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Mastodon’s UX with regards to following people on other servers seems to be really broken. Is there a simple ”browse to profile, click ”follow”’ experience on a

Mastodon’s UX with regards to following people on other servers seems to be really broken. Is there a simple ”browse to profile, click ”follow”’ experience on any client? All mastodon clients I have seen involved logging in to the foreign server and/or copy/pasting handles. If this can just solve that it already removes critical friction.

raydev 4y ago
IceCubesApp and Ivory, both on iOS, handle external follows seamlessly.
Ciantic 4y ago
Yes it's weirdly broken, but it seems to be hard problem to solve. Servers aren't connected to each other unless someone follows someone on other server, thus it's a bit hard to build a full graph in one server to browse profiles. Mastodon team should have made own browser extensions a long time ago, now the community is working to make this easier. I use one called StreetPass [1], but it still is a bit barebones, and doesn't yet help with following accounts accross servers. It does make discovering accounts nice. [1]: https://streetpass.social/ https://streetpass.social/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jghn 4y ago
I found that the federation aspect of the fediverse breaks the things I most like about Twitter. Sure, there are advantages to it but they're outweighed in my mind by the disadvantages. What you bring up is a big one. Another big one for me is search. I used Twitter search all the time. For local things like "what're those sirens I hear in my neighborhood", to cultural zeitgeist like "who is this artist performing on SNL", to using it as a quasi-Google.
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  Couldn’t somebody write a simple service that just scrapes profile info for following? Really doubt anyone would care if that aspect is centralized if it’s just a UX improvement. Same with search, although you’ll always have a vocal minority angry that their public posts are being scraped.
  - piperswe 4y ago
    > vocal minority angry that their public posts are being scraped That's the problem here: there have been scraping efforts before, but they always receive a tidal wave of community backlash.
    - camjohnson26 4y ago
      There’s no legal issue though, and I think most users are willing to accept the tradeoff if it gives them search. The ones who it really bothers always have the option of joining a private instance. Unfortunately posting public data by definition always means somebody is going to do something with it that you don’t like, you can’t opt out of the world.
  - dnissley 4y ago
    The issue is thinking that this is simply a bolt-on ux improvement when it's really a core part of the ux. Such a service would quickly rival the value of mastodon itself and soon overtake it. It might even eventually become what non-technical people refer to when they say "mastodon", kind of like how many older non-technical people think of google as "the internet".
    - camjohnson26 4y ago
      I don’t know about that since it’d really just be a read only cache of public mastodon data. Account ids, follower counts, most recent posts, etc. but it wouldn’t support any of the write operations, you’d still need federation for that.
    - 4y ago
rvz 4y ago
> Mastodon’s UX with regards to following people on other servers seems to be really broken. 'Broken' is an understatement. It is defective 'by design' and eternally a problem that they can never solve. It is not early days either. Hence why Twitter is still unmatched with the 220M+ daily active users.
thinkmassive 4y ago
There’s only one ATP server for now. The official Mastodon client accepts a web URL in the search box, to a profile on another server.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dwighttk 4y ago
Yeah the weirdest thing to me is abstracting away copy/paste seems so easy to me but every client I’ve tried actually requires the selection and copy and paste of handles… why not just a button to follow once I’m at a profile?
- camjohnson26 4y ago
  Ivory seems to support following without copy paste, finding the profile still requires searching the full handle though.
  - dwighttk 4y ago
    Can I see followers and followees of people I’ve followed if they are on a different server? That would take care of like 80%
    - camjohnson26 4y ago
      I don’t think so, haven’t found a way personally.
- mal-2 4y ago
  I know Akkoma has this with the 'Remote Follow' button, I'm pretty sure Misskey does too. It's really not that hard but you have to enter your home server domain for it to create the redirect.
stetrain 4y ago
The Ivory app seems to handle this well. You can search for profiles and just click Follow, even if they are on another instance.
lapcat 4y ago
[self-promotion] I made a Safari extension to do this: https://underpassapp.com/homecoming/ https://underpassapp.com/homecoming/
mal-2 4y ago
I'm confused by this, this only happens if you discovered the user outside of your normal server (like if you opened a link to their profile/post from an external source). If you discovered them within your feed just click their profile within your home server and click follow. "logging in to the foreign server" is almost never the right move. Am I missing a particular situation you're describing?
- ccouzens 4y ago
  Different people must prefer different flows. I usually follow people based on them mentioning their handle on podcasts, or linking to their feed from their profile on another website.
  - mal-2 4y ago
    Gotcha, yeah it is more difficult if you got there from a profile link on a website, and browser plug-ins can help with that. I was just confused about the idea that 'browse to profile and click follow' doesn't work, that works just fine in most clients as far as I'm aware. What the OP is talking about is 'remote follow' which is different.

raydev 4y ago

IceCubesApp and Ivory, both on iOS, handle external follows seamlessly.

