7 ms·

Would you say the same thing about e-mail and SMTP?

by pawal 8y ago

phoe-krk 8y ago
That's a good example. In a way, e-mail was the first federated social network, and nowadays there's no critical UX issue with "there's too many e-mail providers to choose from, there should be only one GMail for people to sign up to". The only difference is that e-mail is "obvious" and Mastodon is new.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gemlog 8y ago
this. It doesn't matter one whit about the instance, except perhaps initially. Maybe. You choose who to read and follow and the instance doesn't matter. I already 'follow' about 80 like-minded geeks I'm interested to read each day and that's all I can keep up with. I never look at either the local timeline or the federated timeline: they are too much information; firehose. edit: and those 80-odd ppl are all over the planet on various instances in various languages.
- mattmanser 8y ago
  Is it not like an email server then? What happens when they decide shut down their mastodon server without warning?
  - TuringTest 8y ago
    People can learn about service providers after they've been using the service for a while, when they understand how it works and what value it provides; it is then a good time to decide whether they want to migrate to a more stable or close provider. The sign-up form during the first experience with the service is not the point to educate the newcomer about those issues, beyond maybe a friendly reminder of who is the one providing service to them at that point. The sign-up process should be streamlined to make sure users arrive to a server that provides a good experience based on their interest; not on educating them about the technicalities of the service.
- s_kilk 8y ago
  > It doesn't matter one whit about the instance, except perhaps initially. Maybe. You choose who to read and follow and the instance doesn't matter. Not in my experience. Mastodon doesn't really have any (good) cross-instance discovery mechanisms aside from just watching the global fire-hose, so your initial experience is formed by the other users on your instance. And the experience varies wildly from "This instance is very quiet" to "This instance is full of furries".
  - gcb0 8y ago
    sound just like email or twitter or facebook before everyone's parents were on it.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
There has historically always only been one sensible email provider. It was your ISP, and then it was gmail.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  I've never used my ISP provided email. Even before gmail, I used other gmail-ish ones (hotmail, yahoo &c.)
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Just as I've tried to do with my email for a long time now, I decided to have my own Mastodon instance on a domain I control. Email does show us a greater need in Mastodon to emphasize trust-relationships over ill-defined "social groups" as better ways to form relationships. In the early days of email, the ISP was an easily formed trust relationship, and in today's arena a lot of people have preferred trust relationships to hosts like Google (Gmail) or Microsoft (Hotmail/Outlook), etc. The "people interested in Topic X" that most of the instance lists are focused on doesn't give you any information towards trust relationships, and is possibly in the way of forming them. The immediate problem is that those large companies like Google or Microsoft with lots established trust relationships aren't expected to play in Mastodon/ActivityPub, so you need to bootstrap new ones. Luckily, there's a lot of room for trying to bootstrap new trust relationships. Some instances have already been playing with ownership models, and companies are easy enough to form if people want to place those ownership models into transparently accountable units/liability-protected units that are recognized by larger governing bodies than just themselves. A friend I follow, Darius (@darius@tinysubversions.com), has also been ruminating on this quirk in Mastodon adoption lately and trying to find ways to establish trust relationships with instances, though so far his solution is to stick to a smaller scope and start with the idea of "you trust me, so let me host your instance" among friends. That idea might scale if there were enough folks like Darius doing that, and I've sent very simple invites to possibly add friends to my instance that I control, and have been looking to come up with governance documents based on that idea, but haven't yet had anyone take me up on that invite, so I keep procrastinating it.

Would you say the same thing about e-mail and SMTP?

by pawal 8y ago

Would you say the same thing about e-mail and SMTP?

That's a good example. In a way, e-mail was the first federated social network, and nowadays there's no critical UX issue with "there's too many e-mail providers to choose from, there should be only one GMail for people to sign up to". The only difference is that e-mail is "obvious" and Mastodon is new.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gemlog 8y ago

this. It doesn't matter one whit about the instance, except perhaps initially. Maybe. You choose who to read and follow and the instance doesn't matter. I already 'follow' about 80 like-minded geeks I'm interested to read each day and that's all I can keep up with. I never look at either the local timeline or the federated timeline: they are too much information; firehose. edit: and those 80-odd ppl are all over the planet on various instances in various languages.

mattmanser 8y ago
Is it not like an email server then? What happens when they decide shut down their mastodon server without warning?
- TuringTest 8y ago
  People can learn about service providers after they've been using the service for a while, when they understand how it works and what value it provides; it is then a good time to decide whether they want to migrate to a more stable or close provider. The sign-up form during the first experience with the service is not the point to educate the newcomer about those issues, beyond maybe a friendly reminder of who is the one providing service to them at that point. The sign-up process should be streamlined to make sure users arrive to a server that provides a good experience based on their interest; not on educating them about the technicalities of the service.
s_kilk 8y ago
> It doesn't matter one whit about the instance, except perhaps initially. Maybe. You choose who to read and follow and the instance doesn't matter. Not in my experience. Mastodon doesn't really have any (good) cross-instance discovery mechanisms aside from just watching the global fire-hose, so your initial experience is formed by the other users on your instance. And the experience varies wildly from "This instance is very quiet" to "This instance is full of furries".
- gcb0 8y ago
  sound just like email or twitter or facebook before everyone's parents were on it.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

There has historically always only been one sensible email provider. It was your ISP, and then it was gmail.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I've never used my ISP provided email. Even before gmail, I used other gmail-ish ones (hotmail, yahoo &c.)
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Just as I've tried to do with my email for a long time now, I decided to have my own Mastodon instance on a domain I control. Email does show us a greater need in Mastodon to emphasize trust-relationships over ill-defined "social groups" as better ways to form relationships. In the early days of email, the ISP was an easily formed trust relationship, and in today's arena a lot of people have preferred trust relationships to hosts like Google (Gmail) or Microsoft (Hotmail/Outlook), etc. The "people interested in Topic X" that most of the instance lists are focused on doesn't give you any information towards trust relationships, and is possibly in the way of forming them. The immediate problem is that those large companies like Google or Microsoft with lots established trust relationships aren't expected to play in Mastodon/ActivityPub, so you need to bootstrap new ones. Luckily, there's a lot of room for trying to bootstrap new trust relationships. Some instances have already been playing with ownership models, and companies are easy enough to form if people want to place those ownership models into transparently accountable units/liability-protected units that are recognized by larger governing bodies than just themselves. A friend I follow, Darius (@darius@tinysubversions.com), has also been ruminating on this quirk in Mastodon adoption lately and trying to find ways to establish trust relationships with instances, though so far his solution is to stick to a smaller scope and start with the idea of "you trust me, so let me host your instance" among friends. That idea might scale if there were enough folks like Darius doing that, and I've sent very simple invites to possibly add friends to my instance that I control, and have been looking to come up with governance documents based on that idea, but haven't yet had anyone take me up on that invite, so I keep procrastinating it.