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>“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and cho

by dsr_ 2y ago

>“you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” Yes, and choldgraf@gmail.com and choldgraf@ibm.com are different email-people, too. This is not a hard concept.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
Yet, people are confused by it. I think this is at least partly because there's even less to differentiate the different mastodon domains than there was to differentiate gmail and yahoo. And, of course, there are a lot of people growing up now who don't really use email, so the analogy can't be taken for granted.
- igravious 2y ago
  they may be confused by it yet it is not a hard concept
  - conradfr 2y ago
    Therefore it's a bad concept.
    - ohhxohzohx 2y ago
      are all hard to understand concepts bad concepts? are hard concepts from math and science bad concepts? should we discard calculus? is potty training a toddler a bad concept? they initially struggle with it and some find it hard is a healthy diet a bad concept? people without prior knowledge of what's healthy and what isn't are likely to struggle
  - stavros 2y ago
    People being confused by a concept is the definition of it being hard.
    - foxglacier 2y ago
      No, it can just be because they haven't been exposed to it or needed to care about it. Obviously people's real names have similar problems and nobody is confused that John Smith isn't the same person as John Jones.
    - dsr_ 2y ago
      Anglophones are often confused by the concept of tone being used to differentiate words in many non-European languages. But it's not a hard concept, it's just unfamiliar to them. People being confused by a concept after it has been taught to them suggests that either the concept is hard or the educational process inadequate. Confusion on initial introduction has nothing to do with difficulty.
  - grumbel 2y ago
    It's not a hard concept, but it is a stupid one. Phone numbers for example you can take with you when you switch providers. Email has the provider hardcoded into your email address, thus every new provider means you have a new email. The Web still lacks a first-class concept of a user identify that you can take with you across servers.
    - enos_feedler 2y ago
      But if you own your own domain and use it for your own mail, you do take your identity with you? Isn't this what AT protocol is promising with Bluesky's identity system?
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Phone numbers only work that way due to laws requiring number portability. Otherwise the provider is encoded in the number range.
    - glenstein 2y ago
      It's funny you mention that because for a while the supposed deal breaker with Mastodon was the inability to migrate accounts (even though no other service let you do that). But now you can, so we're on to the next whack-a-mole.
- BodyCulture 2y ago
  What is the evidence for people being confused about that? Did any scientist some research about this, are there any facts or studies about this issue? Or does just someone think it is an issue?
  - glenstein 2y ago
    Personal anecdotes. It's always personal anecdotes that coincidentally corroborate whatever position someone was already arguing for. As I noted elsewhere, it would be a lot easier to take these seriously if they weren't so on the nose, and if they instead took the form of "well it seems they have account migration figured out BUT instances are confusing BUT the sign up process is streamlined BUT it's not easy to explain to people..." It would be clear we were at least talking about things where "the people" had reactions to specific things for specific reasons that were in principle solveable and not merely ghosted into existence to support a point the commenter wanted to make anyway. I think people see one another doing it and kind of collectively converge on this ritual of collective storytelling where we offer anecdotes that don't offer any kind of truth tracking accountability.
- dsr_ 2y ago
  Stages of enlightenment: 1. That didn't work as I expected. 2. I am confused! 3. Oh, that's how it works! I learned something. Humans go through this every day, in domains technological and not.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    Most people stop at step two and wait around for someone to do it for them.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    Right, and this is all you need to point out to burst anyone's bubble who insists on behalf of "the people" that it's all too hard. It just goes in circles with personal anecdotes that always coincidentally corroborate whatever position someone was already arguing for anyway. What would be really interesting to see is someone making the case against Mastodon but acknowledging that "people I know" weren't confused by it or vice versa.
  - javier_e06 2y ago
    Stores won't let you have cash-back from your purchase when using your debit card if you flash the card. You have to insert the card. Some cashiers don't even know that. I don't feel enlightened by that fact. Newer cars won't disengage the hand-break if parked on a slope and you don't have the seat locked in. I don't feel enlightened by that fact. The list of "rules" goes on and on and technology feels oppressive, not empowering. Maybe is artificial enlightenment? Sorry for the rant.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    But when they are faced with two options, one of which is confusing and requires figuring out, and another one that does not, with the first having no clear advantages over the second, why would they bother spending time figuring it out?
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
You can say it’s “not a hard concept” as much as you’d like, it doesn’t change the reality that it is confusing and hard to understand for end users used to Twitter (which is everyone)
nkrisc 2y ago
Ask any random person on the street to identify the domain in a URL or email address and what it means.
jeroenhd 2y ago
