-6 points

There sure is a suspicious push for Bluesky on Lemmy as of late. Interesting.

Why does anyone care what platform others use? They can both burn to the ground for all I care.

permalink
report
reply
24 points

I think it’s because X actually does a lot of harm and people want it to fail.

Blue sky definitely seems like the best alternative for an average non technical user.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-7 points

All social media provides a level of harm. Twitter is not better or worse than Facebook, Instagram, etc.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Instagrams format doesn’t really lend itself to societal breakdown. Twitter and Facebook Groups absolutely do and have a lot to answer for.

Fediverse is the next gen and improved to cause less of that. People are excited about the normies making the next step.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Twitter is now the most actively harmful with the widest reach, by a large margin

It is categorically worse than the Meta services because they still at least maintain a veneer of moderation.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree they all are bad. But it’s should be the priority of everyone reasonable to end the reach of Twitter ASAP given the damage it’s causing.

Bluesky represents a departure from both X/Twitter and Meta, and should be encouraged. Yes it would be great if everyone was heading to Mastodon, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

The goal is to make Twitter irrelevant as quickly as possible

permalink
report
parent
reply
69 points
*

I’d be a lot happier if Mastodon were seeing 1 million new users a day right now, but I’ll take what I can get. Any dent in Twitter’s user base is good. Here’s hoping that experiencing “the Fediverse with training wheels” over at Bluesky will lead to people moving to Mastodon sooner rather than later.

permalink
report
reply
32 points

It will not. You have to teach people what federation is while also having an enticing platform. I haven’t seen anyone do that yet. Like Henry Ford said, the masses will just want a faster horse.

Let’s pretend like the fediverse is a car. We’re asking people who’ve never seen a car, and are used to horses, to select the parts and put it together with no manual. But, unless there’s heavy provocation people will not switch from what they’re familiar with.

This was the Reddit API changes for me and many on here. Yet due to Lemmy’s adolescence at the time many didn’t see a good enough platform to migrate to.

I consider myself quite literate with tech, but when I tried Mastodon years ago I couldn’t even figure out how to sign up. They didn’t explain what a server was, what federation is, or why I was unable to login after making an account. And they still do a terrible job at it. Your average person gets confused and gives up.

If I knew anything about development I’d throw together an app that’d walk you through the sign up process. It’s such an easy thing to fix.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-7 points

I mean, it’s just downloading an app and creating a account for me. I feel like you’re overcooking this a bit.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

But mastodon has no good algorithm or search

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

No one using this platform is indicative of the average person.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-9 points

I can’t imagine how much you must have suffered choosing an email client. 🙄

It’s been my experience that people who couldn’t figure out how to join Mastodon are the same people that get so used to doing things one way, that when you introduce a different way, they fall apart. Regardless if they’ve done virtually the same thing with different services.

Mastodon isn’t difficult to sign up for and use. FFS there are people of all ages and tech experiences who figured it out easily. I’ve seen grandmas who only ever used Facebook figure out Mastodon and teens who failed english figure it out. It’s not rocket science. It’s just not what you are used to when signing up for similar services.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

Let’s compare on-boarding processes for Mastodon and BlueSky

How to join Mastodon:

  • First pick an instance!

User: What is «instance»?

  • Lectures user for 10 min. over what federation is, comparing it to email federation

User: Ok… but what instance should I use?

  • You gotta figure that out yourself!

User: picks random instance.

Now one of these things happen

  1. Every thing goes well

  2. They pick a small instance with almost nobody in it, complain that there is no-one there and leave or the instance gets shut down.

  3. They pick an instance centered around something they are not interested because they had no info on what each instance is like other than a small description that doesn’t give you a good idea of what the average post is like.

No matter which one happens, if they stick around, things like this will pop up:

Someone will send them a link to a Mastodon post. They click it, but the link they were send was on another instance as such they are logged out. Thing is, they don’t know what federation is and most instances have nearly indistinguishably UI, as thus the user doesn’t notice they are on a completely different site. “Strange”, they think, “I could have sworn I was logged in”. Then they try to log in on the other instance… can’t and get confused and maybe even panic. “Did I just lose my account?”.

