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It is stunning to me that Mastadon still hasn't come up with a simple onboarding solution to sidestep the issue of "instances" I completely agree with you. Mas

by DirkH 3y ago

It is stunning to me that Mastadon still hasn't come up with a simple onboarding solution to sidestep the issue of "instances" I completely agree with you. Mastadon even loses techies like me due to the decision fatigue of having to pick instances before I can even start exploring.

ajayyy 3y ago
They did. The mobile app by default signs you up on mastodon.social now
- willio58 3y ago
  Is this not a centralizing measure? This is where things fundamentally break down for me.
  - travisporter 3y ago
    No it’s not in my opinion because it’s a default setting
  - capybara_2020 3y ago
    I am curious, why don't you like centralization? It seems like no matter the crowd, people need centralization. Atleast to begin with, then they are ok breaking off into subgroups. Like what happened with reddit. You start on the popular frontpage. Then the longer you stay, the more subreddits you start using.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      historically speaking, I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket. We've seen sites rise and fall, some fall from grace and others outright shut down. And often times, no one is prepared enough to move. In many cases they may not even care about the lost knowledge and move on in life. Sometimes I do care tho and I spend way too much of my time trying to find any data hoarders who may have also cared. This is a huge hassle. So in theory, a decentralized network should solve this. If one part goes down, you host another instance, migrate, and have that new instance rise, with minimal impact to your community since all of this is happening under the surface. They may change their URL, but they will still feel like they are on their favorite site, hopefully with most of the people intact. >Like what happened with reddit Yes, a great example of why I don't like centralization, given current times. While I support the blackout, if there was some important bookmark to a piece of content that I needed, I may not be able to access it. If reddit was federated, I coudl simply clone those important posts to a new instance ahead of the blackout and keep on keeping on. Maybe have some way to redirect the URLs as well (I'm not too versed in how configurable these instances are).
  - jtode 3y ago
    [false quote narrative removed, I had names mixed up] Not in the slightest. You see, you can use mastodon.social for exactly as long as it suits you to do so. If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. If you figure it out eventually, you can take all of your content and migrate it to whatever new instance you like. No hassle, no corporation making it difficult because they are trying to keep you coralled in their silo. The flagship instance would absolutely love to help you move off their servers while keeping every bit of your data. Has this addressed all of your concerns?
    - smallerfish 3y ago
      > If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. So, 99% of users will stay there, and another 0.9% for the network effect of interacting with the 99%. Right?
      - jtode 3y ago
        I dunno, the experiment is in motion. The hope is always that people will open their minds and learn the concepts. But I feel just as lost watching a sports event as a lot of folks apparently feel picking an instance, so I get it. Edit: the thing is, even the totally incurious might run up against a rule they don't like, or they might notice that every post that is relevant to them ends with @sexy.gazebos and get curious what that means. I am 100% positive that that curiosity plus a 100IQ is enough to get the idea.
      - jtode 3y ago
        I have to ask, though: if 99% of users do stay on mastodon.social (I'm still there, for instance) or whatever ends up being the main Lemmy instance, is that actually a problem in some way, which is not a much bigger problem on Reddit?
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Sounds that way. If nothing else, if the main network does collapse, you can make instructions for how to get people to jump off that instance. Much smoother migration than this Reddit issue here.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  It's one of those battles you can't win: Ask people to choose up front, new users balk. Assign a default, the existing crowd absolutely riots about centralization, and half of everyone doesn't even notice the change anyways.
  - jtode 3y ago
    The difference there is, they're wrong about it being a centralizing move, because the user retains the right to move on at any time now or in the future. It's just a matter of continuing the conversation until it sinks in, I had to do it with a very forward-thinking friend who I only learned in that conversation, had no clue about FOSS stuff at all. I really did have it in my head that everyone who got on the internet also figured out how the internet works just by being here, but of course not, they've been using platforms that protect them from the real internet...
vxNsr 3y ago
What’s shocking is everyone can wrap their heads around regular country post offices, emails, in general distinct entities interacting, but lose their minds when you tell them about mastodon. Just tell them it’s email for twitter. Just like you can interact with anyone who’s email address you know so too with their mastodon handle. The only real difference is that everyone also publishes all their “emails” for anyone to see instead of sending them privately.
- 0_____0 3y ago
  As someone who has heard of Mastodon but not really interacted with it, that's a really helpful metaphor!
- aniforprez 3y ago
  Oh please. The consolidation has affected email equally to the point where "email" is synonymous to "gmail". No one is signing up for email by searching for other email clients, setting up SMTP and whatnot. They go to Google, search for "email" click on the sign up link to "gmail" and carry on. I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature Unless Mastodon has similarly sensible, no frills defaults, it is doomed to the fringes. Normal users are not going to have the patience to look at a bunch of instances and make a choice that they really don't understand. Make a large instance for everyone and make it the default
  - Andrex 3y ago
    > I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature You're completely ignoring the corporate world, which may outweigh consumer email use (dunno, but it wouldn't surprise me.) G Suite isn't even close to a monopoly, and I imagine there's large IT departments at anti-cloud corpos specifically for managing all their emails. It's like, consumers don't know or care if they're using Linux, but they would definitely care if everything using it went away. Consumers aren't where Linux "won" either, it won on servers. All this to say email is more centralized than it should be, but its decentralization is absolutely still important for its continued relevance. If you take away the decentralization and Gmail were to become its own private messaging service, it would have the momentum to carry on for a while. But it would surely die. 5 years, maybe 10. But I have no doubt it would suffocate itself. I know lawyers and founders who have Hotmail and AOL.com addresses, so I'd jump ship day one. One mass "Hey guys Gmail is bad here's my new email" to all my contacts (or as much as spam prevention allows...) and done.
Andrex 3y ago
They lost a techie like me when their main web app refuses to even display without JS. And I say that as a JS guy. Open stuff with aims as big as Mastodon should work on as many devices as possible.

