As long as its not twitter :-)
We get it, no matter how many times people get fucked by venture capital pushing enshittification, most people don’t actually care enough about the issues at hand to deal with even the minor discomfort of learning something new that isn’t highly polished. They’ll take getting fucked by corporations every time.
Edit: lol
I mean…you say this with an air of sarcasm, because you DO care about decentralization. But I’ve been saying since I got here, with no sarcasm, that Lemmy is not a competitor to reddit. Mastodon is not a competitor to twitter. The fediverse is not appealing to the masses on it’s own current merrit. And why?
Because it’s main selling point is that it’s decentralized. And any average woman named Britney, or any average guy named Todd, does not give a shit about that. At all. At all. At all.
They don’t know what it is. They don’t care what it is. They just want to see what Taylor Swift is saying online. They just want to follow Nascar. They just want to follow all the accounts that you view as corporate branding. That’s what they WANT.
I’ve said in other threads various ways to get the concepts of the fediverse to be looked at. But it takes us, the fediverse, to appear to be appealing to the masses instead of scary.
It needs to feel like a walled garden. It can act as a decentralized service on a technical end. You can wizard of oz the shit out of it. Stay behind a curtain and keep all the scary technical stuff hidden. The technical stuff can still work, but you guys are pushing it front and center like it’s a selling point. It’s not. It’s scary to them, and bluesky looks and feels just like twitter, without the fascism. That’s all they want.
Nobody is over on bluesky asking if bluesky is truely decentralized. Nobody there knows what that is. Nobody cares. It would be like me inventing my own currency that only works in an office I work in. Then wondering why the other offices in that building aren’t adopting my currency. They don’t care about my currency. It means nothing to them.
The fediverse had years of a headstart, and learned nothing. I don’t have the technical skills to build. What I do have is the ability to blend in with any crowd and understand what they’re feeling. So I understand them. I understand you. And I understand the difference in mentality between them and you. I also understand that you guys DON’T understand their mentality. And they don’t even know your mentality exists.
The best way to describe it is, they are like a bunch of flies. They just want to fly to the nearest lightbulb. And you guys are putting on one of those blacklights to expose all the filthy stains around you. And the flies literally land in and eat shit happily, so they don’t care about the stains. Yet you’re so tunnel visioned that all you see are the stains, and are certain the flys will care. Then a neighbor turns on a porchlight, and they all fly over there.
Also the previous big light was a bug zapper.
This is so correct it’s actually unreal. Really well put, solid comment.
While sometimes I think…do we really want it to get super popular? But also even if the popularity comes with the assholes…blocking and curating can help and in the end, it IS still decentralized. So let’s say that convinces the average Lemmy user that yes, let’s grow this shit.
How do we get some of the big names here to promote it? I tell anyone who has a complaint with standard social media about the fediverse but I have minimal influence. I HAVE included it on surveys and contact with podcasts I follow, to promote it more, again limited influence.
I feel like we need like…whatever…a Taylor Swift type to take it up as something they push and then other big names will follow.
As you said, I don’t care about that really but many others do. Lemmy and occasional checkins with Reddit are my only social media. But if it gets more people here, it could be worth it. I personally would just love more communities to be more active because I like Lemmy…but right now I only see the biggest “Reddit copycats” getting the major activity.
I said before, the biggest thing is handles. If Taylor Swift came to the fediverse, I assume her twitter handle is @TaylorSwift
If she came to Lemmy, or Mastodon, her handle would be “@[email protected]” or “@[email protected]”
But then I could myself register “@[email protected]” or “@[email protected]”
And I could just be Taylor Swift.
What she has to do, and this goes for any public figure, is protect her brand. Her brand is Taylor Swift. Anything at all which creates confusion or infringing on use regarding that name is a problem for her. She needs to keep Taylor Swift exclusively to herself.
Just as Kellogs would want all use of the word Kellogs to belong to them.
So to attract them, they won’t come unless they can be the sole and exclusive @TaylorSwift
That’s the important part. She wants to be @TaylorSwift.
Not @[email protected].
So to do this, I shouldn’t be able to create an identical handle, on a different instance.
The fediverse needs to all communicate with each other. I don’t have a peertube account. But since I’m Lost_My_Mind, that exact handle should no longer be in the pool of available peertube account names. And if I were to sign up, with the email from this Lemmy account, I wouldn’t even chose a handle. It would automatically choose Lost_My_Mind. The accounts would be the same.
Because at the end of the day, what celbrities want is one easy place for all people to reach them. Right now with X and Bluesky being two systems that aren’t interconnected, this splits the audience. We already know America is divided. Almost down the middle.
So the LAST thing celebrities, and brands want is bluesky to take off. Because then you’d have X with its right wing views, and bluesky with it’s left wing views. And then brands will have to make two accounts. One on X, one on bluesky. They’d much rather say they have one account with 40 million followers than 2 accounts. One with 22 million followers, and another account with 18 million followers.
And the thing nobody is taking into consideration is the scaling of the fediverse. You can have all of X and all of bluesky on the fediverse. All decentralized. But because 98% won’t notice the decentralized aspect, they won’t care. They’ll just stick to their little corner of the fediverse. And you’ll stick to your corner, and in the middle will be brands.
And both sides can connect to brands from their corner of the fediverse. The only reason brands care to pick a side, is because analytics tells them one side is more likely to financially support them. But they’ll happily take subscribers and money from the other side. Red states? Blue states? Doesn’t matter. All they care about is green states!
