Why not just use mastodon? Why is this better in any way? Twitter was already going to shit before Elon accelerated it.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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At least in my own bubble, many did switch to Mastodon. Those that didn't are looking at other options, because the whole federation idea and things like home instances didn't appeal to them or were simply too complicated (they want a service that at least hides its decentralized nature).
I don't get why people dislike federation
Because it doesn't come with instructions and there's a lot of "buts". For example, it took me a while to understand that, for example, I can't log in "Mastodon.world" with my "Mastodon.social" account, I had to go to "Mastodon.social" to log in and THEN I can access to the content in "Mastodon.social". Also, there's the problem of instances blocking other instances. I would be pretty salty if I couldn't access an account I followed, because the admins of the instance in which the account is hosted, decided to block the instance in which my account is in. That's why the mayority of users go to the biggest instance (Lemmy.world and Mastodon.social for example), because instances blocking the biggest instance is unlikely to happen (you would block a lot of potencial users and therefore, diminished attractiveness of your instance). But everyone doing that defeats the whole point of federalization. Also, there's the problem of defederalizing of instances. Also, the problem of safety, privacy and security. For example, a massive security fault was recently discovered in Mastodon and a server was raised by the police and all of it's data captured by the police. In simple words, the fediverse is not the panacea it was sold like, the kinks are not ironed out.
And what is when X decides to ban an account you are interested in? You can't do anything against it. In your mastodon you could still read it on that instance. Or maybe there is a client where you can add two accounts and show content of both? And do you think X or Bluesky does not cooperate with law enforcement and gives data if the US government wants it?
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There are a ton of reasons not to like it and they're evident on Lemmy pretty notably, let alone other platforms. The entire idea of being able to defederate and federate at will is a big feature of these platforms but they're also the part that people like the least. If the server you're on defederates from another server you like, you have no choice but to start all the way from the beginning if you need to choose another instance to join. At the same time, each instance gets its own version of every single community. If you join an instance that federates with lots of other instances, you're very likely to see the exact same posts multiple times since each community is completely unique and separate (again, a feature for some, a boon for others).
Federation is great for a few reasons and really horrible for others. It's not the single answer that works for everyone.
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Yeah, if you don't like it just create and account on a generic big one that let's you access most content and just go with it. Act as if centralized. People like to create problems for no reason. If other people care about choice and the tech behind it and the new possibilities allowed, let them be happy for it.
It's literally like email. Most people just have a gmail one and that's most common. Others care about specific services, prices, choice, privacy features, etc, and the trch allows people to make that choice without compromising the primary purpose which is connecting people.
Everyone should have a federated account just like everyone has a email account for most things that require it. More and more places are starting to have proper integration for example commenting on blogs instead of the other stupid common alternative (discourse or wtv is the name I don't remember).
From an average outsider perspective is hard to know what is "the big one" in a federated system. And i think links online are what break federated systems. If you get linked to some content from another instance than your own. Then you've got do deal with the url bar yourself in a specific way that is never well documented (only passed around via word of mouth) so you can log in and interact with said content. A baked in "instance switch" at the top of such services that would redirect you to the same content on another instance would be the best solution but I've not seen anything like that yet.
There are browser extensions that make sure any link opens in the user home instance. And I think there were recent improvements recently to improve the UX in those cases.
There's always the true known universal way which is get the url and past it in the search box of the home instance. If installing a browser extension is too much for most users.
It's obvious we are not at peak perfect UX, and work needs to be done and will be done eventually, but it's not having to learn 2 or 3 new things that should be seen as a blocker to using it. Facebook and twitter were very intuitive at some point when nobody knew how things worked. It's all about learning how to work with it.
What's confusing about it?
One thing genuinely confusing is having people reply to a comment I made from a federated instance, and when I try to reply to their comment, I get taken to the reply in the context of the lemmy instance they commented in, not the one I commented in. For example, if I'm on Beehaw and someone from lemmy.ca replies to my comment, and I want to respond to them, what I'll typically do is click on the button below the comment that shows the context of the conversation, because I comment a lot and don't always know what comment I made that someone is replying to. When I do that, it takes me to lemmy.ca, which I can't reply from, because I'm not on lemmy.ca. This is confusing, because this routine thing pulls you into other parts of the fediverse that your reply might exist in, and which other people can see, but you can't comment on that instance because you don't have an account there. But if you go back to your own instance and find your comment through your profile, you can navigate to a reply someone from another instance made and reply to them as long as you're still on your instance. This is both cumbersome and, to a new user, terribly disorienting.
