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Bluesky: install an app and make an account.
Mastodon: first pick a server. What does that mean? You figure it out. Ok, now select a client and install it. Doesn’t matter which one, but it actually does. Then use that client app to log onto the server you made an account on. Now you just need to figure out who to follow and you’re ready to participate!
The how-to-search-for-people-to-follow thing caused me trouble with Mastodon. I could handle getting a client and an account, but actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge. Discoverability was pretty broken.
Bluesky doesn’t seem to have that problem.
Lemmy I’ve stuck with because it handles that better.
The latest version of Mastodon does suggest accounts to follow. But you’re absolutely right - Bluesky being fully centralized can do a lot of things easier than it is for the Mastodon network. I have high hopes that @dansup@mastodon.social will help alleviate this a lot though with the Fediverse equivalent for “starter packs”:
actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge
Isn’t it the same on bluesky? As I understand it, there’s effectively only the one instance, and the federation is theoretical.
Download “Mastodon” from an app store. Create an account. Post.
It’s been a few years since you last tried, right?
It offers you a server, which is a step up, but the option to pick a different one is still very prominent which is going to make some people ask questions and lead to the usual confusion and anxiety about picking the “right” one.
Anyone who has studied UX and how users move through an app knows that every step you make someone do has a huge drop off in user completion of that process.
Unfortunately that means that centralized, simple platforms will always have a distinct UX advantage over federated platforms. We have to make up for it by being simply better. (No ads is a good start.)
install an app and make an account
Mastodon is pretty much the same now
There is an option to pick another server, but non-technical users are probably going to glance over it entirely
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/04/official-apps-now-available-for-ios-and-android/
AFAIK, Mastodon has exactly the same experience as BS if you just download the Mastodon official client and pick the main mastodon.social instance.
And as far as finding people to follow, just follow some hashtags to start with. Like #boston should immediately got you local users and news and #mac for computer news, etc etc. Following 5 or 10 hashtags will get you a pretty strong initial feed on mastodon.social, I suspect.
This is either outdated information, or purposeful misinformation.
Gonna put this out there: the fediverse is vastly depressing and not very fun. Lacks creative-types, too.
I see why people would choose the alternative.
The general user base is off putting and creates a shit experience. The fediverse will unfortunately never grow beyond a niche platform. It’s a great idea, it’s too bad so many of the people are such shit. Even in this thread another user calmly pointed out what non technical users care about and sure enough, someone with their head so far up their ass they probably haven’t been able to walk outside in weeks is blasting off while smelling their own farts because it’s so inconceivable that some portions of the population may not be as technical or similarly vested in things as they are.
Bingo.
Only place I’ve had folks follow me around to harass me, too. It’s disturbing.
Press block?
I had some loser follow all my comments and downvote them for a couple weeks but that’s all they could do in their impotent babyrage.
Indeed, quite unfortunate
And full of propaganda, especially from Lemmy.ml
Not surprising to me that its faltering, but very disappointing
Like Twitter and Meta aren’t
Twitter and Meta are corporate social media, but the Fediverse has a chance to be something entirely different
And organizations, state and private, will attack it because of that chance.
Yeah. They’ll also use it to spread their disinformation/marketing etc.
The combined annual budget of all Fediverse instances for addressing the problem isn’t enough to buy a pack of gum
Hey. Cmon man, every instance has its agendas and bad apples. Some spread pro-US and anti-Russia/China rhetoric, others are flipped.
Yes, a minority of the mods are fucked in some of their values and beliefs but that’s true of any instance, and most of the time it’s not an issue.
We all harbour our strange 1% ideas that’s separate us from the norm, but that’s the beauty of the lemmyverse that you can find a server where that’s better represented.
Too much? Go to an instance where it’s not and chill there for a bit.
Something that could be fixed if creative types and fun people would just flood the place already. The place is being held hostage by social misers and digital HOA Karens.
They will not come here because there’s an absolute fuckton of hostility.
My favorite woman-centric community went dark due to lack of moderation. Mods left because it was so damn hostile.
The t×nkie problem is also pretty bad.
Federated spaces will forever be niche spaces, because of all of this. Say “good” all you want, but it’d be great to have mass adoption.
They could outnumber and shout down the existing user base in a day. The number of active users in the fediverse is quite small. A tiny number of toxic people have killed the open social web for the next decade.
Unfortunately the loud obnoxious ones ruin it for everyone else.
The t×nkie problem is also pretty bad.
Aren’t you okay on sopuli.xyz? I now use lemmy.cafe as my main, they block ml, hexbear and grad
I am! But I left 4-5 other instances before finally settling. Blahaj especially actually welcomed HB at one point because “trans solidarity”, which opened the door to mass harassment. …again. I was so absolutely disappointed because I was like “hey…don’t” and was basically told off.
