TL;DR: The current Mastodon-signup is only removing the confusion of users on first glance, because it either hides the server-choice altogether, or leaves them with a choice that is impossible to …

TL;DR: The current Mastodon-signup is only removing the confusion of users on first glance, because it either hides the server-choice altogether, or leaves them with a choice that is impossible to make at this point of their Mastodon-journey. Instead, it should introduce them to decentrality on a lower scale, with a handful of handpicked servers to choose from, such that the decision makes sense to them and shows them the merits and fun of the concept instead of scaring them away. Ideal would be to give them a sense of agency. Then, chances are higher that they consider migrating again in the future and eventually internalize it as a permanent option of the digital world.

  • Nougat
    22•11 months ago

    Here’s another way: stop referring to everything “Twitter-like” as Mastodon. Stop referring to everything “Reddit-like” as Lemmy. Those are both client platforms through which one can access ActivityPub content.

    Conflating the platform with the provider with the protocol with the content is what’s confusing people.

    • @CoggyMcFeeEnglish
      33•11 months ago

      Are you saying to start calling all of it ActivityPub? In which case, I would think that’d be extra confusing since lemmy and mastodon don’t cross-interface very well and you really need one client for each type.

        • @CoggyMcFeeEnglish
          10•11 months ago

          Great, can you explain what you mean? I did not follow.

          • Nougat
            1•11 months ago

            The article refers to ActivityPub-based “microblogging” by assuming that Mastodon is the only client application available for that purpose. It is not. Mastodon is certainly the most popular client application for that purpose, but it doesn’t have to be. Other client applications exist, and a better or more popular client application could be created.

            When the point of the article is to get people to comprehend that federated social media is not a “walled garden” –

            People are using open, free Mastodon, but in their minds, they are still in a walled garden.

            maintaining the notion that a single client application is the only way to read or create a certain kind of content is a big part of the very problem the article describes.

            And the author seems to be aware of this:

            Often, I hear about people trying to explain the idea behind Mastodon to someone, who is not on the Fediverse, they often explain it with e-mail. However, nowadays, people don’t even experience this “choice of service” even with e-mail anymore. They get their e-mail when signing up with google and that’s it.

            GMail is not the only way to send and receive SMTP email. It’s certainly a very popular way to do so, but you wouldn’t describe a concern over people being blind to their choices of email providers (or, indeed, their ability to host their own email server) as

            The current [GMail]-signup is only removing the confusion of users on first glance, because it either hides the server-choice altogether, or leaves them with a choice that is impossible to make at this point of their [GMail]-journey.

            If the author, or anyone else, wants people to have a better understanding of the nature of federated social media, describing it wrong is not a path to that goal.

            • @CoggyMcFeeEnglish
              5•11 months ago

              What would you prefer people use to refer to “Reddit-like” ActivityPub clients, and what would you prefer for “Twitter-like” ones?

              • Nougat
                1•11 months ago

                I used “microblogging” earlier as a stand-in for “Twitter-like,” and I shamelessly pulled that terminology from the kbin interface. It’s accurate, but I don’t know that the term is sufficient to gain popular traction - and I certainly do not pretend to be the person to dictate what the terminology ought to be.

                Now that I think about it, the core of social media of all types is “someone posts a thing” (whether that thing is a link to something else or original text content), and other people comment on it. YouTube, Xitter, Reddit, slashdot, fark, etc etc. The display format, post and comment organization, tagging options - those are all ancillary.

                Federation via ActivityPub introduces a wholly new aspect to social media by separating the client application from the content accessed therethrough. I, from kbin.social, can see and interact with content posted by someone originating from mastodon.social. Content is one thing, and client application another.

                People do have familiarity with that kind of separation in at least one other internet functionality: email. People generally already understand that their web interface to their email provider allows them to send and receive email both within and without that provider, and that their mobile app is just a different way to access that same content. But SMTP email is old. Since then, the aim of content providers on the internet has been to capture and contain users, using existing protocols, which causes people to consider the provider and the content to be the same thing - because in so many cases, it is.

                ActivityPub is a new(ish) protocol. Functionally, it is much more like email than it is like an internet forum of any kind. Extending this comparison, SMTP email is one-to-one (yes, there can be multiple recipients, but they are all themselves “ones”); ActivityPub is one-to-many. Yes, this is similar to traditional walled-garden forums, which are also one-to-many, but those walled-gardens restrict the “many” to “those who have accounts inside our garden.” Perhaps ActivityPub is more accurately described as one-to-very many or one-to-all.

                It probably seems that I am avoiding your clear and plain question. Maybe I am, but I also think it’s important to consider the details of these as-yet-unnamed things in order to arrive at an appropriate and effective way to market them. Federated social media is a public forum in a way that previous internet forums have not been since Usenet. “Forumnet” seems like it could be workable. It’s definitely more descriptive than “fediverse” (a name I have never been very pleased by).

                While it gets closer, that continues to avoid your specific question. I will need to put a good deal more thought to this, and must now direct my attention elsewhere. Watch this space.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•11 months ago

            I’m not them but -

            Forum style posts =\= reddit.

            Short text style posts =\= twitter.

            Just because lemmy is a forum style alternative to Reddit does not mean we should call it a reddit-like.

            Just because mastodon is a short text style post alternative to Twitter does not mean we should call it a twitter-like.

            It would be like saying reddit is a gameFAQs-like, but for more than just games. Is it inaccurate? Not exactly, but they are their own things. Related/inspired from each other, but so is basically everything that exists from art to practicality.

            I think in this case, yes Lemmy was made as an alternative to the forum-image style posting that Reddit is now known for. However, lemmy and mastodon are far beyond that now too due to how it interfaces with ActivityPub (each instance being able to have its own community of the same name). It’s created enough separation that it almost seems inaccurate now to entirely call these a “-like” alternative.

      • Nougat
        1•11 months ago

        … without mentioning Twitter.

        That seems like a pretty arbitrary restriction. At this point, a basic knowledge of “what Twitter is like” is a pretty general-knowledge thing.