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What’s shocking is everyone can wrap their heads around regular country post offices, emails, in general distinct entities interacting, but lose their minds whe

by 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.
  - aniforprez 3y ago
    I didn't say 1% of all email users are not gmail users. I said 1% know about its federated nature. Even if email allows for different email domains and there are entire departments are dedicated to manage domain emails, I thoroughly doubt even these people would even understand that this is what makes email "federated" or even call it that gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >I said 1% know about its federated nature. I mean, they may not know, but they'd understand a high level overview. I on gmail can email someone at hotmail, outlook, yahoo, or any custom business email. I can do this because email is a common protocol that is shared amongst dozens of servers. That isn't deep technical knowledge, but they would get the gist of federation there if I segway'd to it. >gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time Even my Grandma has a Yahoo account. She knows my Gmail address and can send me messages. I don't think Gmail is as synonymous with email as you think. also as mentioned above: some 80% of people with a business email address probably knowws that there are more addresses than "@gmail.com".
- vxNsr 3y ago
  You’re missing the point. Just like most people have no idea how their post office functions, really. And most people have no idea how their email service functions except at the most basic level, they understand enough to use it. For most nontechnical people I know, they’re more likely to be using yahoo or aol vs gmail.
  - aniforprez 3y ago
    You are missing MY point. If you put front and center how your social media is "federated" and then add friction in the signup process by asking them to "pick a server" then it's DOA for anyone except most tech users From what I've seen, they've significantly changed their signup process to push unauthenticated users to a default feed and to create an account by default on their largest instance which is a massive win for getting new accounts. This is a good change
SoftTalker 3y ago
The name itself is a problem. It sounds heavy, ponderous, and prehistoric.
shagie 3y ago
This also displays where the federation that mastodon uses, has difficulty. If a rural post office closes (they do from time to time), unless you're using a very old "rural route" style postal address ( https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm ), your address doesn't change when a post office changes. Additionally, if you happen to live next to a person with unsavory views, the post office will still deliver all your mail to you. When a mastodon instance shuts down unexpectedly (it also happens from time to time), you need to start up a new identity somewhere else and your address changes. If your neighbor on an instance becomes problematic you may find that your messages aren't visible to others anymore as other instances start defederating from the instance that you are on. For situations where people say "well host your own...", for most of the populace, this is similar in practicality as staffing your own post office.
TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
What I can't wrap my head around is trying to read a conversation with some bits silently missing because some parts haven't (yet) synced to my server. It makes it impossible to use Mastodon for anything serious, as there's too great a risk of talking at cross purposes due to missing context. (Or, simply repeating something someone else has already said.)

by vxNsr 3y ago

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.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  I didn't say 1% of all email users are not gmail users. I said 1% know about its federated nature. Even if email allows for different email domains and there are entire departments are dedicated to manage domain emails, I thoroughly doubt even these people would even understand that this is what makes email "federated" or even call it that gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >I said 1% know about its federated nature. I mean, they may not know, but they'd understand a high level overview. I on gmail can email someone at hotmail, outlook, yahoo, or any custom business email. I can do this because email is a common protocol that is shared amongst dozens of servers. That isn't deep technical knowledge, but they would get the gist of federation there if I segway'd to it. >gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time Even my Grandma has a Yahoo account. She knows my Gmail address and can send me messages. I don't think Gmail is as synonymous with email as you think. also as mentioned above: some 80% of people with a business email address probably knowws that there are more addresses than "@gmail.com".
vxNsr 3y ago
You’re missing the point. Just like most people have no idea how their post office functions, really. And most people have no idea how their email service functions except at the most basic level, they understand enough to use it. For most nontechnical people I know, they’re more likely to be using yahoo or aol vs gmail.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  You are missing MY point. If you put front and center how your social media is "federated" and then add friction in the signup process by asking them to "pick a server" then it's DOA for anyone except most tech users From what I've seen, they've significantly changed their signup process to push unauthenticated users to a default feed and to create an account by default on their largest instance which is a massive win for getting new accounts. This is a good change

SoftTalker 3y ago

The name itself is a problem. It sounds heavy, ponderous, and prehistoric.

shagie 3y ago

This also displays where the federation that mastodon uses, has difficulty. If a rural post office closes (they do from time to time), unless you're using a very old "rural route" style postal address ( https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_021.htm ), your address doesn't change when a post office changes. Additionally, if you happen to live next to a person with unsavory views, the post office will still deliver all your mail to you. When a mastodon instance shuts down unexpectedly (it also happens from time to time), you need to start up a new identity somewhere else and your address changes. If your neighbor on an instance becomes problematic you may find that your messages aren't visible to others anymore as other instances start defederating from the instance that you are on. For situations where people say "well host your own...", for most of the populace, this is similar in practicality as staffing your own post office.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago

What I can't wrap my head around is trying to read a conversation with some bits silently missing because some parts haven't (yet) synced to my server. It makes it impossible to use Mastodon for anything serious, as there's too great a risk of talking at cross purposes due to missing context. (Or, simply repeating something someone else has already said.)