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This highlights why I’m so far not on Mastodon: Decision fatigue. How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic s

by jrmg 4y ago

This highlights why I’m so far not on Mastodon: Decision fatigue. How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant - and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic? Maybe I should just join what seems to be the default (because of its friendly domain?) of http://mastodon.social http://mastodon.social. But that seems defeat the purpose of decentralization - and (without evidence) I don’t really trust that mastodon.social is set up to handle the huge influx of users at the moment…

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
You also can't: - move your account to a different server - use your account as a sign-on for other ActivityPub based services - easily discover content that your server doesn't already know about
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  Your first point is wrong, you definitely can move your account to a new instance and take your followers with you.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move The docs, for anyone wondering.
    - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
      That just moves followers, not the account, data, followings, posts, reputations, links to your account, etc.
      - kixiQu 4y ago
        Moving the accounts you follow (and block/mute settings) is on that page under a different heading. Setting up a profile redirect is also on that page under a different heading. It is correct that moving posts/other data is not possible. "Reputations" isn't a thing technically attached to an account.
socialismisok 4y ago
This is 100% why I haven't signed up yet. It's like walking into a blockbuster video and being told, "you can pick one movie from this store, but everyone will know which movie you pick, and the director of that movie will be able to control what other movies you get to see." The analysis paralysis this induces is incredible.
- josteink 4y ago
  > and the director of that movie will be able to control what other movies you get to see That’s not true though, is it? Aren’t you able to consume content from anywhere else in the fediverse?
  - flkiwi 4y ago
    You can unless an admin specifically blocks another instance. It doesn't seem to be that common in practice (other than blocking the content that you'd expect to be blocked or, IIRC, a handful of servers that effectively de-federate).
- lrvick 4y ago
  It is more like you previously could -only- obtain movies from Blockbuster and you loved that they recommended sponsored movies whenever you visited. You did not have to think. Now Blockbuster is gone and there are a pile of other ways to obtain movies out there and you are complaining that choosing one is hard. It is entertainment and they all have access to the same movies so it is not that important of a choice.
shadowgovt 4y ago
You and a lot of other people. I see this blind spot in the open source community from time to time regarding decision paralysis and I'm surprised that more people don't realize how much of an issue it is for a lot of users. I don't want to think about what server I'm on. I want the whole thing to just work. The fact that there is only one Twitter and only one Facebook are actually advantages in the marketplace for those services.
- josteink 4y ago
  > I don't want to think about what server I'm on. Maybe I’m the exception but for me almost without exception the answer is that I want to run my own instance. What’s the point of leaving a centralized system for a decentralized one if you still let someone else own your data?
  - parminya 4y ago
    People aren't mass-leaving Twitter because Twitter owns their data. They were happy with someone else owning their data to the extent that they were users of Twitter. They're mass-leaving Twitter becomes Elon Musk bought Twitter. Elon Musk cannot buy Mastodon. He might buy your particular server, but the chances he'd try to are much more remote because the benefit of doing so is much less.
- mynameismonkey 4y ago
  Agreed. I've been pasting this anywhere I see the frustration Think of it like your phone number, it's a service and you need a provider. Choose one by location https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094 https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094 makes no difference, they all talk to each other and you can move servers at any time And it's curated for servers that are open for registration so hopefully no dead ends
  - tekchip 4y ago
    Totally this. Did decision fatigue stop you from using email? It didn't because they all talk. It doesn't really matter which you choose. This is especially true now that there is an official system to change/move servers.
phoe-krk 4y ago
> How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant Just don't care about it that much, really. My main account has been at https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe for years now, but I'm posting about pretty much everything there: programming, music, art, politics, current events, shitposting. > and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic? Ask someone from your friend circle who's already on Fediverse, but also see the above point.
- jrmg 4y ago
  Just don’t care about what the first thing people will see that’s specifically about me says about me? I don’t think I can bring myself to do that.
  - flkiwi 4y ago
    Then signing up for a general instance (mastodon.social, mas.to, etc.) makes sense. It's like (as in exactly like) signing up for gmail vs. having a custom domain.
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/ isn't allowing new signups, https://mas.to/ https://mas.to/ is returning a cloudflare error page for me.
      - flkiwi 4y ago
        It's an exceptional growth period for the servers. Twitter used to have failwhales, and gmail used to require invitations. It will stabilize. (And, if you happen to be interested and have the skillset, you could deploy your own instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a VPS provider that already has pushbutton mastodon deployment in place.)
        4y ago
Joeboy 4y ago
You actually can't sign up on mastodon.social at the moment. I thought the same, all the instances are for weirdly specific groups I'm not in. You don't have this problem with email, there's no requirement to choose an email address that matches your political tendencies, sexual kinks etc. I eventually chose fosstodon.org which seems like about the most vanilla thing that's open to new users and where I have a decent claim to being the right kind of person. I suspect a lot of people will look at the long list of furry-centric instances and conclude Mastodon is not for them. IDK, maybe that's considered a feature.
- berkes 4y ago