Ciantic 4y ago

Yes it's weirdly broken, but it seems to be hard problem to solve. Servers aren't connected to each other unless someone follows someone on other server, thus it's a bit hard to build a full graph in one server to browse profiles. Mastodon team should have made own browser extensions a long time ago, now the community is working to make this easier. I use one called StreetPass [1], but it still is a bit barebones, and doesn't yet help with following accounts accross servers. It does make discovering accounts nice. [1]: https://streetpass.social/ https://streetpass.social/

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jghn 4y ago

I found that the federation aspect of the fediverse breaks the things I most like about Twitter. Sure, there are advantages to it but they're outweighed in my mind by the disadvantages. What you bring up is a big one. Another big one for me is search. I used Twitter search all the time. For local things like "what're those sirens I hear in my neighborhood", to cultural zeitgeist like "who is this artist performing on SNL", to using it as a quasi-Google.

camjohnson26 4y ago
Couldn’t somebody write a simple service that just scrapes profile info for following? Really doubt anyone would care if that aspect is centralized if it’s just a UX improvement. Same with search, although you’ll always have a vocal minority angry that their public posts are being scraped.
- piperswe 4y ago
  > vocal minority angry that their public posts are being scraped That's the problem here: there have been scraping efforts before, but they always receive a tidal wave of community backlash.
  - camjohnson26 4y ago
    There’s no legal issue though, and I think most users are willing to accept the tradeoff if it gives them search. The ones who it really bothers always have the option of joining a private instance. Unfortunately posting public data by definition always means somebody is going to do something with it that you don’t like, you can’t opt out of the world.
- dnissley 4y ago
  The issue is thinking that this is simply a bolt-on ux improvement when it's really a core part of the ux. Such a service would quickly rival the value of mastodon itself and soon overtake it. It might even eventually become what non-technical people refer to when they say "mastodon", kind of like how many older non-technical people think of google as "the internet".
  - camjohnson26 4y ago
    I don’t know about that since it’d really just be a read only cache of public mastodon data. Account ids, follower counts, most recent posts, etc. but it wouldn’t support any of the write operations, you’d still need federation for that.
  - 4y ago

rvz 4y ago

> Mastodon’s UX with regards to following people on other servers seems to be really broken. 'Broken' is an understatement. It is defective 'by design' and eternally a problem that they can never solve. It is not early days either. Hence why Twitter is still unmatched with the 220M+ daily active users.

thinkmassive 4y ago

There’s only one ATP server for now. The official Mastodon client accepts a web URL in the search box, to a profile on another server.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dwighttk 4y ago

Yeah the weirdest thing to me is abstracting away copy/paste seems so easy to me but every client I’ve tried actually requires the selection and copy and paste of handles… why not just a button to follow once I’m at a profile?

camjohnson26 4y ago
Ivory seems to support following without copy paste, finding the profile still requires searching the full handle though.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  Can I see followers and followees of people I’ve followed if they are on a different server? That would take care of like 80%
  - camjohnson26 4y ago
    I don’t think so, haven’t found a way personally.
mal-2 4y ago
I know Akkoma has this with the 'Remote Follow' button, I'm pretty sure Misskey does too. It's really not that hard but you have to enter your home server domain for it to create the redirect.

stetrain 4y ago

The Ivory app seems to handle this well. You can search for profiles and just click Follow, even if they are on another instance.

lapcat 4y ago

[self-promotion] I made a Safari extension to do this: https://underpassapp.com/homecoming/ https://underpassapp.com/homecoming/

mal-2 4y ago

I'm confused by this, this only happens if you discovered the user outside of your normal server (like if you opened a link to their profile/post from an external source). If you discovered them within your feed just click their profile within your home server and click follow. "logging in to the foreign server" is almost never the right move. Am I missing a particular situation you're describing?

ccouzens 4y ago
Different people must prefer different flows. I usually follow people based on them mentioning their handle on podcasts, or linking to their feed from their profile on another website.
- mal-2 4y ago
  Gotcha, yeah it is more difficult if you got there from a profile link on a website, and browser plug-ins can help with that. I was just confused about the idea that 'browse to profile and click follow' doesn't work, that works just fine in most clients as far as I'm aware. What the OP is talking about is 'remote follow' which is different.