Can you explain the benefits of the fediverse over a centralized private site to a regular person in 5-second quip that will convince them that the relative complexity of using the fediverse versus BlueSky is worth the effort?
Okay. Now, explain the concept of enshitification. And do it using terms that regular folk won’t find crass.
You know how conservatives live in this bubble where they don’t even see their racism because it’s so normalized? We’re interacting within a bubble where everyone has a very high level of technical competence versus the average person, so we fail to understand just how tech illiterate others are.
Not just tech illiterate but also advertising illiterate. The regular folks I know seem happy to wade through endless platform ads and influencer sales pitches. Enshittification can really be a slowly boiling frog type scenario.
Well the general idea of federation is not the same as “fediverse”. most “fediverse” sites are FOSS which is the main selling point in my opinion. They cannot be sold and do not rely on ad income (and thus preying on people’s cognitive weaknesses with algorithms) to operate. Federation is an added bonus on top of that which allows you to set up your own instance if you want.
Sure meta could make a federated service of some kind (like bluesky has done), but without being FOSS there’s always the high likelihood of enshittification.
Threads by Meta is on the fediverse. So by describing the fediverse as good, it sounds like Threads is just like Mastodon.
The topic is too complicated to quickly explain to a novice. Because now you have to explain FOSS, and why that’s sometimes good, but not always since bad actors have used FOSS .
it’s not too complicated to give people an elevator pitch. of course there is more detail and nuance to get into (as with with literally everything), but it’s not needed to get the general point across.
Company focus on profit. even if mean overall experience get not gooder
I dumbed it down to caveman speech for those that still wouldn’t understand. It’s a simple concept all of use that have used the Internet in the past year have experienced.
I never tried it. My only contact with the fediverse was through Lemmy.
When I became aware of lemmy it was first through the piracy subreddit doing the exodus and the head mod db0 mentioning the new piracy community. I wasnt aware of instances at the time and signed up on lemmy.ml because that was the first thing that popped up.
Later I realized I didnt want to be a part of ml and switched to my current instance.
Same goes for matrix. Signed up on element and now I dunno if I wanna stay there or leave. No special reason to do either.
Last time I heard about Mastodon it also doesnt inform about instances.
First google on mastodon leads me to mastodon.social.
A few links later (Info about an animal called mastodon, mastodon.social, google news widget, google info page widget and a “people also ask” section) I get to the joinmastodon.org page and first leads me to mastodon.social and a server selector.
My grandmother would be overwhelmed, my mother would ask me if the site is safe (I warned her to be wary about domains switching) and I assume other more tech iliterate would be just joining mastodon.social totally defeating the use case of deferedation.
Can you explain the benefits of the fediverse over a centralized private site to a regular person in 5-second quip that will convince them that the relative complexity of using the fediverse versus BlueSky is worth the effort?
Billionares with mega yacht fleets are choosing bluesky over mastodon.
Talk for yourself, the average person does indeed care about the environment. In the past years there have been massive greenwashing campaigns from companies trying to please the average customer.
Man, I wanna live in your neighborhood. I’m surrounded by bougie people or people with bougie fantasies. They talk all the time about drinking wine on a boat.
Yeah because it doesn’t cost them anything to say they “do their part” when they make token “commitments”. It’s not because the average person gives a shit. Give them a choice - $5 more an hour, or instantly and forever solve climate change and see how many people would choose climate change.
People complain about having to sort trash before throwing it out. Saying “most people care about the environment” is extremely naive.
It gives space to do servers based on specific interests if you want. I’m part of a game development server, and my “Local” tab has people on my server often talking about, and showing, things that are related to game development. And I can still follow anyone from any other Mastodon server too.
If you’re into video games, film, maybe a specific genre of music, you can have an instance dedicated to that. (It might already exist.) It’s like a virtual neighborhood, or forum. Remember forums? Those were nice. They cultivated a sense of community which made people a little more responsible in their attitudes, it feels like. Maybe that’s just nostalgia, but I like the server I’m on. It’s got friendly people I can talk to without feeling the need to fill my follows with them.
And blue sky got like 15 millions in two weeks. Look, do you really think that everyone decided to diss Mastodon? All major companies, celebrities, sport teams, you name it? Or maybe there’s a more reasonable explanation why Bluesky?
