A new Type of Mastodon Signup that gives people a sense of Agency

TL;DR: The current Mastodon-signup is only removing the confusion of users on first glance, because it either hides the server-choice altogether, or leaves them with a choice that is impossible to make at this point of their Mastodon-journey. Instead, it should introduce them to decentrality on a lower scale, with a handful of handpicked servers to choose from, such that the decision makes sense to them and shows them the merits and fun of the concept instead of scaring them away. Ideal would be to give them a sense of agency. Then, chances are higher that they consider migrating again in the future and eventually internalize it as a permanent option of the digital world.

stevecrox,
stevecrox avatar

If you signup to social media it will pester you for your email contacts, location and hobbies/interests.

Building a signup wizard to use that information to select a instance would seemto be the best approach.

The contacts would let you know what instance most of your friends are located (e.g. look up email addresses).

Topic specific instance, can provide a hobby/interests selection section.

Lastly the location would let you choose a country specific general instance.

It would help push decentralisation but instead of providing choice your asking questions the user is used to being asked.

russjr08,

To be honest, as an instance owner I would not want to even have that data touch my instance - that would be a nightmare waiting to happen whether some instance operator does so with or without malice intent (such as a server compromise).

Plopp,

Giving social media platforms access to my contacts? Ew. Never. However for those that want it it might be a good idea, except what if I don’t want whoever has put me in their contacts to find me that way?

shrugal,

The contacts would let you know what instance most of your friends are located (e.g. look up email addresses).

I don’t think that’s possible without creating a privacy nightmare, at least not with an identifier like the email address.

astronaut_sloth,
@astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz avatar

Building a signup wizard to use that information to select a instance would seem to be the best approach.

That’s actually not a bad idea. I’m not on board with mining contacts, but I think there’s a simple, transparent way to do this that can actually be fun: a personality quiz. Sure, if someone knows what instance to join already, they can override this. But if they don’t, they get like five questions, and then they are matched to an instance.

nycki,

I think the “migration” process needs more work. If you want to hop homeservers, you’re going to lose your whole post history and all your followers. That’s what keeps people stuck, more than the sign-up process itself.

RobotToaster,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

There’s still nothing like awesome lemmy instances that shows a server’s blocking and blocked by count?

That’s the biggest hurdle for me, there’s no guarantee who you want to follow won’t be blocked by your or their BOFH.

Nougat,

Here’s another way: stop referring to everything “Twitter-like” as Mastodon. Stop referring to everything “Reddit-like” as Lemmy. Those are both client platforms through which one can access ActivityPub content.

Conflating the platform with the provider with the protocol with the content is what’s confusing people.

helenslunch,

I’m curious how you would explain Mastodon to a layman without mentioning Twitter.

Nougat,

... without mentioning Twitter.

That seems like a pretty arbitrary restriction. At this point, a basic knowledge of "what Twitter is like" is a pretty general-knowledge thing.

helenslunch,

It is a general knowledge thing, but that means nothing if you don’t actually reference it.

CoggyMcFee,

Are you saying to start calling all of it ActivityPub? In which case, I would think that’d be extra confusing since lemmy and mastodon don’t cross-interface very well and you really need one client for each type.

Nougat,

I said no such thing.

CoggyMcFee,

Great, can you explain what you mean? I did not follow.

Nougat, (edited )

The article refers to ActivityPub-based "microblogging" by assuming that Mastodon is the only client application available for that purpose. It is not. Mastodon is certainly the most popular client application for that purpose, but it doesn't have to be. Other client applications exist, and a better or more popular client application could be created.

When the point of the article is to get people to comprehend that federated social media is not a "walled garden" --

People are using open, free Mastodon, but in their minds, they are still in a walled garden.

maintaining the notion that a single client application is the only way to read or create a certain kind of content is a big part of the very problem the article describes.

And the author seems to be aware of this:

Often, I hear about people trying to explain the idea behind Mastodon to someone, who is not on the Fediverse, they often explain it with e-mail. However, nowadays, people don’t even experience this “choice of service” even with e-mail anymore. They get their e-mail when signing up with google and that’s it.

GMail is not the only way to send and receive SMTP email. It's certainly a very popular way to do so, but you wouldn't describe a concern over people being blind to their choices of email providers (or, indeed, their ability to host their own email server) as

The current [GMail]-signup is only removing the confusion of users on first glance, because it either hides the server-choice altogether, or leaves them with a choice that is impossible to make at this point of their [GMail]-journey.

