"We believe it’s important for Mastodon to be good as a product on its own merits, and not just because of its ideology. If we only attract people who already care about decentralization, our ability to make decentralization mainstream becomes that much harder."
@molly0xfff Kind of skeptical of mastodon.social being the de-facto default. Think it would be better to have the servers change so we'd keep Mastodon's decentralized nature.
@molly0xfff I feel like the default should be different based on your language and maybe it could be rotating among these option. To set the default by language would make people go in a community that would already be a good fit for them. @Gargron .
@molly0xfff this is not a good news, IMHO. If decentralisation is important then why put Mastodon.social as default? Why not even a multiple choice? Why not providing the user with the possibility to choose between local/language based/ interest driven different instances?
@molly0xfff@gerrymcgovern That sounds fair enough. I hope account migration with post import is coming soon or there might be some confusion when people find they’re posts are stuck on .social even if they move themselves.
@molly0xfff It is interesting to see some people are willing to die on the hill of decentralization. But shouldn't we get people who are interested in joining onboard first?
Someone made the really great comparison with how Linux was historically hostle for new users. The whole, "Of course you compile your own kernel" crowd. Analogies are flawed of course, but relation for me was very clear.
Also, look at the popularity of BlueSky. People are willing to join a obviously flawed and alpha experence, because it's easy to sign on and it feels somewhat farmilar.
@molly0xfff I strongly disagree that the solution to "decentralization is confusing to people" is "default to mastodon.social". It gives mastodon.social undue power over all other instances.
If they'd rotate through a list of known well-moderated and well-maintained instances, that would've been fine. But now, all the power is being centralized in one place. What's to stop a Twitter-style takeover now?
Imho, at this rate mastodon.social will kill Mastodon like Gmail killed the good of email.
@SylvieLorxu i think there's still a lot that differentiates mastodon and twitter that would make a twitter-style takeover unlikely and unsuccessful. i do like the idea of a pool of default servers, though!
@molly0xfff It's one of those things where I understand the decision and understand the detractors.
There are some risks! But there's also a risk this whole thing loses steam while VC-brained people are working hard to be the net that catches Twitter's ejectees. A few Mastodon instances catching them instead while forks, new instances, and new AP platforms proliferate isn't such a bad outcome.
I understand but disagree with people who seem worried Eugen is waiting to spring some trap to take the fediverse over.
@givemefoxes i largely agree with this. and i think there are some things that could go towards alleviating the fears around increasing centralization, too, like prioritizing account portability
@molly0xfff I don't know how much trouble it is, but AP could go a long way toward taking away some of ATP's wind by adding the identity portability functionality. I should at least be able to show as name@mydomain so I can just point the record elsewhere if my instance collapses.
Moving posts will hopefully come after they finish support for backfilling statuses on remote profiles. That seems like it would resolve whatever was in the way.
@molly0xfff Cool. But is making mastodon.social a de-facto default a good compromise? Also, the wording of "Pick my own server" is a bit unfortunate. "Pick a server manually" would've been better, maybe? 🤔
@dusnm FWIW as someone who actually did host “my own server” for a bit, it didn't even occur to me to read it in that way. I think non-technical people (the majority of an ideal user base) will likely not read it that way. But … if you want to choose (your own server), you could still choose it when (choosing your own) server, couldn't you?
@bensaufley I always prefer eliminating ambiguity when there's even a slight chance such ambiguity will lead to an adverse outcome. You're correct that the ambiguity is slight, but I would still like to see it gone. It doesn't cost anything.
@dusnm I don't disagree, generally, but sometimes eliminating ambiguity creates more obtuse or technical language, which can be alienating to a broader user base. I'm not saying there isn't a solution, but you do have to balance precision with friendliness.
@bensaufley Well, to me it doesn't sound obtuse or technical... If we're being honest, the word "server" is already a bit technical, yet we assume most people understand what it means and would not mistake it for an actual human whose job description is "server" right? 🙂
@dusnm Hahah but you could say the same for “Choose your own" couldn't you? Make the assumption that people can infer from context? Different people will find different things obtuse or technical and you have to try to plan for that.
@bensaufley I see I've opened up quite the can of worms here... 😂 I'm definitely not the best person to decide these things. I simply prefer clarity over ambiguity. To that end I propose this gem, 🥁 🥁 🥁 :
Use a different machine serving content over the internet to join this fine establishment... 😂
The term "host" is used outside technical spaces, and happens to have a good correspondence to hostname. Very few instances will actually be single servers anyway.