I meant "what's confusing about some people disliking federation?"
And I agree with you, unnecessary complexity is one of those reasons.
Check if an issue already exists, or file one
the fuck is bluesky?
old twitter founder jack created another social platform just like how twitter was except it has a protocol very similar to activitypub (but not it so not compatible)
So... why the fuck don't people just use Mastodon or Firefish then?
Mastodon is the one everyone's heard of, but it's not the most intuitive if you're coming from Twitter. Lemmy has the advantage of many old reddit apps switching to its API, making the user experience fairly seamless between them and bringing a bunch of dedicated users. Alternate Twitter apps, if there were any, didn't have that kind of footing, and the official Mastodon app is a bit overwhelming. If there was a similar app for Mastodon that could make content discovery more akin to Twitter, it might have a chance to take off.
I've never used Twitter and I have Mastodon, but only use it a tiny bit.
What discovery feature does (did?) Twitter have that Mastodon doesn't? I ask because I haven't had any issues finding things on Mastodon.
I don't use Mastodon much because I find Mastodon/Twitter a less intuitive method to communicate. I prefer the Lemmy/Reddit method. (On that same note, I also don't understand Discord as a replacement for any of these. It's chat, which is great for chat, but terrible as a Mastodon/Lemmy alternative.)
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Some sort of centralized alternative to Mastadon. Kinda silly tbh.
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So we've all decided to give Jack Dorsey another chance to do the same thing he did last time?
Y’know, we — as a group — are kind of stupid.
No, not stupid. Insane. The definition of insanity is doing the exact same fucking thing over and over again and expecting shit to change. That is crazy.
Compromise: “Insanely stupid”.
What did he do last time? Never used Twitter so I have no clue what people hated about it
Well, refused to ban Trump for years no matter how many sitewide rules he broke, for starters.
Like the joke of old:
Internet Explorer: the best browser for downloading other browsers
There's an earlier version of this Fediverse Tree diagram where everything is more carefully on branches and the sky is... Blue. Bluesky. Bluesky is very much a response to the Fediverse. As a replacement. As a more popular and more important service.
Don't quite get why Wordpress is anywhere near this. Isnt this a website solution?
Their blogs just got integrated fairly recently with the fediverse.
That's a really neat way of intergrating it.
We could literally follow ArsTechnica (they are on wordpress according to their last BTS) on Lemmy.
Would be neat if Wordpress develops it further so a theme topic like tech or politics would be [email protected] or [email protected] amd thus followed.
What's with Lemmy users doing free advertising for corporate social media like this? You're already here, so you should know better, right?
I mean, yeah, I'm on Lemmy and lots of other sites in the Fediverse, but why would that make me "know better"? Is my account supposed to give me some profound insight that sets me apart from the plebs on other sites? What I begin to know unfortunately is that the Fediverse and Lemmy in particular would be much more popular if it wasn't so full of self-absorbed comments like this. The sole point of this post was to share something I found interesting that day, but if the mere mention of services that aren't Lemmy provokes these kinds of comments, then I fear Lemmy will never make it out of obscurity. JFC
No, having an account won't give you insight, but what I'm getting at is that most of us are here to get away from the glaring flaws of corporate social media. Obviously I want as many people as possible to join the Fediverse, and I don't see how advocating for or at the very least normalizing more the exact kind of corporate-controlled platforms that drove most of us here is going to help that.
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It's dead lets move on to intresting things
Twitter or Bluesky? It's both actually and you can add threads to that list as well.
Neither, a lot of celebrities, companies and media outlets are in Mastodon. A lot of artists are moving to BlueSky.
use mastadon or nostr, they are actually decentralized. Bluesky is just twitter 2.0 with the same broken incentives and the same broken business model.
Competition is great and all, but Mastodon already exists.
Yeah honestly, let's have competition between Mastodon servers instead. My current favorite is dice.camp for tabletop fans.
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