  But it really is the same with mastodon. You don't need to find an instance that matches your political tendencies, furry niche, or whatever. Just pick one that feels right. Maybe you are French or Korean and like a server in French or Korean, or maybe you feel very strong about politics: the make that a parameter. Otherwise just go for any "general" server. Just like with email, people will generally just pick Hotmail, AOL, xs4all.nl, yahoo or email, without much thought. This is fine. You can easily move later if you ever find a community that you wish to be part of.
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    > Otherwise just go for any "general" server That's exactly what I tried, and failed, to do. As far as I was able to discover, including via the site being discussed here, there are no such servers currently available for new signups.
    - berkes 4y ago
      I'm sorry to hear that. The influx is big currently. Many servers can barely handle all the signups and extra load. So this is temporary, and certainly not a fundamental issue.
      - Joeboy 4y ago
        Thank you! This is a much, much better response than the denialism I'm seeing in other replies.
Cyberdog 4y ago
You're overthinking it. Find an instance that seems friendly and sign up. If it turns out you don't like it there, you can migrate to another one; barring defederation issues, everyone who is following you on the old instance will follow you on the new one automatically. Unfortunately the list of people that you follow isn't automatically migrated, but some front ends reduce the pain of this by letting you export a list of follow-ees on the old instance and then import it on the new one. Just do it!
- mabcat 4y ago
  That's such a strange piece of UX. As a typical user, who on average consumes content rather than produces it, what I care about is that my list of followed accounts migrates with me so that my feed stays relatively consistent. As a content producer I would also care about my past posts migrating with me, which they don't. Having followers continue to follow me after migration is only the primary concern for the "influencer". I get that "my friends can still find me" is an important feature but who thought it was ok to skip the other two?
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    Followed accounts are easier to do manually; there's a simple export / import interface that existed before the account move feature. I will note that for you "as a content producer" the uniformly reverse chronological presentation on Mastodon highly penalizes older posts (even a day old!) to an extent that is pretty rough to get used to, and that makes those older posts pretty irrelevant to move over. This is much like Twitter before its engagement-maximization algorithm days, though.
elcapitan 4y ago
To me it's like the difference between living in an anonymous big city where I can do whatever I want without too many people yelling at me, and having to pick some village where everybody knows everybody and forces their rules on them. I would never choose the latter just by my own nature, so Mastodon will never be an alternative to twitter for me. Looking at that endless list of specialized echo chambers of some people with their own sub rules just makes me shudder immediately.
- chc 4y ago
  There are general servers that provide basically the same "anonymous in a big city" experience as Twitter (or at least, as much as Twitter did 10 years ago).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- lrvick 4y ago
  If you want to be on your own sovereign island you can host your own Mastodon instance or pay a monthly fee to one of the many Managed Mastodon providers and even use your own domain name. It is not that much different from choosing an email provider.
olah_1 4y ago
I just want a public key. You can name me what you want or I can buy an easy-to-read username and renew it like a domain.
- lrvick 4y ago
  You have the choice to have any username you want on a domain you own.
  - olah_1 4y ago
    *if you know how to manage and maintain a server
    - lrvick 4y ago
      Or if you know how to pay someone else to do that for you. I searched for managed mastodon and found plenty of options. https://masto.host https://masto.host https://toot.io https://toot.io https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon https://hostdon.jp/#/ https://hostdon.jp/#/ https://federation.spacebear.ee/software/mastodon https://federation.spacebear.ee/software/mastodon https://ossrox.org/ https://ossrox.org/ https://weingaertner-it.de/ https://weingaertner-it.de/ I expect many more will emerge now that demand is increasing.
      - olah_1 4y ago
        The reason I just want a public key is because I don’t really own the account otherwise. I only own it if I self host it. If I rent from them, I’m just renting my account from these services. It’s actually worse than renting it from Twitter because people care less if smaller companies abuse you.
linsomniac 4y ago
FYI: I had signed up years ago on mastoton.social and not really used it. I tried logging in a few days ago and it was struggling under the load. Sounds like the admin of that instance is buying hardware to support the new load.
dredmorbius 4y ago
It doesn't matter ... too much. I've been on Mastodon since 2016. I've switched instances twice, once when the instance was shut down (the maintainer gave several months' notice), once when instance ownership changed. The first time was early enough that profile migration didn't exist ... and it still wasn't much of a deal. I follow a few hundred profiles, and am followed by about 2,000. It turns out that it's pretty easy to re-associate, at least for individuals. (Commercial / brand profiles with large follow/follower lists would have a different experience.) We reconnected pretty easily. The more recent switch used profile migration. This brings along your followers / following lists, as well as block and mute lists, and is straightforward. Toots are not migrated, but for the most part Mastodon "lives in the present", and the back-catalogue isn't particularly significant. (I care more about this than most, and ... it's still not that big a deal.) I actually have several active profiles, though all are forwarded to my primary active one: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius>. Again, if I need to fallback to another instance, I can. Larger instances tend to be fairly anodyne. Smaller instances tend to fit niches, of both specific interests and policies. Pick something that looks reasonable. If you decide you want to change at a later date, it's not a big deal.
TheBrokenRail 4y ago
100% this! There doesn't seem to be many general servers that: 1. I can trust won't just shut down in a week. 2. Are accepting signups 3. And won't end up having a negative stigma a in year when the creator goes off a deep end. I know I can just switch to another instance, but I really don't want to have to do that frequently. Matrix at least solves this by just having an official Matrix home-server. Matrix is still federated, but if you just want to just sign-up and join a chat room, you're not forced to pick a home-server that's specific to you or worry about the factors above.