Until Mastedon can appeal to simple minded mainstream basic folk (which is a pretty good size of netizens) it will always be a niche group.
I think the bigger problem is that the tech press starts from the perspective that Mastodon and the Fediverse is just for techie nerds and then fills out the narrative with supporting details and so unless those narratives are challenged Mastodon and the Fediverse will never be for normal people because the Tech press and the money behind it won’t let that narrative stick in the general public’s minds.
I am not trying to argue this isn’t also true too, my argument is that the fediverse doesn’t have a marketing department so the framework of discussion around the fediverse in mass media will always be fit to whatever the most convenient narrative is for the corporate tech world which will always be the fediverse is an obscure nerdy diy thing like ham radio or something.
That isn’t to say the fediverse doesn’t also have existential accessibility issues on multiple dimensions.
Why not Mastodon?
Can you explain the benefits of the fediverse over a centralized private site to a regular person in 5-second quip that will convince them that the relative complexity of using the fediverse versus BlueSky is worth the effort?
Twitter was bluesky before musk bought it, federation ensures that can’t easily happen to mastodon.
That’s it.
Cool. Now give me an argument why my mother would care about this fact.
maybe not your mother, but anyone who left twitter recently (because musk) should understand. that’s who we are talking about.
Let’s hope it dies quickly
Is she looking for alternatives?
If so, it sounds like she understands Twitter turned to shit and would be smart enough to not want that to happen again.
If she’s not looking for alternatives it sounds like she’s fine on Twitter.
This was an example for someone that couldnt care less about twitter and social media politics.
Then she’s probably staying on Twitter (or was never there in the first place) making this whole thread about moms moot.
That will just make them stay on X.
Centralized and private = enshitification
Self hosted and federated = not prone to enshitification
Idk how simple it has to be for people but clearly I’m over estimating people
Okay. Now, explain the concept of enshitification. And do it using terms that regular folk won’t find crass.
You know how conservatives live in this bubble where they don’t even see their racism because it’s so normalized? We’re interacting within a bubble where everyone has a very high level of technical competence versus the average person, so we fail to understand just how tech illiterate others are.
Not just tech illiterate but also advertising illiterate. The regular folks I know seem happy to wade through endless platform ads and influencer sales pitches. Enshittification can really be a slowly boiling frog type scenario.
elon musk bought twitter and turned it to shit. elon (or someone else) could do that with Bluesky too, but can’t with Mastodon.
So that’s impossible with the fediverse? No way a company like Meta could have a fediverse platform?
Well the general idea of federation is not the same as “fediverse”. most “fediverse” sites are FOSS which is the main selling point in my opinion. They cannot be sold and do not rely on ad income (and thus preying on people’s cognitive weaknesses with algorithms) to operate. Federation is an added bonus on top of that which allows you to set up your own instance if you want.
Sure meta could make a federated service of some kind (like bluesky has done), but without being FOSS there’s always the high likelihood of enshittification.
Threads by Meta is on the fediverse. So by describing the fediverse as good, it sounds like Threads is just like Mastodon.
The topic is too complicated to quickly explain to a novice. Because now you have to explain FOSS, and why that’s sometimes good, but not always since bad actors have used FOSS .
it’s not too complicated to give people an elevator pitch. of course there is more detail and nuance to get into (as with with literally everything), but it’s not needed to get the general point across.
Company focus on profit. even if mean overall experience get not gooder
I dumbed it down to caveman speech for those that still wouldn’t understand. It’s a simple concept all of use that have used the Internet in the past year have experienced.
The usual suspects couldnt care less. The more convenient it is the better. No matter how bad the future wil be.
I cannot imagine mastodon getting any more convenient.
I personally never like the style of twitter so I don’t use it
But when I did make an account on the mastodon app it was so simple my special needs clients could do it.
I never tried it. My only contact with the fediverse was through Lemmy.
When I became aware of lemmy it was first through the piracy subreddit doing the exodus and the head mod db0 mentioning the new piracy community. I wasnt aware of instances at the time and signed up on lemmy.ml because that was the first thing that popped up.
Later I realized I didnt want to be a part of ml and switched to my current instance.
Same goes for matrix. Signed up on element and now I dunno if I wanna stay there or leave. No special reason to do either.
