2 ms·

> People just have lost the ability to comprehend the concept of federation because everything in the current internet is walled gardens. Non-technical users h

> People just have lost the ability to comprehend the concept of federation because everything in the current internet is walled gardens. Non-technical users have never understood these things. They browse the web by accident and sending e-mail is incomprehensible magic. Most people don't care at all how such things work, they only care when they don't work.

cyborgx7 4y ago
Yes that type of person exists but they are not the ones looking for a twitter alternative because of Elon Musk right now. There are shades of gray between the people who understand the technical definition of federation, and people who, as you put it "browse the web by accident". The people who are looking for an alternative right now understand e-mail well enough (from an end-user perspective) to make the comparison. If we ever get to the point where enough people use mastodon that the latter category would also be interested in participating in it, it would be so ubiquitous that they would ask someone with a minimum of understanding to et it up for them. Just the way it works now with other things.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  The "federation" of e-mail and Mastodon are only superficially similar. It's non-intuitive to follow a user from a different instance. It's also non-intuitive to find those users to follow. Most of the time Mastodon users are found via some side channel where they advertise their presence. Every point of friction you add for a user of a new thing is a reason for them to abandon it. Even if Mastodon isn't trying to necessarily replace Twitter, catering only to the most dedicated users is not a way to grow a healthy community.
rchaud 4y ago
It's much worse now, partially due to the fact that young people's first computing device is a phone, instead of a family computer. Here's a story about an engineering professor lamenting that their first-year students do not understand folder structures, because they have been using Google Docs for a decade, and don't use use anything besides the search bar. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Let's be real though, nested directories aren't necessarily the best way to organize or find documents. In an era where systems support tagging, full text search, and other graph connections between files nested folder structures aren't necessary for everyone. They're a conceptual holdover from a different time with much more limited means to persist data. That's not to say they're obsolete but it's not necessary for whole classes of users to use and understand them.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    For me, folder structures in Windows and MS-DOS helped me grasp the basics of information architecture. That is still how most website URLs work. Even if websites are now database-driven CMSes, and not actual folders on a web server, URLs are still written in that way to give both humans and search engines an idea of the structure of the site. I would posit that it's easier to understand things like objects, arrays and API endpoints if you have that basic familiarity with folders.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      You're not wrong. At least not for yourself. At the same time a lot of web-based apps and even local apps don't necessarily work on directory hierarchies. In many cases hierarchies are just ceremony or boilerplate that slow down a user. Say a note taking application. It can store the actual notes in a database that can sync between machines and the web. Using search to find notes, especially if it supports some sort of inline tagging like hashtags, is faster for the user than trying to come up with some folder hierarchy. Hierarchies also are inconvenient when documents straddle multiple categories. Grouping by tags let a note/document exist in multiple categories without reorganizing everything. Thirty years ago the only "view" into storage was directories and files. File systems were relatively sparse in terms of metadata support. Directory hierarchies were the only tool for organization. Information Retrieval systems were all about adding an over the top database and document indexing system on shitty sparse file systems. Today a lot of those Information Retrieval concepts are rolled into online storage systems (Google Docs etc). So hierarchies aren't the primary organization unit since they're not the only mechanism the backing store has for organization.

cyborgx7 4y ago

Yes that type of person exists but they are not the ones looking for a twitter alternative because of Elon Musk right now. There are shades of gray between the people who understand the technical definition of federation, and people who, as you put it "browse the web by accident". The people who are looking for an alternative right now understand e-mail well enough (from an end-user perspective) to make the comparison. If we ever get to the point where enough people use mastodon that the latter category would also be interested in participating in it, it would be so ubiquitous that they would ask someone with a minimum of understanding to et it up for them. Just the way it works now with other things.

giantrobot 4y ago
The "federation" of e-mail and Mastodon are only superficially similar. It's non-intuitive to follow a user from a different instance. It's also non-intuitive to find those users to follow. Most of the time Mastodon users are found via some side channel where they advertise their presence. Every point of friction you add for a user of a new thing is a reason for them to abandon it. Even if Mastodon isn't trying to necessarily replace Twitter, catering only to the most dedicated users is not a way to grow a healthy community.

rchaud 4y ago

It's much worse now, partially due to the fact that young people's first computing device is a phone, instead of a family computer. Here's a story about an engineering professor lamenting that their first-year students do not understand folder structures, because they have been using Google Docs for a decade, and don't use use anything besides the search bar. https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

giantrobot 4y ago
Let's be real though, nested directories aren't necessarily the best way to organize or find documents. In an era where systems support tagging, full text search, and other graph connections between files nested folder structures aren't necessary for everyone. They're a conceptual holdover from a different time with much more limited means to persist data. That's not to say they're obsolete but it's not necessary for whole classes of users to use and understand them.
- rchaud 4y ago
  For me, folder structures in Windows and MS-DOS helped me grasp the basics of information architecture. That is still how most website URLs work. Even if websites are now database-driven CMSes, and not actual folders on a web server, URLs are still written in that way to give both humans and search engines an idea of the structure of the site. I would posit that it's easier to understand things like objects, arrays and API endpoints if you have that basic familiarity with folders.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    You're not wrong. At least not for yourself. At the same time a lot of web-based apps and even local apps don't necessarily work on directory hierarchies. In many cases hierarchies are just ceremony or boilerplate that slow down a user. Say a note taking application. It can store the actual notes in a database that can sync between machines and the web. Using search to find notes, especially if it supports some sort of inline tagging like hashtags, is faster for the user than trying to come up with some folder hierarchy. Hierarchies also are inconvenient when documents straddle multiple categories. Grouping by tags let a note/document exist in multiple categories without reorganizing everything. Thirty years ago the only "view" into storage was directories and files. File systems were relatively sparse in terms of metadata support. Directory hierarchies were the only tool for organization. Information Retrieval systems were all about adding an over the top database and document indexing system on shitty sparse file systems. Today a lot of those Information Retrieval concepts are rolled into online storage systems (Google Docs etc). So hierarchies aren't the primary organization unit since they're not the only mechanism the backing store has for organization.