I think it’s because businesses tend to focus on super easy access, user interface and user engagement first, while open source projects tend to focus on tech and often forget about the end user experience.
As far as I’m aware, the big “problem” with Mastodon (and the Fediverse as a whole) is that you have to choose an instance to join. It’s an aditional step that mainstream social media does not have and it’s already enough to push regular people away. It’s kinda like trying to convince a Windows user to jump ship to Linux, by the time you begin explaining what a distro is you’ve already lost them.
So you didn’t get the choice at all? I guess people who sign up this way are going to be really confused why they can’t follow some accounts their friends can.
The official Mastodon app has a box where you can pick one out of several hard-coded instances. It defaults to mastodon.social. You can pick a different instance if you want to. But you can also ignore it, scroll past it and let yourself be conveniently railroaded to mastodon.social without even knowing what an instance is.
If you’ve never in your live chosen anything that has to do with IT, if all you know is centralised, monolithic silos, then you can’t be expected to first choose one out of literal dozens of microblogging projects in the Fediverse and then one out of dozens, hundreds or thousands of instances.
The Fediverse would be a whole lot smaller if not all newbies who didn’t come from Reddit were railroaded hard to mastodon.social. Oh, and Lemmy would be a whole lot smaller without Redditors having been railroaded first to lemmy.ml and now to lemmy.world.
Download official, fully featured app and not something utterly crippled
Looks and feels like Twitter
No weird tech mumbo-jumbo (WTF is a server, is that like a Discord server, what’s that gotta do with Twitter) confusing you because there are no instances to choose from
No need to get used to anything because literally everything stays precisely the same as what you’re used to, only that it’s no longer “Twitter” or “X” or “tweets”
Use it literally precisely the same as Twitter
Pretend you’re still on Twitter, it won’t make a difference
If Mastodon wanted to compete with this, it would have to
replace its default Web UI with an even more faithful clone of the immediate pre-Musk Twitter Web UI,
replace its official app with something that’s absolutely identical to the immediate pre-Musk Twitter app in all but name and branding
remove the instance chooser without introducing any other option of joining any other instance than mastodon.social
completely hide decentralisation and instances from newbies, ideally for a few months or years after they’ve joined
introduce a content-forwarding algorithm like the one on X, but better
forcibly ban Mastodon’s user-grown culture and force pre-Musk Twitter culture upon everyone
mollycoddle its users for months or years so that Mastodon really feels like “literally Twitter without Musk” by shielding them from not only all hints that Mastodon is different, but also from the entire rest of the Fediverse
Maybe wasn’t that way before, but when signing up on Bluesky now you are asked to choose a instance (bsky.social being the default), and the username contains the instance name, exactly like any Fediverse account.
I guess then a key difference is that Bluesky is presented to 𝕏 users as the same kind of monolith as 𝕏 whereas Mastodon is presented to them as a huge number of instances from which they absolutely have to pick one.
So what I’m hearing is… Bluesky is the only one that actually has a chance of going mainstream
I don’t understand why that’s always true but yes
I think it’s because businesses tend to focus on super easy access, user interface and user engagement first, while open source projects tend to focus on tech and often forget about the end user experience.
I guess but with mastodon I literally cannot imagine it getting any easier.
Download app -> make an account (the app will default to some instance, at least it did for me) -> use it exactly like Twitter.
How do you follow someone you discovered while browsing a foreign instance?
Open app on phone and search them up.
Or go to the instance I use and search them up
As far as I’m aware, the big “problem” with Mastodon (and the Fediverse as a whole) is that you have to choose an instance to join. It’s an aditional step that mainstream social media does not have and it’s already enough to push regular people away. It’s kinda like trying to convince a Windows user to jump ship to Linux, by the time you begin explaining what a distro is you’ve already lost them.
Like I said in my comment tho. When I downloaded the app it automatically chose for me. I just made an account there and boom.
So you didn’t get the choice at all? I guess people who sign up this way are going to be really confused why they can’t follow some accounts their friends can.
Yes the choose was there but it automatically was filled with a default instance.
You can choose. But you don’t have to.
The official Mastodon app has a box where you can pick one out of several hard-coded instances. It defaults to mastodon.social. You can pick a different instance if you want to. But you can also ignore it, scroll past it and let yourself be conveniently railroaded to mastodon.social without even knowing what an instance is.
Better than no one having the ability to follow that person because a centrally controlled social media banned them.
But worse than anyone being able to follow that person because they’re using a platform where moderation is separate from identity, as in AtProto.
Is that helpful though? Isn’t that the same as everyone registering at Lemmy.world?
If you’ve never in your live chosen anything that has to do with IT, if all you know is centralised, monolithic silos, then you can’t be expected to first choose one out of literal dozens of microblogging projects in the Fediverse and then one out of dozens, hundreds or thousands of instances.
The Fediverse would be a whole lot smaller if not all newbies who didn’t come from Reddit were railroaded hard to mastodon.social. Oh, and Lemmy would be a whole lot smaller without Redditors having been railroaded first to lemmy.ml and now to lemmy.world.
I feel with mastodon it’s different because instances don’t host communities to subscribe to. Just people to follow
@secret300 @fediverse @can There are bots that cross-post posts, they actually implement groups.
Bluesky:
If Mastodon wanted to compete with this, it would have to
Maybe wasn’t that way before, but when signing up on Bluesky now you are asked to choose a instance (bsky.social being the default), and the username contains the instance name, exactly like any Fediverse account.
Good to know.
Strangely, people don’t seem to mind.
I guess then a key difference is that Bluesky is presented to 𝕏 users as the same kind of monolith as 𝕏 whereas Mastodon is presented to them as a huge number of instances from which they absolutely have to pick one.
You say “chance”, I read “intent” 🤷 Mainstream isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Yep then it will be the next twitter/Facebook/ect.