If the author, or anyone else, wants people to have a better understanding of the nature of federated social media, describing it wrong is not a path to that goal.

CoggyMcFee,

What would you prefer people use to refer to “Reddit-like” ActivityPub clients, and what would you prefer for “Twitter-like” ones?

Nougat,

I used "microblogging" earlier as a stand-in for "Twitter-like," and I shamelessly pulled that terminology from the kbin interface. It's accurate, but I don't know that the term is sufficient to gain popular traction - and I certainly do not pretend to be the person to dictate what the terminology ought to be.

Now that I think about it, the core of social media of all types is "someone posts a thing" (whether that thing is a link to something else or original text content), and other people comment on it. YouTube, Xitter, Reddit, slashdot, fark, etc etc. The display format, post and comment organization, tagging options - those are all ancillary.

Federation via ActivityPub introduces a wholly new aspect to social media by separating the client application from the content accessed therethrough. I, from kbin.social, can see and interact with content posted by someone originating from mastodon.social. Content is one thing, and client application another.

People do have familiarity with that kind of separation in at least one other internet functionality: email. People generally already understand that their web interface to their email provider allows them to send and receive email both within and without that provider, and that their mobile app is just a different way to access that same content. But SMTP email is old. Since then, the aim of content providers on the internet has been to capture and contain users, using existing protocols, which causes people to consider the provider and the content to be the same thing - because in so many cases, it is.

ActivityPub is a new(ish) protocol. Functionally, it is much more like email than it is like an internet forum of any kind. Extending this comparison, SMTP email is one-to-one (yes, there can be multiple recipients, but they are all themselves "ones"); ActivityPub is one-to-many. Yes, this is similar to traditional walled-garden forums, which are also one-to-many, but those walled-gardens restrict the "many" to "those who have accounts inside our garden." Perhaps ActivityPub is more accurately described as one-to-very many or one-to-all.

It probably seems that I am avoiding your clear and plain question. Maybe I am, but I also think it's important to consider the details of these as-yet-unnamed things in order to arrive at an appropriate and effective way to market them. Federated social media is a public forum in a way that previous internet forums have not been since Usenet. "Forumnet" seems like it could be workable. It's definitely more descriptive than "fediverse" (a name I have never been very pleased by).

While it gets closer, that continues to avoid your specific question. I will need to put a good deal more thought to this, and must now direct my attention elsewhere. Watch this space.

wolfshadowheart, (edited )

I’m not them but -

Forum style posts == reddit.

Short text style posts == twitter.

Just because lemmy is a forum style alternative to Reddit does not mean we should call it a reddit-like.

Just because mastodon is a short text style post alternative to Twitter does not mean we should call it a twitter-like.

It would be like saying reddit is a gameFAQs-like, but for more than just games. Is it inaccurate? Not exactly, but they are their own things. Related/inspired from each other, but so is basically everything that exists from art to practicality.

I think in this case, yes Lemmy was made as an alternative to the forum-image style posting that Reddit is now known for. However, lemmy and mastodon are far beyond that now too due to how it interfaces with ActivityPub (each instance being able to have its own community of the same name). It’s created enough separation that it almost seems inaccurate now to entirely call these a “-like” alternative.

AllNewTypeFace,
@AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space avatar

Bad example, given that Hogwarts-house-in-bio is a reliable transphobic dog whistle, and transphobia is very much unacceptable in the fediverse.

them,

Is it really? Can someone not just like the potter series and either disagree with or ignore the politics of the author?

ArcaneSlime,

No, you’re not allowed to like things. I know because I’ve been told this as a fan of H. P. Lovecraft, comedy, old movies, books, and music. Everything is bad and you should feel bad for liking it.

them,

I don’t agree that this type of response is productive, there’s a lot more nuance to these arguments. It is however interesting which things we’re no longer allowed to like. Disney for example, despite their history of anti-Semitism don’t nearly get as much hate as they deserve and at a time where even suggesting something that Israel did to Gaza is bad becomes conflated with hating Jews

ArcaneSlime,

Tbh, I pirate digital anyway and only buy physical, so it isn’t like I’m giving them money.

