Mars2k21

I'm assuming most of us here want a large community. The reality is most people aren't into technology nearly as much as many of the people actually on the Fediverse. For other people who are into tech (like myself and a lot of people here), the federation technology itself being promoted as a core component of the appeal makes sense, but for your average person? They just don't care, and they shouldn't have to in order to experience the best things about the Fediverse.

Federation, ActivityPub, and even open source are like "buzzwords" to most people. Yet, when I've seen federated software recommended on other social media websites, every article and many times, we tell everyone about the underlying technology first and THEN about how they actually compare to Twitter/Reddit/etc., on a feature basis, as well as about the community of people actually here. It should be the other way around. Why are we telling people about the tech first over the actual social aspect?

This place can't rely solely on mass exoduses from Reddit and Twitter for new members. We've got to get out there and tell people why it's good. Right now, by many people, it's viewed at best as the "Next best thing" and at worst as "over-complicated social media".

People who do come here should learn about the underlying technology and its implications for them. If someone is willing to come here, by all means, tell them about the benefits and drawbacks of the underlying decentralized technology. Understanding how it works is pretty important anyway in the case they'd like to move their account to another instance or view posts from other instances. However, for someone who isn't here, the case can be made that it makes things seem less user-friendly to begin with. Countless times, I've seen people on the Fediverse who still barely understand how federation works. The paralyzing choice of picking an instance to join alone could make someone back away from Mastodon and just stick with Twitter.

Telling them about tech-related things that they don't know about or aren't really interested in doesn't help much. The local artist down the street likely doesn't care about having a deep understanding about federation works or the benefits of decentralized versus centralized social media. They just want somewhere to post their art for others to see and comment on others in their space.

All in all, this post is meant to target our methods of telling people about the Fediverse. We, as a community, have to be better at making this place more user-friendly. This isn't a post to criticize federation and ActivityPub themselves, but rather about how we tell people about the Fediverse through word of mouth.

Recently I've dove a little deeper into the Fediverse. I began with Mastodon like many others and I'm ready to move on. Mastodon as a software in comparison to similar services in the Fediverse like Calckey/Firefish, Friendica, Misskey, etc. just isn't as good and the only thing it has going for it is an established user base and simplicity/lack of feature creep I guess. I've also had major difficulty finding any sort of conversation or getting followers, although that could just be because of me just not being really active on social media in general and being disinterested in discussing the most popular topics like politics.

I've been looking at another microblogging/Twitter type service to switch over to since I just like the concept of the Fediverse (I credit Kbin for being a great 2nd impression) but its been a struggle. It seems like in the microblogging space of the Fediverse, there are just a bunch of different platforms that do the same thing while trying to one up each other in some aspect. I'm not sure if there are large features that separate them besides UI, but this is just how it appears. If there is, please let me know.

This fragmentation is making it difficult to choose a platform, and I can't imagine it'd be any easier for anyone new the Fediverse. Once I choose a platform, I have to choose an instance as well of course. I was going to join calckey.social/firefish.social but I'm a little hesitant now because mastodon.art defederated with it, and I follow multiple accounts from that instance. The drama that always surrounds defederation is a fundamental design flaw in the Fediverse, but I try to choose servers that don't have these issues as I would rather not self-host right now. The Mastodon instance I have an account on has a great admin that lets the users decide when it came to a large move such as defederating with Threads.

I'm really beginning to see how the Fediverse can be complicated for new users, even if they understand the underlying technology. Unfortunately, these seem to just be deep problems with the Fediverse in general rather than just things to adjust to.

Anyway, enough ranting and back the question: which of these microblogging platforms should I even choose? Its making my head spin. Seems like Calckey would be the best for my needs at the moment.