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.
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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.
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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)
If I am not wrong decentrlization is a very old promise for that platform and not actually implemented in any way...
I think they posted recently they were looking to make it decentralized in early 2024
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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 tech@news.tld or politics@news.tld amd thus followed.
Let's give the Twitter guy another chance, I mean we all loved his platform sooo much before Musk, right? ...
Yeah, that's what bothers me. Feels like people romanticize pre-Musk Twitter, when in reality, its always just been complete garbage. Musk's Twitter is certainly worse in some ways, though that isn't saying a lot.
Overall, Twitter just sucks. Use other platforms where possible.
Yea, I have my issues with Lemmy too ever since the Israel/Palestina conflict got violent again so my by far favorite and most used is Mastodon, to me that feels like a supirior Microblogging site that actually dose things different and doesn't just try to reimplement Twitter!
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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Having an invite only service seems like a risky move. If you make the sign up process too difficult people will give up and never return.
At this stage that's kind of the point. It's an intentional demand-curbing measure. The number of people trying to switch to BlueSky outstrips hosting infrastructure. They're scaling up slowly and carefully.
I presume once it's out of open beta and they have the infra they need to launch properly, it will stop being invite ony.
Understandable, but at that point it may be too late as people will have cemented themselves with some of the competition such as Mastodon or wherever it may be. At least for me I am very unlikely to use BlueSky at this point or in the future because I was unable to go to the site when I had heard of it and sign up.
I think those of us that treat social media services this way are a minority in the grand picture. If BlueSky continues to be effective, network effect will pull in a steady stream of users, including ones that may have balked before.
It is poising itself to be a 1:1 drop-in replacement for Twitter. Federated services like Mastodon aren't that (and aren't trying to be).
I wholly believe that the majority of Twitter users have no interest in federated platforms as alternatives. By comparison, platforms like Mastodon feel vaguely like Twitter but more fractured and isolated. Everyone was on Twitter. Comparatively no one is on Mastodon. Discovery is awful and micromanaging instances and subscriptions is tedious busywork. "Why can't it just be all in one convenient place, like on Twitter? This is so stupid and complicated," I expect most would complain.
Federated platforms are loved by us because we value the fine control and we like putting in effort to curate our feeds. The complexity is the appeal. But I think it's negative appeal to the type of person who has gotten accustomed to an algorithm doing all of that for them, and I think that's most people. You can use federated platforms out of the box and they'll "just work" without all the tinkering, but it will be very bland and vapid. It only becomes great when you put in work to make it great for yourself.
The thing BlueSky seems to be promising is that big, monolithic platform that Twitter was and most people want. And I think they're the only notable player in that game, so they'll completely corner that market. As long as they don't trip over any footguns (and I don't believe making the beta invite-only is one of them), I believe they're going to succeed greatly.
But the sign up codes are the only reason people care about it. Yes, people are just THAT shallow.
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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.
I find it funny how the only problem people see with Twitter is that the wrong oligarch owns it. The real issue is with reliance on privately owned social spaces. Corporations shouldn't be in charge of how people communicate with each other.
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