@ScienceisWhere@molly0xfff I guess it's all a matter of perspective? Different people interpret things differently. Different people have different priorities. I tend to prioritize clarity over ambiguity, sometimes at the cost of "friendliness".
@ScienceisWhere@dusnm@molly0xfff Since the infamous github issue, I've been asking non-tech people about 'choose my own server'. Not one knew what it meant, and most assumed it would mean they would have to set up a server theirselves. It's a terrible, terrible piece of UX.
@crispinb@ScienceisWhere@dusnm i'm sure there's some wording like "pick a different server" that could straddle the line between user-centered and tech jargon
@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere I am very much against having a de-facto default server. I feel like we're not doing something right if the concept of federation is apparently so complex it bounces new users away. (Which I'm struggling to understand, federation has real world analogues after all) A hand-holding compromise, with a revolving door of vetted servers would indeed be a better approach if far from the ideal one.
@dusnm@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere Because federation doesn't map neatly on to people's trained preconceptions, sign-up needed a serious, iterative design process. An unexplained and undiscussed fiat decision (and a poor one) only creates suspicion and discord.
@dusnm@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere you might not get why the concept of federation is too complicated for many users, but you don't have to. The reality is that it's too complex. I've have been around when other folks have talked about their attempts to join Mastodon and were so confused they gave up before every picking a server.
I get the concern around having a central default server, but folks can move servers if needed. For many people, the simpler option is ideal.
@dusnm@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere a big part of why BlueSky is taking off is that the onboarding experience is dirt simple (once you get an invite). There is only once server, only one place to go. A lot of the benefits people point out about BlueSky revolve around it being a single centralized service. Of course, if they actually federate the service the same criticisms lobbied at Mastodon will likely apply.
@fancysandwiches@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere I don't like the implication that we have to conform to the lowest common denominator (what everyone's already familiar with), while leaving mastodon's central aspect, federation, as a "choice techies can do if they want". There has to be a better way...
@fancysandwiches@dusnm@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere yes this was done specifically because people think it's too difficult to sign up and pick a server. I am against there being a default but the number of people who want to "get on Mastodon" and fail is why this happened.
@stinerman@fancysandwiches@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere But there has to be a way, a compromise that's not antithetical to Mastodon's central feature, federation. People proposed a revolving door of select serves, or my favorite, a simple dropdown menu that has a random server already selected.
@dusnm@fancysandwiches@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere I agree that there should be a better way. However we've found from complaints that a sort of random selection can get users sent to poorly moderated instances. Or where admins are not flexible (one example was of an admin that demanded everything have a CW) when the user refused they got suspended. That's not a good experience.
("we" refers to us on the Discord channel discussing these issues; I don't speak for Mastodon gGmbH)
@stinerman@fancysandwiches@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere Random is probably not good either, but a curated list of well-moderated servers with a proven track record (like fosstodon.org hey), coupled with the objectively great looking UI/UX in the picture, is one way to solve the problem without compromising federation.
@dusnm@stinerman@crispinb@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere this is a great example of why random isn't a great idea. The average person has no clue what FOSS is, nor do they care, nor will they. Straight from Fosstodon's site:
"The whole point of Fosstodon is to be a community of like-minded people who enjoy Free & Open Source Software (FOSS)."
@dusnm
You are onto something there! I don't get why was this so hard to do A/B tests and understand that wording is crucial, and that having just one "well moderated server" is not a good look. It undermines all the hard work put onto those servers, servers that even made it past instance picker on official Mastodon website and closely follow Mastodon Server Covenant.
After all that work done, official app just wants to promote the single instance, even if it's covered by good intentions.
@fancysandwiches@dusnm@molly0xfff@ScienceisWhere No-one's denying the need to simplify sign up. What people are saying is that (a) the means of doing so shouldn't be decided by a crude, unexplained, and undiscussed fiat (which has already damaged the federated community), and (b) the chosen solution was a fairly obviously bad one.
It strikes me that what Mastodon needs is for each server to expose a /meta URL to present JSON data describing if that server is open to new sign-ups, plus details about the server type—general, theme(s), geography, etc.
Joinmastodon.org could scrape and combine them all, and present the unified json data for all Mastodon clients to use. Smart server selection for user onboarding would become a client feature each one could innovate on.
The issue is the "techy" wording. If it said "Choose my neighborhood" reactions would be different. Especially if there was small text saying "You can always move!".
Of course, for that to be really acted upon moving servers would be less painful. If would also allow me to move past posts, not just follows and followers...
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