I do however think saying someone is a bad person for having nostalgic feelings for something like lion king (to use your disney example) because a long dead man who created the company hated the jewish people is pretty dumb, for example, which is actually something some well intentioned anti-enjoyment activist has suggested to me before (not that you were here, of course).

I understand when it’s something like the Lord’s Chicken, you have to give them money, but buying a book from H. P. Lovecraft’s estate doesn’t help his corpse at all, nor does it mean I support his xenophobic views or the name of his stupid cat, I just like cosmic horror. Yes I like Clark Ashton Smith too (and maybe more) just let me enjoy Innsmouth ffs lol.

them,

In Rowling’s case it seems to be due to her being alive and directly benefiting from the financial success of her work. Pirating seems like a fair compromise. “I like what you make enough to consume it, but don’t like you enough to pay for it”

Maybe good creators are just horrible people

ArcaneSlime,

Yeah so pirate, buy used, you don’t have to contribute to her net worth. And I’m not talking about just “Just Kidding Rowland,” it doesn’t mean I’m transphobic for reading HP though. You can like the books and disagree with their author.

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

You can of course add it to your bio if you’re a fan, but you might want to be aware that it will increasingly not be interpreted innocently.

AllNewTypeFace,
@AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space avatar

Given how strident the author has been about her views, and that she is still a living person, earning royalties and materially contributing to anti-transgender causes, proclaiming oneself a fan of these books is as least saying that the author’s anti-transgender activism is not a dealbreaker. Making part of one’s identity an aspect of the books’ universe is even more so, to the point where there’s a correlation between people proclaiming their Hogwarts house in their bio and expressing anti-trans views. (TERF/“gender critical” activists having suddenly discovered that they were Slitherpuffs or whatever a few years ago, despite not having expressed any interest in YA fantasy novels before Rowling’s statements, is an observed phenomenon, to the point where such a statement in one’s bio is more likely than not to serve as a feeler for scouting out fellow anti-trans sympathisers.)

brbposting,

More reading here:

Please consider how many (not all) trans individuals, out or not, might see your posts and excitement about Harry Potter and view them as a red flag, an implicit sign that you value Rowling’s work over trans lives, and question whether or not you’re a safe person for them connect with.

I’m dismayed by Rowling’s too-real controversies but have a deep affection for the imaginary universe she gave the world.

It’s good to know this, that at a minimum disclaimers are critical forever more it seems.

them,

Thanks for the perspective. I’m not a member of the community (or much of a potter fan, other than enjoying the movies as a kid. Nostalgia) so it’s probably a lot easier for me to separate author from work.

It just concerned me that people would be unintentionally flagging themselves as an adversary. The generalisation also seemed unfair and alienating in the same way many marginalised groups are. I do understand though that one side is something you enjoy and the other is something you are.

brbposting,

It just concerned me that people would be unintentionally flagging themselves as an adversary.

Agreed. Wonder if it’s worth pinning a post in the HP subLemming about it / rejecting anti-transism.

MudMan,
MudMan avatar

I've been saying this from the go: users don't need to know decentralization even exists until AFTER they are signed up.

What Mastodon needs is a proper migration flow that moves old posts and remote follows so users can decide if they want a new instance after they spend some time in the system and start to understand how it works. Any mention of decentralization on signup is a churn point, because decentralization doesn't add any features to posting and reading posts. From a UX perspective, decentralization isn't a feature.

Things are about to get messier once the big decision coming in becomes "do you want to see Threads or nah?", which then actively requires thinking about a competing social media platform on the way into this one.

Foxfire,
@Foxfire@pawb.social avatar

Though if decentralization were to be hidden, it’d be a good idea to cycle through lots of well established general instances for user signups under the hood. The vast majority of people are just going to choose the default options, and if it’s all going to funnel into mastodon.social, that’s a lot of centralization of users. Ideally no single server lords over all the others in terms of user count, because that gives them lots of power other instances may feel compelled to abide by. Having power spread out across many different people helps keep things in check, at the very least making large or drastic decisions more of a round table affair.

pbaesse,
@pbaesse@ursal.zone avatar

@MudMan @blue_berry nice points.

Scrollone,

Not only decentralization is not a feature – it’s a burden. “Normal” users (read: non nerds like 99% of us here) couldn’t care less about which server they should sign up to.