by jrmg 4y ago

GartzenDeHaes 4y ago

You also can't: - move your account to a different server - use your account as a sign-on for other ActivityPub based services - easily discover content that your server doesn't already know about

M2Ys4U 4y ago
Your first point is wrong, you definitely can move your account to a new instance and take your followers with you.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move The docs, for anyone wondering.
  - GartzenDeHaes 4y ago
    That just moves followers, not the account, data, followings, posts, reputations, links to your account, etc.
    - kixiQu 4y ago
      Moving the accounts you follow (and block/mute settings) is on that page under a different heading. Setting up a profile redirect is also on that page under a different heading. It is correct that moving posts/other data is not possible. "Reputations" isn't a thing technically attached to an account.

socialismisok 4y ago

This is 100% why I haven't signed up yet. It's like walking into a blockbuster video and being told, "you can pick one movie from this store, but everyone will know which movie you pick, and the director of that movie will be able to control what other movies you get to see." The analysis paralysis this induces is incredible.

josteink 4y ago
> and the director of that movie will be able to control what other movies you get to see That’s not true though, is it? Aren’t you able to consume content from anywhere else in the fediverse?
- flkiwi 4y ago
  You can unless an admin specifically blocks another instance. It doesn't seem to be that common in practice (other than blocking the content that you'd expect to be blocked or, IIRC, a handful of servers that effectively de-federate).
lrvick 4y ago
It is more like you previously could -only- obtain movies from Blockbuster and you loved that they recommended sponsored movies whenever you visited. You did not have to think. Now Blockbuster is gone and there are a pile of other ways to obtain movies out there and you are complaining that choosing one is hard. It is entertainment and they all have access to the same movies so it is not that important of a choice.

shadowgovt 4y ago

You and a lot of other people. I see this blind spot in the open source community from time to time regarding decision paralysis and I'm surprised that more people don't realize how much of an issue it is for a lot of users. I don't want to think about what server I'm on. I want the whole thing to just work. The fact that there is only one Twitter and only one Facebook are actually advantages in the marketplace for those services.

