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Admittedly I don't use social media like most people, but I dont understand the "discovery problem", personally. I've never wondered "how do I discover user ema
by 0x0000000 4y ago
Admittedly I don't use social media like most people, but I dont understand the "discovery problem", personally. I've never wondered "how do I discover user email addresses?" for example. Don't you already have friends or folks you're interested in following? Can't you ask them what their ActivityPub instance/identity is? Once you have even a small network, can't you see the folks who interact with those you're already following?
I don't mean for this to sound callous or dismissive, I'm just wondering if y'all can help me understand where you're coming from. Is it FOMO? An issue of optimization? I feel like time and attention is already limited and the last thing I need is to find more things on which to waste either.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, perhaps consider a more organic approach? Even on HN we see threads like "what are your favorite youtube channels?" from time to time, despite that one major draw to YouTube is the "discoverability" (it's one reason why folks post content there instead of on their own site, no?)
- fariszr 4y agoI personally never used Twitter for friends or any relatives. And the discoverability problem is more for my account, rather than discovering other people, Its very hard to grow organically on Mastodon. Still, this applies to discovering other people too.
- 0x0000000 4y agoFair enough, I can understand if you are trying to build an audience and be discovered yourself that this is a bigger problem than trying to discover others.
- rzazueta 4y agoI feel like that's part of the point of the Fediverse, though - it;s not a centralized social media platform like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. - it;s really for creating interconnected communities that are mostly self-supporting and grow very deliberately. The benefits of discoverability - gaining a following of strangers, reaching new audiences for marketing purposes, etc. - are also what breed a lot of the problems associated with centralized social media. If Twitter is an international airport, then Fediverse apps are like your local regional airports - like the ones you pass on the freeway but never really notice are there. If you;re looking for a true Twitter replacement, Mastodon and the others aren't it - they're building smaller, focused, organic communities rather than incentivizing engagement to sell eyeballs to advertisers. That changes their whole dynamic.
- fariszr 4y agoBut these Discovery problems aren't because of the Fediverse. They are Mastodon Problems. Matrix is a federated protocol, and it doesn't have the same discovery issues.