ArcaneSlime,

Tbh then just tell em to sign up for mastodon.social, or a specific instance you know they’d like since you know them fairly well, problem solved. They can migrate later if they want anyway, fuck it, they’ll be fine. It’s a masto acct not a limb amputation, like hair so to speak “it’ll grow back.”

explodicle,

Mastodon has account migration? Are we going to get that?

Edit: Yes. github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3976

ArcaneSlime,

Iirc I heard that is part of this update along with blocking instances but I haven’t yet figured out how to do either, and my instance just logged me out with the update so I finally made the move to eternity and am learning that UI now too instead of jerboa, so it may be a minute before I do figure it out lol.

panicnow,

If you migrate your own account to a new server, do other people follows of you automatically migrate too? Or do all your followers need to then update to follow you at the new location?

russjr08,

I just did this the other week, all of your followers (who are on servers that are still online of course) will follow your new account and unfollow the old account.

It was a bit funny, because I had already signed into the mobile I used and was flooded with notifications as each account followed me (some might be slightly delayed, but all in all it didn’t take more than an hour for the ~50 followers I had).

You will however want to export the list of people you follow from the old account though, because that isn’t automatic. Once you plug the export file into the new account though it’ll do the rest for you.

panicnow,

That sounds very slick. I never really used twitter so had no reason to use mastodon instead, but I am glad it exists!

richieadler,

That kind of attitude leads to being scammed with popups and robbed of all your savings.

Go back to your VCR, Granma.

Serinus,

And if it such a central feature

It’s not. It’s an important feature. It’s not a central feature.

That’s like saying two factor authentication is a central feature of Twitter. It’s important, yes, but it’s not central.

Kecessa, (edited )

I think it should be like joining a mining pool, if you create a server you don’t have admin privileges like they exist here at the moment, you’re added to the pool of machines that stores info and users don’t choose a server at all, the servers communicate between themselves to make sure all info is backed up on at least three machines.

From the front end it looks like any equivalent private social media, one website for everything. On the back end side the servers are all over the place instead of in a couple data centers.

Server owners could decide to ban certain communities from storing info on their server, but that wouldn’t delete the community, it would just rely on being hosted elsewhere (hence the triple backup at all times) and users would be responsible for curating their own feed.

It would solve the issue of having to switch server if you disagree with the admin’s decision and would make the experience much more user friendly. Each new server would improve the stability of the whole network by taking part of the load and making sure that if one server is down, others have the same content available so no user can tell that there’s something wrong happening behind the scene.

Serinus,
  1. 2 is good.

Decentralization doesn’t matter until it does. Recruiting people to your specific Mastodon instance is ideal and simple. All they need out of the decentralization concept is to know they can’t be screwed if Elon takes over their instance.

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

I like this, though I will say I acutally prefer the playful choice idea. Not Hogwarts for me particular, but in general.

otter,

I’m curious about the state of account migrations right now. Ideally it should be super easy and it should strengthen the Fediverse if people can hope platforms with ease when an admin isn’t behaving as they should.

One technical challenge might be deletion

  • Admins need to be able to delete or quarantine harmful / illegal content
  • You can’t move instances if an admin suddenly comes along and deletes everything

Could on-device backups be a thing? The collective userbase takes up a lot of storage, but each individual person probably doesn’t upload more than their phone can store. It might also incentivize them to not spam large files

CleoTheWizard,
@CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world avatar

I think account migration will have to come in two waves. It would be far easier to migrate accounts that are federated. That should be as simple as name swapping comments and posts and assigning them to the opposite servers while handing over user data.

The hard part is with servers who do not federate. Two solutions exist. One would have a data hop. It’s very likely that defederated servers would contain some link somewhere between federated servers. So the original server would pass data through one or two other servers to get to your new destination server that otherwise wouldn’t receive that data.

The other solution involves allowing a user to download their content with a key from the server and then present that to the new server. That data may need to be encrypted or have verification somehow to prevent tampering before reuploading it.

Any of these solutions will probably require manually approving and sorting through of data. The good news is that you can make requirements to say that users should have so many upvotes or whatever to receive a transfer to your platform. So their backup of data can sit still until you’re deemed worthy of transfer.

I’d say that data backups on your phone should definitely be an option regardless.

starman,
@starman@programming.dev avatar

Account migration and backup are features of lemmy v0.19

github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3976

Illecors,

So… Am I missing something or are you suggesting an oligopoly, elected by a monopoly?

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