josteink 4y ago
> I don't want to think about what server I'm on. Maybe I’m the exception but for me almost without exception the answer is that I want to run my own instance. What’s the point of leaving a centralized system for a decentralized one if you still let someone else own your data?
- parminya 4y ago
  People aren't mass-leaving Twitter because Twitter owns their data. They were happy with someone else owning their data to the extent that they were users of Twitter. They're mass-leaving Twitter becomes Elon Musk bought Twitter. Elon Musk cannot buy Mastodon. He might buy your particular server, but the chances he'd try to are much more remote because the benefit of doing so is much less.
mynameismonkey 4y ago
Agreed. I've been pasting this anywhere I see the frustration Think of it like your phone number, it's a service and you need a provider. Choose one by location https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094 https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/mastodon-near-me_828094 makes no difference, they all talk to each other and you can move servers at any time And it's curated for servers that are open for registration so hopefully no dead ends
- tekchip 4y ago
  Totally this. Did decision fatigue stop you from using email? It didn't because they all talk. It doesn't really matter which you choose. This is especially true now that there is an official system to change/move servers.

phoe-krk 4y ago

> How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant Just don't care about it that much, really. My main account has been at https://functional.cafe https://functional.cafe for years now, but I'm posting about pretty much everything there: programming, music, art, politics, current events, shitposting. > and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic? Ask someone from your friend circle who's already on Fediverse, but also see the above point.

jrmg 4y ago
Just don’t care about what the first thing people will see that’s specifically about me says about me? I don’t think I can bring myself to do that.
- flkiwi 4y ago
  Then signing up for a general instance (mastodon.social, mas.to, etc.) makes sense. It's like (as in exactly like) signing up for gmail vs. having a custom domain.
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/ isn't allowing new signups, https://mas.to/ https://mas.to/ is returning a cloudflare error page for me.
    - flkiwi 4y ago
      It's an exceptional growth period for the servers. Twitter used to have failwhales, and gmail used to require invitations. It will stabilize. (And, if you happen to be interested and have the skillset, you could deploy your own instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a VPS provider that already has pushbutton mastodon deployment in place.)
      - 4y ago

Joeboy 4y ago

You actually can't sign up on mastodon.social at the moment. I thought the same, all the instances are for weirdly specific groups I'm not in. You don't have this problem with email, there's no requirement to choose an email address that matches your political tendencies, sexual kinks etc. I eventually chose fosstodon.org which seems like about the most vanilla thing that's open to new users and where I have a decent claim to being the right kind of person. I suspect a lot of people will look at the long list of furry-centric instances and conclude Mastodon is not for them. IDK, maybe that's considered a feature.

berkes 4y ago
But it really is the same with mastodon. You don't need to find an instance that matches your political tendencies, furry niche, or whatever. Just pick one that feels right. Maybe you are French or Korean and like a server in French or Korean, or maybe you feel very strong about politics: the make that a parameter. Otherwise just go for any "general" server. Just like with email, people will generally just pick Hotmail, AOL, xs4all.nl, yahoo or email, without much thought. This is fine. You can easily move later if you ever find a community that you wish to be part of.
- Joeboy 4y ago
  > Otherwise just go for any "general" server That's exactly what I tried, and failed, to do. As far as I was able to discover, including via the site being discussed here, there are no such servers currently available for new signups.
  - berkes 4y ago
    I'm sorry to hear that. The influx is big currently. Many servers can barely handle all the signups and extra load. So this is temporary, and certainly not a fundamental issue.
    - Joeboy 4y ago
      Thank you! This is a much, much better response than the denialism I'm seeing in other replies.