You'll be surprised how many people think they can just use first.lastname@gmail.com and have email magically appear in their account. And even more people have no idea what the @gmail.com/@ibm.com is about. All they know is that some of their emails don't reach their contacts, probably because "the computer broke again". It's not a hard concept, but it's a concept that was only ever explained in school to a sliver of the population actually using email every day. Plus, federation makes validating accounts real hard. Looking for a semi-popular Twitter user on Mastodon will bring forth 800 Twitter-to-Mastodon-bridges with plausible-looking domains, only for the real user to end up using something like "hachyderm" as their domain name. I don't know any good solutions to this problem, but that doesn't make the problem go away.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  I have my own domain, and have email set up so that any email to that domain goes to me. You'd be surprised (well, nobody here on HN would be) to know how many times I tell a business that my email is "their-business@my-domain.com", and they ask me how I got that email address, whether I work for their company, etc.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Yep. I've had that conversation more than once. They get very suspicious! And probably triggers internal meetings with cyber.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      I genuinely wonder how many emails I've missed because some system flagged the email address as invalid or suspicious.
    - dingaling 2y ago
      I can only dream that it triggers meetings with security. I once started receiving spam addressed to <mybankname>@<mydomain>.org and after several instances I reported it to MyBankName. I explained that I only used that address in my dealings with them and so it must have leaked from them. They said that's not how email works, you have one address that you use with all your contacts. One of them must have leaked it. I tried to explain that I used a different host portion with each company I contacted. They said that's not how email works, you have one address that you use with all your contacts. One of them must have leaked it. I transferred my balance out and let the account lapse.
jrmg 2y ago
I think people underestimate just how much “weird techiness” having two ‘@‘ signs creates. It’s (whether it ‘should’ be or not) immediately unapproachable.
Aurornis 2y ago
This line of thinking is what makes the website user-hostile. I completely understood the function of the usernames from the start, but to this day I still sigh whenever I encounter a new Mastodon user on a different network because I have to do a song and dance to get them followed on my main account. The whole thing is cognitive overhead I do not want.
- riffraff 2y ago
  But this is the same for blue sky, it's just that there's no other bluesky "instance"
BeetleB 2y ago
This was the weakest point of the whole article, particularly because Mastodon and Bluesky are identical in this respect. The reason he doesn't realize it is that almost everyone is on the same instance. So yes, you will have: @stephenking.bsky.social and @stephenking.bsky.otherinstance Unless Bluesky remains a single server, in which case it's not at all decentralized.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  You've highlighted the exact reason this is a problem for mastodon and not for bluesky: on the latter, there's a default, so people who don't realise why it matters don't need to worry about it. For the record, there are other differences - on Bluesky, you use your non-default domain to login in exactly the same place, there aren't 'weird gaps' between different domains.
- paride5745 2y ago
  It’s already exactly the same problem. @zuck.bsky.app and @zuck.meta.com are two different accounts. The only “problem” bsky solves is choosing a server. But if ATProto becomes widely used, the problem will appear as in Mastodon today. The only way to avoid it is for bsky to never become really decentralised. So yet another VC-backed social media company.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    I think this is why this is in truth, an aesthetic choice masquerading as a conversation about technical implementation. I think there's no two ways around it, @stephenking.bsky.social looks better than @stephenking@mastodon.social. Blue Sky does the names better and opts people into a default server at the moment, and I would say their desktop and mobile experience is a bit better, and that feels like they've solved something specific and technical even though, as you pointed out, the issue with domains is the same in each case.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  Small nitpick, the domain name used for a ATProto identity is decoupled from the server that hosts that users data. A username is established on ATProto by creating a TXT record of the users DID (essentially a public key). This is not identical to ActivityPub, because the users data is hosted / managed by the server that the A/AAAA record points to. ATProto users can migrate their data from server to server while maintaining the same username. ActivityPub users cannot. Also, Bluesky is a centralized view of the data in the decentralized ATProto network. This means you will never end up having the problem where searching for a user on one instance will not show up because they are on another instance that they have not federated with. There are obviously tradeoffs with this, but IMO they do seem sensible. The nice thing about Bluesky is not that it is decentralized (it's not), it's that the data that it let's users interface with is decentralized, and if something goes south with Bluesky, another application can be built on the same data and users can migrate without starting from square one.
ggm 2y ago
Wait until you find out the tuple to identify you logging in on Amazon is {user@host.dom, password} or used to be: I had two distinct accounts using the same email address. Confusing!
glenstein 2y ago
I'm noticing here that people are giving it the college try of insisting that email domains are "too confusing". I think the further down this rabbit hole we go, the more equivocal one has to be about how large percentage of the population that actually is. I work at a company that relies on engagement with customers over email I'm sure plenty of other people here do as well, and whatever people's confusion with email, somehow they figure it out when they need to and the world seems to keep turning. At some point this conversation is no longer about the specifics of Mastodon or BlueSky, it's just general information literacy and functional literacy. Hilariously, arguments of the form "what if people do it wrong" like this were made even for the introduction of calculators. I think it's better understood as an ordinary rite of passage than the specific identification of a genuine problem.