“Oh you can block them if you don’t like it! It’s up to the individual!” I’m sure that’s fine if you’re tough & completely mentally stable, but these people genuinely triggered my PTSD, which had not been a thing that had happened to me in years. It left me and my faith in this whole thing very very shaken.
That aside, I think sopuli only has ML unblocked because it has such large tech communities.
I really really really loved Beehaw, too, but after their talk about moving away from Lemmy, I scrambled to find another home.
An average user is not going to want to continually move around to keep themselves sane & safe.
An average user is not going to want to continually move around to keep themselves sane & safe.
Indeed, I think I’ll just recommend lemmy.cafe as the safe recommendation from now on
where are you primarily getting your fediverse access, because that’s not my experience at all
My Lemmy experience is kinda shit, but Mastodon is alright
i’ve come to believe that something in reddit’s design with the upvotes and the downvotes brings out the worst in people
Not the worst in people, but I agree that it incentives undesirable behavior.
I’ve thought and read about this a bit. I don’t have the answers, but I think the lack of willingness and desire to experiment is damaging to the social experience.
People change. Communities change. Culture changes. Social systems ought to adapt as the need arises.
Yet, here we are, painting over mold and nailing pieces of a system made a decade over that was toxic then, is toxic now, and will likely be toxic tomorrow. How would that ever work? We’re not special. We’re just another group ready to slip in the same slopes as the previous one.
Should we disable downvotes? Instances doing this never hear the end of it. Should votes be public to all? Dev thread brigaded. C’mon, let’s think together, are we actually gonna be reddit, but federated, forever? Surely that’s not what you want—Oh. Ohh. Well, my bad, then.
Easy to forget we all have our own wants, needs, and priorities. I’m sure I was the bad part of someone else’s experience, just doing what I thought was best. Still, I’m… getting tired, of Reddit 2. I’m not sure it’s possible to make it much better. It’s all too entrenched.
Hey, I’m depressive and not very fun, lack creativity too.
I’m not disagreeing, just voicing my well, fuck you too over here.
(But bring some people over, post lemmy links on that skytwatter before it turns toxic)
Oh, I don’t mind depressive, not-so-fun, lacking creativity people! They’re cool! I do mind pointedly depressing and hostile content.
AI art posts? Put it in the trash. Hopeless memes? No thanks. Constant politic-ing pretending to be sincere but it’s actually t×nkie pushing? Nope.
I’ll miss you when you’re gone… hope you find a comfortable place that tailors to your specific wants.
Fediverse is the over-engineered great solutions that most people don’t understand
I tried to explain the Fediverse to the marketing department at my company and the looks of confusion just made me gave up.
“It’s like email. We have our company domain and others have theirs and it all just works”
That’s a great start to an explanation, but first, you are assuming that people know how email works, and second, unlike email, federated social media has discovery, feeds, and in general content that gets pushed to you. How all of that works can be complicated and if you join a small instance, you may not realize how much content you are missing because of it.
In some cases, I think technical explanations aren’t necessary. For some people, the recommendation could be more like
Here are some growing platforms that people are using. I feel that this one is the most viable long term, and so we should maintain a presence there in addition to whatever else we choose.
The marketing department doesn’t need to know how email works in order to set up newsletters
ATproto is way more over-engineered than ActivityPub, and due to its crypto currency roots using merkle trees it simply cannot scale decentralized.
The analogy the other day works well, aside from the LaTeX one which still feels like a stretch
- Firefox : Chrome
- Linux : Windows
- LaTex : MS Word
- actual Fediverse : Bluesky’s Fediverseᵀᴹ
However I’m happy to be here. Mastodon is getting a boost right now too. Even if they didn’t, and everyone on Twitter moved to bluesky, I don’t expect those instances to close up shop
https://atproto.com/guides/applications
You can use atproto to build other federated applications.
Just because one implementation of atproto (bluesky) doesn’t have feature parity, doesn’t mean it’s a fake federated protocol.
‘actual fediverse’ and ‘bluesky fediverse’ doesn’t make sense as a comparison.
It’s more like, ActivityPub vs ATProto.
https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto
Bluesky is just one implementation of the protocol, that implementation happens to have a lot of steam, but it’s not fake or anything.
I wouldn’t call it fake, but the concern is about who created, maintains, and/or controls the protocol
ActivityPub was developed by W3C, and it’s properly decentralized. For Atproto, the concern is that Bluesky will exert control over the protocol once shareholders and profit get in the way of making a good product.
