tuna_safe_dolphin t1_j2e1m86 wrote
Reply to comment by ianhillmedia in Mastodon—and the pros and cons of moving beyond Big Tech gatekeepers | Standards-based interoperability makes a comeback, sort of by Hrmbee
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.
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