Cyberdog 4y ago

You're overthinking it. Find an instance that seems friendly and sign up. If it turns out you don't like it there, you can migrate to another one; barring defederation issues, everyone who is following you on the old instance will follow you on the new one automatically. Unfortunately the list of people that you follow isn't automatically migrated, but some front ends reduce the pain of this by letting you export a list of follow-ees on the old instance and then import it on the new one. Just do it!

mabcat 4y ago
That's such a strange piece of UX. As a typical user, who on average consumes content rather than produces it, what I care about is that my list of followed accounts migrates with me so that my feed stays relatively consistent. As a content producer I would also care about my past posts migrating with me, which they don't. Having followers continue to follow me after migration is only the primary concern for the "influencer". I get that "my friends can still find me" is an important feature but who thought it was ok to skip the other two?
- kixiQu 4y ago
  Followed accounts are easier to do manually; there's a simple export / import interface that existed before the account move feature. I will note that for you "as a content producer" the uniformly reverse chronological presentation on Mastodon highly penalizes older posts (even a day old!) to an extent that is pretty rough to get used to, and that makes those older posts pretty irrelevant to move over. This is much like Twitter before its engagement-maximization algorithm days, though.

elcapitan 4y ago

To me it's like the difference between living in an anonymous big city where I can do whatever I want without too many people yelling at me, and having to pick some village where everybody knows everybody and forces their rules on them. I would never choose the latter just by my own nature, so Mastodon will never be an alternative to twitter for me. Looking at that endless list of specialized echo chambers of some people with their own sub rules just makes me shudder immediately.

chc 4y ago
There are general servers that provide basically the same "anonymous in a big city" experience as Twitter (or at least, as much as Twitter did 10 years ago).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lrvick 4y ago
If you want to be on your own sovereign island you can host your own Mastodon instance or pay a monthly fee to one of the many Managed Mastodon providers and even use your own domain name. It is not that much different from choosing an email provider.

olah_1 4y ago

I just want a public key. You can name me what you want or I can buy an easy-to-read username and renew it like a domain.

lrvick 4y ago
You have the choice to have any username you want on a domain you own.
- olah_1 4y ago
  *if you know how to manage and maintain a server
  - lrvick 4y ago
    Or if you know how to pay someone else to do that for you. I searched for managed mastodon and found plenty of options. https://masto.host https://masto.host https://toot.io https://toot.io https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon https://elest.io/open-source/mastodon https://hostdon.jp/#/ https://hostdon.jp/#/ https://federation.spacebear.ee/software/mastodon https://federation.spacebear.ee/software/mastodon https://ossrox.org/ https://ossrox.org/ https://weingaertner-it.de/ https://weingaertner-it.de/ I expect many more will emerge now that demand is increasing.
    - olah_1 4y ago
      The reason I just want a public key is because I don’t really own the account otherwise. I only own it if I self host it. If I rent from them, I’m just renting my account from these services. It’s actually worse than renting it from Twitter because people care less if smaller companies abuse you.

linsomniac 4y ago

FYI: I had signed up years ago on mastoton.social and not really used it. I tried logging in a few days ago and it was struggling under the load. Sounds like the admin of that instance is buying hardware to support the new load.

dredmorbius 4y ago

It doesn't matter ... too much. I've been on Mastodon since 2016. I've switched instances twice, once when the instance was shut down (the maintainer gave several months' notice), once when instance ownership changed. The first time was early enough that profile migration didn't exist ... and it still wasn't much of a deal. I follow a few hundred profiles, and am followed by about 2,000. It turns out that it's pretty easy to re-associate, at least for individuals. (Commercial / brand profiles with large follow/follower lists would have a different experience.) We reconnected pretty easily. The more recent switch used profile migration. This brings along your followers / following lists, as well as block and mute lists, and is straightforward. Toots are not migrated, but for the most part Mastodon "lives in the present", and the back-catalogue isn't particularly significant. (I care more about this than most, and ... it's still not that big a deal.) I actually have several active profiles, though all are forwarded to my primary active one: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius>. Again, if I need to fallback to another instance, I can. Larger instances tend to be fairly anodyne. Smaller instances tend to fit niches, of both specific interests and policies. Pick something that looks reasonable. If you decide you want to change at a later date, it's not a big deal.

TheBrokenRail 4y ago

100% this! There doesn't seem to be many general servers that: 1. I can trust won't just shut down in a week. 2. Are accepting signups 3. And won't end up having a negative stigma a in year when the creator goes off a deep end. I know I can just switch to another instance, but I really don't want to have to do that frequently. Matrix at least solves this by just having an official Matrix home-server. Matrix is still federated, but if you just want to just sign-up and join a chat room, you're not forced to pick a home-server that's specific to you or worry about the factors above.