Last I heard they were discussing potentially moving the necessary registry/directory to a separate non-profit “like ICANN”, but even with that they seemed noncommittal about it.
I’d love to see more diversity in the federated space. Competition and iterative development is how we make things better. But I need Bluesky to take those necessary steps before I feel comfortable endorsing it over ActivityPub
Gee . . . I wonder why
Users: ermagerd, I haVe to ChoSe a SeRveR! tHiS is SO diFFicUlT!!! 😭😭😭
“but you need to do the same for email…”
Discovery sucks out loud, federation is all to often at the whims of some admin in a pissing match with another server, even when you know someone you want to follow locating their account is a hassle, it’s slower than Bluesky to populate across federated instances, there isn’t a good app design out there for free, the web portal is inferior in both UX and UI to even Twitter, I could go on.
If you want to make strawman arguments, go ahead; but, you’re ignoring the real problems with Mastodon that have caused users to avoid it.
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federation is all to often at the whims of some admin in a pissing match with another server,
Yes, and that’s kind of by design. The whole system is not designed to emulate large centralized social media, but to enable content syndication and synchronization across independent publishing platforms. Each site, then, is hosting and serving content published on other sites.
If a site admin decides they don’t want to be in a contnt hosting agreememt with another, that’s gotta be seen as OK. I wouldn’t want to host most people’s blogs on my website. Especially if the publishing site had a poor track record of content moderation.
But services like Mastodon bend over backwards to hide the nature of the fediverse, and make it seem like it’s all one common place and experince. Most major fediverse platforms now fail to allow sufficient theming or site branding, and reinforce the idea that the local site’s community is meaningless, and is to be ignored.
It bypasses the whole point, so that everyone can get all shakey trying to avoid the FOMO.
there isn’t a good app design out there for free, the web portal is inferior in both UX and UI to even Twitter,
I agree with the rest of your comment but i love mastodon’s android app design and the web app design. They weren’t so great before but right now, they’re way better than either Twitter or Bluesky (which is basically Twitter anyway).
Discovery sucks out loud
It doesn’t have recommendation engine that forces everybody into certain streams of thought, how terrible. You want someone to do the thinking for you? Can’t think for yourself?
Federation is all to often at the whims of some admin in a pissing match with another server
The admin has *audible gasp* power and users can choose the server they want? It’s almost like they are free. Also twitter, facebook, insta and other sites have never banned anybody because they are bastions of free speech.
even when you know someone you want to follow locating their account is a hassle
I know search boxes are advanced tech for you, but the majority it really isn’t that hard.
it’s slower than Bluesky to populate across federated instances
“I want my content and I want it now!” OK, addict. Maybe going slow would be better for you. Relax.
there isn’t a good app design out there for free, , the web portal is inferior in both UX and UI to even Twitter
Would you imagine that, people who donate their free time and skills to a project without getting reimbursed need longer to design and implement something than those working full time on it for tens of thousands of euros a year. And of course there are users like you that want the free work for free. As soon as somebody asks for money “Oh no, then I’ll go to the VC funded alternative where I’m the product! At least it’s free!”
Always the same with you people. You want a free alternative that can compete with a product that has millions invested in it over multiple years but won’t accept anything less than perfection, otherwise it’s “garbage” and “unusable”.
I dunno why are you so hostile to the other person and their points. The truth is that most people, especially non-technical ones, want three things out of any social media platform and here they are in order:
- It must be popular. If they can’t find their friends / celebrities / favorite brands on there they are not interested in the platform.
- It must be easy to use. If they have to jump through any unnecessary, as judged by them not you, hoops then they are not interested in the platform.
- It must have oodles of content they like and agree with. If they are presented with too much, as judged by them not you, content that they don’t like or agree with then they are not interested in the platform.
If a platform doesn’t meet all three of those criteria then it will not achieve mainstream success. Like it or not Mastadon, which I am on, is failing all three of those and will almost certainly remain a niche platform just like Lemmy.
Well put
but you need to do the same for email…
And that’s a huge part of the reason why email has basically been centralized into Gmail for the general user… I find the e-mail argument to always be odd given how it’s literally proof of this problem…
Happy twitter is dying. For awhile I though modern society will take anything from fascists, but maybe there’re still some lines normies won’t cross.
And yea bluesky is just infant twitter, but it’s like vaping: may be not great for you but hella better than smoking.
Twitter is taking punches but far from dying. 586M MonthlyActiveUsers
I couldn’t tell if that was using recent data. Several statistics cited are from 2023
What does Loona from Helluva Boss have to do with this?
Lol, I think you haven’t explored the furryverse, my friend.
Yay! I’m part of the problem!
