@thomasfuchs Iron law of UX: Any user-facing product led exclusively by developers will offer subpar UX and be easily eaten away by alternatives, basically because (1) UX is hard and requires skills developers don't have, and (2) mainstream users won't tolerate bad UX for the sake of other arguments that don't matter to them, for example "being open source".
I absolutely agree. The Fediverse is falling into the same trap as the bird site — it’s not the tech or protocols that make a social network — it’s the users.
On the upside it should be possible to bridge any open protocol social network (in this case ActivityPub and the AT Protocol); so hopefully at some point in the future you’ll be able to use a single account to interact with people from BlueSky.
@thomasfuchs I have not experienced it myself, but I have come across sites that have mentioned some issues minorities have experienced on Mastodon. I chose not to look into this. Bluesky is very welcoming, but it is currently small with no additional instances.
@thomasfuchs Perhaps if fedi.directory or instances.social had an api that apps could communicate with, giving apps themselves the ability to perform an interest/demographic-based search for you.
@thomasfuchs I have found the exact opposite to be true. The hype over its difficulty to use turned out to be just that.
I have helped several people migrate to Mastodon by simply pointing them to https://joinmastodon.org/
As far as welcoming goes, any feeling of being welcome or unwelcomed is also just that (feelings).
I have had some very horrible things said to me on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, AOL chat, IRC, ect. I was personally offended, not unwelcomed
@thomasfuchs agreed! And said it before myself. Starting fresh and feeling like you’re building something new was taken away from Twitter migrants to masto. And while mastodon people shouldn’t have been required to hand over the keys, a truly thriving federation should have found a way to give the migrants their own space to grow. Now competitors can provide this fresh experience and fracture the field and eat some fediverse lunch.
@emmah Those reasons came from a privileged position from people who use social media just for fun, anyone—especially marginalized communities—using it for real discussions that are often very serious need to be able to add context; which is not possible without quoting posts. (Also, harrassment happens mainly in replies on Twitter, but that’s another story.)
The other thing is that replies have to work. They don’t always work across instances on Mastodon and are not even eventually consistent.
Mastodon and fediverse seem to work great for a lot minorities as long as they’re also techies. Espescially white neurodivergent and/or queer people. Idk why. Less so from other minorities.
But not all marginalized people are techies! For a lot of them Twitter (despite it issues) provides them with a importabt support network that Mastodon just haven’t been able to provide them for a variety of reasons. We need to be sensetive to that too.
That’s where I maybe see some promise from Bluesky and the AT protocol. I want federated social for all, not only techies.
On the other hand: maybe we just need more userfriendly ActivityPub instances. Will be interesting to see happens Tumblr implements ActivityPub.
@torb@emmah@thomasfuchs so I’m curious (as a majority cis-straight etc) as to what extent this is true. Like, for example, are there trans or queer communities out there made up of non-techie people that just don’t see the point of the fediverse or see the dynamic you state here and happily don’t care about it?
Please feel free to rebuff me if the question is onerous or or annoying in anyway. It’s just that you imply an interesting division for the fediverse.
@maegul@emmah@thomasfuchs To be clear, it’s anecdotal based on my personal experience, so I’m not claiming to have hard statistical data here!
I don’t think it’s not seeing the point as maybe not understand the basic concept. I think us techies sometimes underestimate how much less understanding of technical issues non-techies often have (for a variety of reasons). For example, to a lot of them Facebook Messenger is like email, but like, much easier to use, and that’s the extent of what they think of it. Federation is a fairly complex thing after all.
My hope is that a lot more of them is starting to care now, enough to put in the effort to get what federation is!
Frankly I find people make excuses for some of Mastodon’s defacto technica elitism by hiding behind lofty ideals.
Said ideals truly are great, but don’t seem to include concern for less technical users and I frankly find it to imply a mild disdain for non-technical users around here.
It’s the same reason I got really fed up with the Linux on desktop community a decade ago.
(I’m generalising here of course, not everyone in these communities are bad, and many truly are doing great work!)
I'll point out that non-virality was a goal early on in the project, though I think website boy has rejected that since he's more interested in clout now.
These days I find myself questioning "it just works" because of the externalities it produces. Facebook Messenger just works, but it has a side effect of putting fascists in office.
I think end users have a responsibility to think through the implications of the they they use just as the people making the tech.
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