Last time I heard about Mastodon it also doesnt inform about instances.
First google on mastodon leads me to mastodon.social.
A few links later (Info about an animal called mastodon, mastodon.social, google news widget, google info page widget and a “people also ask” section) I get to the joinmastodon.org page and first leads me to mastodon.social and a server selector.
My grandmother would be overwhelmed, my mother would ask me if the site is safe (I warned her to be wary about domains switching) and I assume other more tech iliterate would be just joining mastodon.social totally defeating the use case of deferedation.
Billionares with mega yacht fleets are choosing bluesky over mastodon.
Like it or not, a regular person doesn’t give two shits about that.
Talk for yourself, the average person does indeed care about the environment. In the past years there have been massive greenwashing campaigns from companies trying to please the average customer.
Man, I wanna live in your neighborhood. I’m surrounded by bougie people or people with bougie fantasies. They talk all the time about drinking wine on a boat.
Yeah because it doesn’t cost them anything to say they “do their part” when they make token “commitments”. It’s not because the average person gives a shit. Give them a choice - $5 more an hour, or instantly and forever solve climate change and see how many people would choose climate change.
People complain about having to sort trash before throwing it out. Saying “most people care about the environment” is extremely naive.
It gives space to do servers based on specific interests if you want. I’m part of a game development server, and my “Local” tab has people on my server often talking about, and showing, things that are related to game development. And I can still follow anyone from any other Mastodon server too.
If you’re into video games, film, maybe a specific genre of music, you can have an instance dedicated to that. (It might already exist.) It’s like a virtual neighborhood, or forum. Remember forums? Those were nice. They cultivated a sense of community which made people a little more responsible in their attitudes, it feels like. Maybe that’s just nostalgia, but I like the server I’m on. It’s got friendly people I can talk to without feeling the need to fill my follows with them.
Yes! I’m on a local regional server that is nice. I like that it’s locally owned and operated, and we can talk local news and events.
You know, that feels like a pretty great use case.
I should have made the obligatory link to http://mastodon-near.me/
Thanks a lot!
Oh so just like Discord, why would I need something new, I already have Discord.
Sure, but with that philosophy, why use a microblogging system at all?
Someone like Musk is impossible here
Freedom from tyrants, maybe
Because people moved to bluesky and not to mastodon.
Not true, Mastodon has millions of users
And blue sky got like 15 millions in two weeks. Look, do you really think that everyone decided to diss Mastodon? All major companies, celebrities, sport teams, you name it? Or maybe there’s a more reasonable explanation why Bluesky?
Look that’s what is happening
Their main business and source of money is a proprietary centralized platform. Mastodon is the opposite.
Because casual mainstream basic folk (non-techie) don’t like the slight legwork you need to do and understand the Fediverse
I saw an article from Yahoo (Source: The Independent) last week about Bluesky’s current success from Xitter refugees and it also listed other similar groups like Mastedon. What didn’t surprise me is that they said Mastedon is predominantly “techie” which includes the majority of it’s user base as “supernerds” with the site having the “steepest learning curve.” This was an op-ed from an outsider.
Until Mastedon can appeal to simple minded mainstream basic folk (which is a pretty good size of netizens) it will always be a niche group.
I think the bigger problem is that the tech press starts from the perspective that Mastodon and the Fediverse is just for techie nerds and then fills out the narrative with supporting details and so unless those narratives are challenged Mastodon and the Fediverse will never be for normal people because the Tech press and the money behind it won’t let that narrative stick in the general public’s minds.
Surely not.
I am not trying to argue this isn’t also true too, my argument is that the fediverse doesn’t have a marketing department so the framework of discussion around the fediverse in mass media will always be fit to whatever the most convenient narrative is for the corporate tech world which will always be the fediverse is an obscure nerdy diy thing like ham radio or something.
That isn’t to say the fediverse doesn’t also have existential accessibility issues on multiple dimensions.
Until fediverse advocates stop thinking of people as simple minded, they will never understand the steps needed to be relevant.
The main advantage to Bluesky’s architecture is centralized identity and distributed components.
The centralized identity is key. Unless someone figures out a way to do this in activitypub, the fediverse will remain niche.
That’s more or less what NOSTR is trying to achieve
Accurate username