Now, with that being said, Email is still an example of a federated platform with mass adoption, and we should use it as an example when explaining the fediverse. But I would like to stress the following point: most instances have nearly indistinguishably UI, as thus the user doesn’t notice they are on a completely different site. Go different Email instances and they look distinct. Go to gmail.com and outlook.com and they look distinct enough so that people can intuitively understand that, although they are both email services, their Gmail account is not going to let them log into Outlook.

Mastodon instances on the other hand? They just brand themselves as “Mastodon” and that’s about it. They look identical! Just LOOK:

No wonder people get confused. The big instances NEED to look distinct for this to work. Otherwise, the federation thing will be confusing.


I made a post on asklemmy asking why people were choosing BlueSky over Mastodon and not understanding federation was one of the major pain points.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

I didn’t suffer? I got my email in computer lab when I was a kid. I didn’t have to choose the teacher showed us Gmail. You get an android you’re prompted to create a Gmail. You get an iPhone you’re prompted to create an iCloud.

For your second paragraph that was the entire point of my original comment.

Objectively it’s not difficult in the same way starting a video game isn’t difficult. However, just because some people can learn the controls quickly, doesn’t mean everyone can. See: the video game journalist failing the Cuphead tutorial.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Like Henry Ford said, the masses will just want a faster horse.

The masses are fucking morons and expecting them to eventually do the right thing is a waste of synapse processing time.

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points
*

As someone who would have preferred Mastodon become the more popular service, I completely agree.

Look at mastodon.social and bluesky.app without logging in. Which site seems more interesting to the general public?

Now make an account. If you don’t have a bunch of specific people you want to follow, which has the better new user experience for the general public?

Mastodon looks like it was made by nerds, for nerds, and is populated exclusively by nerds. It’s not nearly as welcoming.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Life long nerd and CS grad. Mastodon ain’t it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

I’m going to use your car analogy, but tweak it.

People are looking to sell their car and buy a new one. One car acts like their old car; it has automatic transmission and there is a network of mechanics to take the car to in case something breaks.

The other car has a manual transmission. The car requires regular maintenance to do done by the owner like weekly tuning of the timing belt. There aren’t mechanics, but car clubs where people will give you advice on how to fix your car.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

I am totally fine with all the normies moving from Twitter to Bluesky.

From the arms of one corporation into the next, at least this one isn’t as evil.

I am very much fine with the Fediverse being a slowly growing, more niche, and thus more selective social media / internet stuff landscape.

If people were actually interested in communicating in a way that is not reliant on or generating profit for a corporation, in a way that is fundamentally more egalitarian…

… They’d either figure it out, or not.

Saves me a whole lot of time when determining who actually cares about such things, vs who doesn’t, but thinks they do.

permalink
report
reply
37 points

in other “too fucking late” news, google searches for “what is fascism” spikes after election

permalink
report
reply
5 points

It’s pretty funny, actually, from an I told you so stance.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

if denial in an individual is a hard thing to overcome, denial with mob mentality is nigh impossible. broke uneducated maga sheep will be standing in a breadline and still not admit they’d been completely fucking hoodwinked by a con man

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Haha, let’s be real, there won’t be a bread line in this economy after Trump kills all the non-profits.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

At this point Schadenfreude is all I’ve got so I’m going to enjoy the fuck out of it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Yeah, that’s the word I’m feeling.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Just like how the amount of searches for “What is the EU and what does it do” rose massively after Brexit by all the morons who voted ‘leave’ before actually knowing what it was.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

I’m glad we’re moving on, but the damage is done.

The xitter takeover to me seemed entirely planned to help suppress media for this election and it worked. It helped muddy the waters even more.

permalink
report
reply

News

!news@lemmy.world

Create post

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

Community stats

  • 14K

    Monthly active users

  • 10K

    Posts

  • 198K

    Comments