Palmsiepoo t1_j2agwlt wrote
Reply to comment by SyrioForel in Mastodon—and the pros and cons of moving beyond Big Tech gatekeepers | Standards-based interoperability makes a comeback, sort of by Hrmbee
>This time, with Mastadon, it’s different because Mastadon is such a huge downgrade from what people were used to, and there is no will from the developers to do anything about it.
This was also my takeaway from the article. If you read this article only as an end-user wanting to get into Mastadon, it sounds like 100000% too much work. People are drawn toward FB, Instagram, and Tiktok because it's easy to jump in. As much as people cry about privacy (and they're not wrong), we see their behaviors are completely at odds with this belief: people will very easily trade their privacy for entertaining and easy-to-use platforms.
For Mastadon to succeed beyond the dozens of webdevs who want to use it, it needs to think more about the end-user.
ianhillmedia t1_j2auaea wrote
I honestly think this is a branding problem more than anything. I joined a Mastodon server in late October as part of the first Twitter migration, and while it took a minute to get used to, I didn’t find it all that difficult to learn. I also think a fair amount about what it would be like if I had to learn Facebook’s UX today from scratch. It’s more complicated than that of a typical Mastodon server.
SyrioForel t1_j2az3bn wrote
It’s not about complexity. On Twitter, you are a part of a global community. There is a constant sense of activity. On Mastadon, you are sitting in a dark room with a small handful of other lost souls.
ianhillmedia t1_j2b915g wrote
One of the things I’ve actually appreciated about Mastodon instances is that they’ve kept me more engaged. That’s because on Mastodon, you’re not limited to only seeing the posts of folks you follow or that those folks want you to see. You can easily see feeds of the posts of everyone on your instance, posts from the folks they follow and folks on other instances. Twitter initially offered a feed of all users on its service - it’s similar to that. So I’m exposed to ideas I don’t get on other services. That said, Mastodon’s 8M users are still largely early adopters - technologists, scientists, artists, activists, educators and journalists - as the post notes. That’s not everybody’s community. If they’re going to keep growing, Mastodon instances will need to attract folks from other communities - and that, in part, means addressing the perception that Mastodon is difficult to join and understand.
tuna_safe_dolphin t1_j2e1m86 wrote
It took you a minute to get used to it. You are obviously a technical end user. That's where Mastodon fails.
Way way back in the early days, Reddit was basically a bunch of nerds like us. However, the platform was easy to use and gradually grew beyond LISP jokes and PC mods.
And you could just start using it without actually signing up.
ianhillmedia t1_j2eb20h wrote
The economic model creates additional challenges. Without corporate financing, ad revenue or other support, admins need to limit access to their servers so they can pay the bills. That means users can’t necessarily immediately join the instances that best meet their interests. Users then come away saying Mastodon is too complicated. But some of it is also branding. When you use terms like “server” and “instance,” users assume the network is only for those who are tech-savvy.
All that said, learning to navigate Mastodon really isn’t any more complicated than learning how to navigate subreddits. When I say it took me a minute to learn the Mastodon UX, it also takes a minute to learn Reddit’s UX and culture - the importance of replying vs. posting, how to find active subreddits that meet your interests, the rules of subreddits, etc. And I’d argue that learning how to navigate a Mastodon instance is easier than learning how to navigate Facebook right now - that UX is a trainwreck.
SVZ0zAflBhUXXyKrF5AV t1_j2brn6n wrote
To the average home computer user, and by that I mean people who don't go actively seeking out tech and IT forums and articles online, I doubt many of those average users understand what's truly involved with privacy online and what is done with the data and metadata the companies gather, profile and build about all their users.
There was an incident many years ago, I think it was something to do with a trial an ISP was doing, where the EU complained that they didn't consult the customers involved and explain what was happening or ask permission. The response, or excuse, was basically it's too complicated for them to understand so they didn't bother. I think it was to do with adverts.
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