by DirkH 3y ago

ajayyy 3y ago

They did. The mobile app by default signs you up on mastodon.social now

willio58 3y ago
Is this not a centralizing measure? This is where things fundamentally break down for me.
- travisporter 3y ago
  No it’s not in my opinion because it’s a default setting
- capybara_2020 3y ago
  I am curious, why don't you like centralization? It seems like no matter the crowd, people need centralization. Atleast to begin with, then they are ok breaking off into subgroups. Like what happened with reddit. You start on the popular frontpage. Then the longer you stay, the more subreddits you start using.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    historically speaking, I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket. We've seen sites rise and fall, some fall from grace and others outright shut down. And often times, no one is prepared enough to move. In many cases they may not even care about the lost knowledge and move on in life. Sometimes I do care tho and I spend way too much of my time trying to find any data hoarders who may have also cared. This is a huge hassle. So in theory, a decentralized network should solve this. If one part goes down, you host another instance, migrate, and have that new instance rise, with minimal impact to your community since all of this is happening under the surface. They may change their URL, but they will still feel like they are on their favorite site, hopefully with most of the people intact. >Like what happened with reddit Yes, a great example of why I don't like centralization, given current times. While I support the blackout, if there was some important bookmark to a piece of content that I needed, I may not be able to access it. If reddit was federated, I coudl simply clone those important posts to a new instance ahead of the blackout and keep on keeping on. Maybe have some way to redirect the URLs as well (I'm not too versed in how configurable these instances are).
- jtode 3y ago
  [false quote narrative removed, I had names mixed up] Not in the slightest. You see, you can use mastodon.social for exactly as long as it suits you to do so. If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. If you figure it out eventually, you can take all of your content and migrate it to whatever new instance you like. No hassle, no corporation making it difficult because they are trying to keep you coralled in their silo. The flagship instance would absolutely love to help you move off their servers while keeping every bit of your data. Has this addressed all of your concerns?
  - smallerfish 3y ago
    > If you're the type who will simply never wrap your head around federation, stay there. Sorted. So, 99% of users will stay there, and another 0.9% for the network effect of interacting with the 99%. Right?
    - jtode 3y ago
      I dunno, the experiment is in motion. The hope is always that people will open their minds and learn the concepts. But I feel just as lost watching a sports event as a lot of folks apparently feel picking an instance, so I get it. Edit: the thing is, even the totally incurious might run up against a rule they don't like, or they might notice that every post that is relevant to them ends with @sexy.gazebos and get curious what that means. I am 100% positive that that curiosity plus a 100IQ is enough to get the idea.
    - jtode 3y ago
      I have to ask, though: if 99% of users do stay on mastodon.social (I'm still there, for instance) or whatever ends up being the main Lemmy instance, is that actually a problem in some way, which is not a much bigger problem on Reddit?
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Sounds that way. If nothing else, if the main network does collapse, you can make instructions for how to get people to jump off that instance. Much smoother migration than this Reddit issue here.
ocdtrekkie 3y ago
It's one of those battles you can't win: Ask people to choose up front, new users balk. Assign a default, the existing crowd absolutely riots about centralization, and half of everyone doesn't even notice the change anyways.
- jtode 3y ago
  The difference there is, they're wrong about it being a centralizing move, because the user retains the right to move on at any time now or in the future. It's just a matter of continuing the conversation until it sinks in, I had to do it with a very forward-thinking friend who I only learned in that conversation, had no clue about FOSS stuff at all. I really did have it in my head that everyone who got on the internet also figured out how the internet works just by being here, but of course not, they've been using platforms that protect them from the real internet...

vxNsr 3y ago

What’s shocking is everyone can wrap their heads around regular country post offices, emails, in general distinct entities interacting, but lose their minds when you tell them about mastodon. Just tell them it’s email for twitter. Just like you can interact with anyone who’s email address you know so too with their mastodon handle. The only real difference is that everyone also publishes all their “emails” for anyone to see instead of sending them privately.

0_____0 3y ago
As someone who has heard of Mastodon but not really interacted with it, that's a really helpful metaphor!
aniforprez 3y ago
Oh please. The consolidation has affected email equally to the point where "email" is synonymous to "gmail". No one is signing up for email by searching for other email clients, setting up SMTP and whatnot. They go to Google, search for "email" click on the sign up link to "gmail" and carry on. I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature Unless Mastodon has similarly sensible, no frills defaults, it is doomed to the fringes. Normal users are not going to have the patience to look at a bunch of instances and make a choice that they really don't understand. Make a large instance for everyone and make it the default
- Andrex 3y ago
  > I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature You're completely ignoring the corporate world, which may outweigh consumer email use (dunno, but it wouldn't surprise me.) G Suite isn't even close to a monopoly, and I imagine there's large IT departments at anti-cloud corpos specifically for managing all their emails. It's like, consumers don't know or care if they're using Linux, but they would definitely care if everything using it went away. Consumers aren't where Linux "won" either, it won on servers. All this to say email is more centralized than it should be, but its decentralization is absolutely still important for its continued relevance. If you take away the decentralization and Gmail were to become its own private messaging service, it would have the momentum to carry on for a while. But it would surely die. 5 years, maybe 10. But I have no doubt it would suffocate itself. I know lawyers and founders who have Hotmail and AOL.com addresses, so I'd jump ship day one. One mass "Hey guys Gmail is bad here's my new email" to all my contacts (or as much as spam prevention allows...) and done.

Andrex 3y ago

They lost a techie like me when their main web app refuses to even display without JS. And I say that as a JS guy. Open stuff with aims as big as Mastodon should work on as many devices as possible.