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I think your position is based on the assumption that choosing an instance will remain friction-full. One could imagine a client picking an instance at random,

I think your position is based on the assumption that choosing an instance will remain friction-full. One could imagine a client picking an instance at random, completely transparent to the end user. Probably not simple but it's possible. (technically it's simple enough, I'm talking about the non-technical challenges)

Sakos 3y ago
Well, yes, because that's what all these alternatives are like now. I also haven't seen any motivation to become more accessible to users in general. If somebody writes a client that's perfect in accessibility, but users never find out about it, then the problem remains. It requires a larger buy-in from the devs and communities involved, but good luck getting that going.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Man, I personally love the fediverse and I think it’s hugely successful. My benchmark isn’t Reddit though, Reddit is a failing to me. It’s the forums of the late 90s and 2000s. To me it’s the solution to the problem of starting communities. Or it’s difficult to start a forum these days because it’s not Reddit. You have to get buy-in from tons of people. Huge friction. Reddit and Twitter style but-in to new tags or new subreddits is basically zero friction. The fediverse solves that problem to me. You can create a forum that isn’t on Reddit now while having a non-zero chance at people joining, people that are in the fediverse that is. That’s huge to me because it felt to me like the internet was dying due to centralization. It was Reddit or nothing. It’s already successful in my view. Obviously it has a long way to go on UX, but it’s got so much potential.
Nextgrid 3y ago
The concept of instances is already too much friction, and will surface beyond the initial "choosing an instance" issue. What happens when your chosen instance shuts down because of lack of funding, or gets pwned because of an admin careless with security, or the admin is a malicious actor and starts messing around, or there is some (whether justified or not) inter-instance drama and as a result yours is getting cut off from the rest of the network? Instances shouldn't be a thing. They are not a thing in conventional social media platforms the fediverse is trying to displace, and those conventional social media platforms displaced the earlier iteration of the fediverse aka forums and websites because most people don't want the extra friction and overhead of maintaining a server and having mostly-isolated communities. Non-ActivityPub implementations such as Nostr actually have a better chance at displacing conventional social media because "instances" aren't a thing; the network isn't balkanized and clients are in charge (so inter-instance drama isn't a thing) of fetching content and choosing which content to display, with relays acting in the background and mostly being replaceable (cryptography ensures relays can't actually tamper with any content).

Sakos 3y ago

Well, yes, because that's what all these alternatives are like now. I also haven't seen any motivation to become more accessible to users in general. If somebody writes a client that's perfect in accessibility, but users never find out about it, then the problem remains. It requires a larger buy-in from the devs and communities involved, but good luck getting that going.

unshavedyak 3y ago
Man, I personally love the fediverse and I think it’s hugely successful. My benchmark isn’t Reddit though, Reddit is a failing to me. It’s the forums of the late 90s and 2000s. To me it’s the solution to the problem of starting communities. Or it’s difficult to start a forum these days because it’s not Reddit. You have to get buy-in from tons of people. Huge friction. Reddit and Twitter style but-in to new tags or new subreddits is basically zero friction. The fediverse solves that problem to me. You can create a forum that isn’t on Reddit now while having a non-zero chance at people joining, people that are in the fediverse that is. That’s huge to me because it felt to me like the internet was dying due to centralization. It was Reddit or nothing. It’s already successful in my view. Obviously it has a long way to go on UX, but it’s got so much potential.

Nextgrid 3y ago

The concept of instances is already too much friction, and will surface beyond the initial "choosing an instance" issue. What happens when your chosen instance shuts down because of lack of funding, or gets pwned because of an admin careless with security, or the admin is a malicious actor and starts messing around, or there is some (whether justified or not) inter-instance drama and as a result yours is getting cut off from the rest of the network? Instances shouldn't be a thing. They are not a thing in conventional social media platforms the fediverse is trying to displace, and those conventional social media platforms displaced the earlier iteration of the fediverse aka forums and websites because most people don't want the extra friction and overhead of maintaining a server and having mostly-isolated communities. Non-ActivityPub implementations such as Nostr actually have a better chance at displacing conventional social media because "instances" aren't a thing; the network isn't balkanized and clients are in charge (so inter-instance drama isn't a thing) of fetching content and choosing which content to display, with relays acting in the background and mostly being replaceable (cryptography ensures relays can't actually tamper with any content).