5 ms·

I really like your take and the one to which it responds. Mastodon is super neat and I'd love to see a broadly appealing open-source, non-commercial, decentrali

I really like your take and the one to which it responds. Mastodon is super neat and I'd love to see a broadly appealing open-source, non-commercial, decentralized social media network become dominant. However, the sharp decline in active users since the Twitter exodus supports what I've been saying for years: it is simply too much technical resistance for general social media audiences. I find it annoying and I used to enjoy dial-up BBSs. It being such a centralized organization definitely gives me "oh boy, here we go again" feels but it's not like it's not like typical users are going to choose anything better. Eschewing this is the essence of the perfect killing the good.

jasmer 3y ago
I think the issue is partly technical, but mostly product, in that neither Mastodon nor it's servers are very obvious in usage, and finally its 'too decentralized'. We don't need 'ultra decentralization' aka a different grocery store on every corner, nor do we want one single grocery store in the middle of the city, but rather just 'choice'. Frankly it's like most things, we just want to avoid monopolization. That said, a slightly different Mastodon configuration and a killer use case might enable it to rise aka business adoption.
- chefandy 3y ago
  The big thing is that there needs to be a path for users who don't care about the geeky shit to have a compelling experience with very little cognitive load at any step of the process. Us humans will gravitate to sub-optimal options if it offers less resistance... There's a reason the top 12 highest grossing US chains are fast food. BlueSky seems to offer a simple centralized service to those folks AND offer federation for folks who want to be more hands-on! I'm down. As a designer and a long-time software developer, I see a TON of Dunning-Kruger Mt. Stupid comments about interface design, usability and what's reasonable to expect of users. Developers are naturally more willing to spend time futzing with social media technology because a) they have the domain expertise to reason about it comfortably, b) they have a high tolerance for high-touch software and take pride in their willingness to wrangle complicated and difficult interfaces, c) they care about the technical underpinnings, and d) because of all that, the space is likely to be populated by people who share their perspectives and interests. If you take those things away, what incentive to users have to use the platform? I reckon that a lot of folks in the dev crowd don't naturally excel with the whole theory of mind thing, but if FOSS is going to produce tools useful to non-technologists, they should trust others that do. IMO the FOSS crowd desperately needs to embrace this cultural shift.
  - jasmer 3y ago
    Yes totally but I don't think D-K is necessarily it but you've tapped into a big source. Not only do most users 'not care' about stuff, it actually is not that important ... until it is. Twitter is actually 'good enough' for the most part. I don't like it, but I use it and find it acceptable. It's a big thing to ask people to shift gears for no really apparent reason (aka 'Musk says nasty things and is unfair!'). So yes, that is a primary product less: it has to be super, super easy to use and understand. Maybe, maybe, you can find a funnel to get people a bit more up the path of understanding. Maybe.

jasmer 3y ago

I think the issue is partly technical, but mostly product, in that neither Mastodon nor it's servers are very obvious in usage, and finally its 'too decentralized'. We don't need 'ultra decentralization' aka a different grocery store on every corner, nor do we want one single grocery store in the middle of the city, but rather just 'choice'. Frankly it's like most things, we just want to avoid monopolization. That said, a slightly different Mastodon configuration and a killer use case might enable it to rise aka business adoption.

chefandy 3y ago
The big thing is that there needs to be a path for users who don't care about the geeky shit to have a compelling experience with very little cognitive load at any step of the process. Us humans will gravitate to sub-optimal options if it offers less resistance... There's a reason the top 12 highest grossing US chains are fast food. BlueSky seems to offer a simple centralized service to those folks AND offer federation for folks who want to be more hands-on! I'm down. As a designer and a long-time software developer, I see a TON of Dunning-Kruger Mt. Stupid comments about interface design, usability and what's reasonable to expect of users. Developers are naturally more willing to spend time futzing with social media technology because a) they have the domain expertise to reason about it comfortably, b) they have a high tolerance for high-touch software and take pride in their willingness to wrangle complicated and difficult interfaces, c) they care about the technical underpinnings, and d) because of all that, the space is likely to be populated by people who share their perspectives and interests. If you take those things away, what incentive to users have to use the platform? I reckon that a lot of folks in the dev crowd don't naturally excel with the whole theory of mind thing, but if FOSS is going to produce tools useful to non-technologists, they should trust others that do. IMO the FOSS crowd desperately needs to embrace this cultural shift.
- jasmer 3y ago
  Yes totally but I don't think D-K is necessarily it but you've tapped into a big source. Not only do most users 'not care' about stuff, it actually is not that important ... until it is. Twitter is actually 'good enough' for the most part. I don't like it, but I use it and find it acceptable. It's a big thing to ask people to shift gears for no really apparent reason (aka 'Musk says nasty things and is unfair!'). So yes, that is a primary product less: it has to be super, super easy to use and understand. Maybe, maybe, you can find a funnel to get people a bit more up the path of understanding. Maybe.