by dsr_ 2y ago

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago

Yet, people are confused by it. I think this is at least partly because there's even less to differentiate the different mastodon domains than there was to differentiate gmail and yahoo. And, of course, there are a lot of people growing up now who don't really use email, so the analogy can't be taken for granted.

igravious 2y ago
they may be confused by it yet it is not a hard concept
- conradfr 2y ago
  Therefore it's a bad concept.
  - ohhxohzohx 2y ago
    are all hard to understand concepts bad concepts? are hard concepts from math and science bad concepts? should we discard calculus? is potty training a toddler a bad concept? they initially struggle with it and some find it hard is a healthy diet a bad concept? people without prior knowledge of what's healthy and what isn't are likely to struggle
- stavros 2y ago
  People being confused by a concept is the definition of it being hard.
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    No, it can just be because they haven't been exposed to it or needed to care about it. Obviously people's real names have similar problems and nobody is confused that John Smith isn't the same person as John Jones.
  - dsr_ 2y ago
    Anglophones are often confused by the concept of tone being used to differentiate words in many non-European languages. But it's not a hard concept, it's just unfamiliar to them. People being confused by a concept after it has been taught to them suggests that either the concept is hard or the educational process inadequate. Confusion on initial introduction has nothing to do with difficulty.
- grumbel 2y ago
  It's not a hard concept, but it is a stupid one. Phone numbers for example you can take with you when you switch providers. Email has the provider hardcoded into your email address, thus every new provider means you have a new email. The Web still lacks a first-class concept of a user identify that you can take with you across servers.
  - enos_feedler 2y ago
    But if you own your own domain and use it for your own mail, you do take your identity with you? Isn't this what AT protocol is promising with Bluesky's identity system?
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Phone numbers only work that way due to laws requiring number portability. Otherwise the provider is encoded in the number range.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    It's funny you mention that because for a while the supposed deal breaker with Mastodon was the inability to migrate accounts (even though no other service let you do that). But now you can, so we're on to the next whack-a-mole.
BodyCulture 2y ago
What is the evidence for people being confused about that? Did any scientist some research about this, are there any facts or studies about this issue? Or does just someone think it is an issue?
- glenstein 2y ago
  Personal anecdotes. It's always personal anecdotes that coincidentally corroborate whatever position someone was already arguing for. As I noted elsewhere, it would be a lot easier to take these seriously if they weren't so on the nose, and if they instead took the form of "well it seems they have account migration figured out BUT instances are confusing BUT the sign up process is streamlined BUT it's not easy to explain to people..." It would be clear we were at least talking about things where "the people" had reactions to specific things for specific reasons that were in principle solveable and not merely ghosted into existence to support a point the commenter wanted to make anyway. I think people see one another doing it and kind of collectively converge on this ritual of collective storytelling where we offer anecdotes that don't offer any kind of truth tracking accountability.
dsr_ 2y ago
Stages of enlightenment: 1. That didn't work as I expected. 2. I am confused! 3. Oh, that's how it works! I learned something. Humans go through this every day, in domains technological and not.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Most people stop at step two and wait around for someone to do it for them.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Right, and this is all you need to point out to burst anyone's bubble who insists on behalf of "the people" that it's all too hard. It just goes in circles with personal anecdotes that always coincidentally corroborate whatever position someone was already arguing for anyway. What would be really interesting to see is someone making the case against Mastodon but acknowledging that "people I know" weren't confused by it or vice versa.
- javier_e06 2y ago
  Stores won't let you have cash-back from your purchase when using your debit card if you flash the card. You have to insert the card. Some cashiers don't even know that. I don't feel enlightened by that fact. Newer cars won't disengage the hand-break if parked on a slope and you don't have the seat locked in. I don't feel enlightened by that fact. The list of "rules" goes on and on and technology feels oppressive, not empowering. Maybe is artificial enlightenment? Sorry for the rant.
- int_19h 2y ago
  But when they are faced with two options, one of which is confusing and requires figuring out, and another one that does not, with the first having no clear advantages over the second, why would they bother spending time figuring it out?