I want Mastodon to work as much as I want Lemmy to work but as long as all the people I want to follow are on/going to Bluesky I’ll be on Bluesky too. At least until it gets entshitified and everyone flees again.
yet onto another centralized platform
Honestly it’s fine. Keep fedi niche, it’s why it continues to be comfy.
Yeah, let the project serve a few thousand then die off entirely well before 2030. That’s what this should be.
Let’s barely be a blip on the radar and make no difference at all to how the future of Internet fora goes.
Let’s do to the fediverse idea what some families do to a discounted grill, use it a few times a year then throw it in a dumpster when it gets rusty.
I rather it grow organically than go viral.
Most people here would have have Lemmy not grow much at all.
There is a price for going mainstream, and I agree that I don’t think I want to pay it. R*ddit was also once niche…
Yep, that’s right. That’s what I mean.
We’re doing nothing with this framework. It’s going nowhere. We’re not dethroning or replacing or reshaping shit.
Lemmy will be done and dead before Trump’s term is, even if he follows the term limit and hands it off in 4 years.I don’t believe that. Lemmy continues to slowly grow. It’s not dieing at all.
We’ll just have to wait and see. But clearly people here don’t want to get even close to the numbers of the big sites.
why is the fediverse the girlfriend. I mean ewww. it whoudl be like bluesky and fediverse as a lesbian couple with xitter checking them out from a construction site.
You must do some pretty niche searches on PornHub.
I want you to know that you were the highlight of this thread for me. Your comment hit me like a stray bullet to the head in Chicago, except I desperately didn’t want to go to work, so really, you practically did me a favor.
Because for some reason people in the fediverse are obsessed with getting others off of mainstream socials
Great! I never wanted 20 million users in my subreddits or irc channels or friend list.
We’ll all be happier this way. I’m happier this way, anyway.
Fiddling while the first real chance at breaking the corporate capture of the web burns because you want to feel intellectually superior to the normies is kinda shit, ngl
It would be super shitty if that’s how i felt.
I like that lemmy is small, and that people are kinda nice and that if you tell someone that they’re wrong about something its not a flame war.
20 million users is going to change that.
Also, if there was 20 million more users worth of content, the cost of running the infrastructure would increase as well.
Fediverse still has linux and github vibes. Which is good in terms of functioning and free and made in the spirit of comraderie. And bad in terms intuitive and easy usability.
Programmers either don’t understand that “nice to look at and use” is actually a really important aspect of an app/program, or it’s a lot harder to do that well than it seems from the outside. I really don’t know. When it’s just one person making the whole thing, it makes sense that they split their work where they can.
But when you’re dealing with a serious contender for a major platform, it’s not optional anymore, and it’s not a normie thing.
Programmers either don’t understand that “nice to look at and use” is actually a really important aspect of an app/program, or it’s a lot harder to do that well than it seems from the outside. I really don’t know. When it’s just one person making the whole thing, it makes sense that they split their work where they can.
It could be both. I guess the former is widespread amongst Linux-based hobby coders who use a minimalist window manager or even a terminal multiplexer instead of a full-blown desktop environment. They don’t see the appeal in good UIs.
But they may also fall victim to the latter because they see good UIs so rarely that they simply don’t know what good UIs look like. That, and most hobby FLOSS coders are backend devs above all. Even if you assemble 20 hobby coders for a project, you may have to appoint one who’ll begrudgingly have to make a UI without actually knowing how.
At least, some Fediverse server applications can not only be themed, but you can replace the entire Web UI. And there are capable UI designers in the Fediverse, just not so many as capable full-stack devs. Granted, they may not be on the same level as frontend devs with Apple paychecks, but still.
For example, Pleroma and Akkoma have gotten to a point where, I guess, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE only see so much use because not everybody has heard of stuff like Mangane yet. But people who have gotten a taste of Mangane usually don’t want to go back.
Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are so extensively themeable that a user-selectable theme is very close to an all-new frontend. In practice, Hubzilla’s themeability fell victim to the effort of keeping Hubzilla’s monstrous backend maintained, and so it’s down to one theme whose name is not the only hint at it being stuck in 2012. Well, enter people who make new third-party themes to stop Hubzilla being as unuseable as it’s being made out to be.
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I’ve been waiting for my 2^68th Linux circlejerk post, I love Linux
That’s cause the Twitter format is not for people who want the open source experience.
Twitter format is about self promotion, it’s not a place to discuss ideas anonymously.
That’s pretty good though, there’s a whole lot of people on Melon Husk’s site that i wouldn’t want to see in my Fedi Timeline.
I usually go with “Elon’s Musk” cos it sounds gross and he is gross
Breaking: Musk offering to buy BlueSky.
/s, but barely.