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

You can say it’s “not a hard concept” as much as you’d like, it doesn’t change the reality that it is confusing and hard to understand for end users used to Twitter (which is everyone)

nkrisc 2y ago

Ask any random person on the street to identify the domain in a URL or email address and what it means.

jeroenhd 2y ago

You'll be surprised how many people think they can just use first.lastname@gmail.com and have email magically appear in their account. And even more people have no idea what the @gmail.com/@ibm.com is about. All they know is that some of their emails don't reach their contacts, probably because "the computer broke again". It's not a hard concept, but it's a concept that was only ever explained in school to a sliver of the population actually using email every day. Plus, federation makes validating accounts real hard. Looking for a semi-popular Twitter user on Mastodon will bring forth 800 Twitter-to-Mastodon-bridges with plausible-looking domains, only for the real user to end up using something like "hachyderm" as their domain name. I don't know any good solutions to this problem, but that doesn't make the problem go away.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
I have my own domain, and have email set up so that any email to that domain goes to me. You'd be surprised (well, nobody here on HN would be) to know how many times I tell a business that my email is "their-business@my-domain.com", and they ask me how I got that email address, whether I work for their company, etc.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Yep. I've had that conversation more than once. They get very suspicious! And probably triggers internal meetings with cyber.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    I genuinely wonder how many emails I've missed because some system flagged the email address as invalid or suspicious.
  - dingaling 2y ago
    I can only dream that it triggers meetings with security. I once started receiving spam addressed to <mybankname>@<mydomain>.org and after several instances I reported it to MyBankName. I explained that I only used that address in my dealings with them and so it must have leaked from them. They said that's not how email works, you have one address that you use with all your contacts. One of them must have leaked it. I tried to explain that I used a different host portion with each company I contacted. They said that's not how email works, you have one address that you use with all your contacts. One of them must have leaked it. I transferred my balance out and let the account lapse.

jrmg 2y ago

I think people underestimate just how much “weird techiness” having two ‘@‘ signs creates. It’s (whether it ‘should’ be or not) immediately unapproachable.

Aurornis 2y ago

This line of thinking is what makes the website user-hostile. I completely understood the function of the usernames from the start, but to this day I still sigh whenever I encounter a new Mastodon user on a different network because I have to do a song and dance to get them followed on my main account. The whole thing is cognitive overhead I do not want.

riffraff 2y ago
But this is the same for blue sky, it's just that there's no other bluesky "instance"

BeetleB 2y ago

This was the weakest point of the whole article, particularly because Mastodon and Bluesky are identical in this respect. The reason he doesn't realize it is that almost everyone is on the same instance. So yes, you will have: @stephenking.bsky.social and @stephenking.bsky.otherinstance Unless Bluesky remains a single server, in which case it's not at all decentralized.

oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
You've highlighted the exact reason this is a problem for mastodon and not for bluesky: on the latter, there's a default, so people who don't realise why it matters don't need to worry about it. For the record, there are other differences - on Bluesky, you use your non-default domain to login in exactly the same place, there aren't 'weird gaps' between different domains.
paride5745 2y ago
It’s already exactly the same problem. @zuck.bsky.app and @zuck.meta.com are two different accounts. The only “problem” bsky solves is choosing a server. But if ATProto becomes widely used, the problem will appear as in Mastodon today. The only way to avoid it is for bsky to never become really decentralised. So yet another VC-backed social media company.
- glenstein 2y ago
  I think this is why this is in truth, an aesthetic choice masquerading as a conversation about technical implementation. I think there's no two ways around it, @stephenking.bsky.social looks better than @stephenking@mastodon.social. Blue Sky does the names better and opts people into a default server at the moment, and I would say their desktop and mobile experience is a bit better, and that feels like they've solved something specific and technical even though, as you pointed out, the issue with domains is the same in each case.
Zambyte 2y ago
Small nitpick, the domain name used for a ATProto identity is decoupled from the server that hosts that users data. A username is established on ATProto by creating a TXT record of the users DID (essentially a public key). This is not identical to ActivityPub, because the users data is hosted / managed by the server that the A/AAAA record points to. ATProto users can migrate their data from server to server while maintaining the same username. ActivityPub users cannot. Also, Bluesky is a centralized view of the data in the decentralized ATProto network. This means you will never end up having the problem where searching for a user on one instance will not show up because they are on another instance that they have not federated with. There are obviously tradeoffs with this, but IMO they do seem sensible. The nice thing about Bluesky is not that it is decentralized (it's not), it's that the data that it let's users interface with is decentralized, and if something goes south with Bluesky, another application can be built on the same data and users can migrate without starting from square one.

ggm 2y ago

Wait until you find out the tuple to identify you logging in on Amazon is {user@host.dom, password} or used to be: I had two distinct accounts using the same email address. Confusing!

glenstein 2y ago

I'm noticing here that people are giving it the college try of insisting that email domains are "too confusing". I think the further down this rabbit hole we go, the more equivocal one has to be about how large percentage of the population that actually is. I work at a company that relies on engagement with customers over email I'm sure plenty of other people here do as well, and whatever people's confusion with email, somehow they figure it out when they need to and the world seems to keep turning. At some point this conversation is no longer about the specifics of Mastodon or BlueSky, it's just general information literacy and functional literacy. Hilariously, arguments of the form "what if people do it wrong" like this were made even for the introduction of calculators. I think it's better understood as an ordinary rite of passage than the specific identification of a genuine problem.