And the potential is there. People who want a small fediverse can scale their individual view smaller. People who want it bigger can scale it bigger. It literally has the ability to please both sides wishes. It just has to be implemented properly.
But it may actually be already too late. The bluesky ball has started rolling. Sometimes it’s not about logic. You can have a factually better option, but still lose by having inferior numbers.
Right now, bluesky has an artificial solution to the handles issue. You’re @[email protected], but EVERYONE is @bsky.app unless you use a custom domain. So realistically you’re just @handle unless specified otherwise.
Same way a website is just website.com, even though it’s really https://www.website.com/
The https://www/. is implied, just like the @bsky.app is going to be implied as time goes on.
Eh, anyone with their own domain can use it even without hosting anything. It just takes a DNS record. So Taylor Swift can have @taylorswift.com or w/e her official website is and that’s pretty much the exact same situation as claiming domain ownership. Someone else could likely register taylorswift.boats but I think most people would realize something is off there.
My point is, she doesn’t want to be @[email protected]
That’s so much extra offputting text. She just wants to be @taylorswift
That’s short, it’s concise, it’s easy to remember. It’s branding.
Just try to imagine a newscastor telling some story, and saying at the end:
“For all the latest from taylor swift, you can follow on the fediverse @taylorswift”
Now imagine that, compared to this:
“For all the latest from taylor swift, you can follow on the fediverse @[email protected]”
You can make it so the official handle in operation behind the scenes is @[email protected]
That’s not the issue. The issue is, she would want to control her own name. Meaning I couldn’t make @[email protected]
Yes, it’s easy to spot that being fake TO YOU. You have to remember that 60% of America is literally illiterate. Domains are NOT hard to register, but they are hard to register every single variation of a false domain.
Now I can be @[email protected]
And how many people might fall for that? And sure, you don’t eliminate the problem by making handles exclusive, but it makes it harder to fake, and easier to go after those attempting identity theft.
My point is that she can be @taylorswift.com not @[email protected]. Also, exaggerating the number of illiterate people in the USA doesn’t help your argument. You can already be @FaylorSwift on twitter so I’m still not seeing how this is any more secure than using her actual domain that her fans may be familiar with.
You can use your domain as your handle Bluesky, I’ve never seen it done on ActivityPub. Is it possible?
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If you want more people to donate, you’ve got to become more popular, and lemmy needs donations afaik
Extraordinary well put.I wish more people would understand that building communities by attracting users from outside is much-much-much more important than to brag about fediverse in your small nerd circle and defederating another server.
It needs to feel like a walled garden.
Imagine that.
Related blog post that puts it similarly well
It’s not about “minor discomfort.” The Fediverse has too much UX friction for someone that isn’t in tech/used to a product that isn’t mature in features or content. Even if they are fine with that, they need to spend time to figure out what server(s) to trust, or at least an organization they can sue if things go wrong.
Ranting about “normies” instead of listening and understanding what their needs and concerns are is not conducive to growth, but it’ll certainly help it decay.
Exactly. Most Fediverse fans always go on a rant about “corporations”, “enshittification”, whatever, when they don’t understand that not everyone will take/have time to learn about these things. Not everything is simple as in just click a big “download” button or “create account”. It’s those new extra steps that confuse those people, some who are of old age, or never saw a desktop computer before. It needs actual designers. Same thing with other FOSS projects.
No, no. It’s definitely about “getting fucked” as SnotFlickerman succinctly put it. It’s just users getting ravaged by corporations so hard they don’t
noticecare—or something.Nah, if the masses wish to be damned I say let them.
Make up your mind fellas. Do you guys want more people to join or not?
People on Lemmy are not all one person or a hivemind, so that depends on who you ask.
Personally I wouldn’t mind it if those people’s values aligned with the values of the fediverse, I think it would be beneficial to us and to them (in getting them off corporate social media and reducing corporate influence in society), but if their values do not align with ours it will only ruin what we have here and potentially just make Lemmy another corporate centralised social media, reducing or removing outright any wider societal benefit in my opinion.
It’s not that serious lol, just a lighthearted joke. I just found it funny that you and the people earlier in comment thread had opposing views.
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and when they do figure out the unintuitive UX, they’re met with an avalanche of reply guys and, if they’re Black, a fuckload of overt and covert racism that everyone else will ignore…
there’s a reason why most people on the fedi are white men in tech
only the queer community seems to have managed to carve itself a place on the fedi, and even it has big issues of rampant racism
Reply guys?
I’ve seen this term on Mastadon. I’m actually confused by it a bit, since I’ve always thought replies are to be expected on the Internet.
I think women have a problem with men following them and replying in an overly familiar manner, or mansplaining, or something like that. I’m old, used to forums, and never used Twitter, so I may be missing some sort of etiquette that developed there. I generally don’t reply at all on Mastadon because of this, and really, I’m not sure what Mastadon or microblogging is for. Seems to be for developing personal brands, and for creators of content to inform followers of what they created. Seems not to be for discussion. I.e. more like RSS than Reddit (that’s my understanding at least).
basically, someone online (usually a man) who replies to another person (usually a woman) in a condescending tone, or giving unsolicited advice, that sorta stuff
Both digital and real world spaces benefit from diversity.
But, but eMAil!!!1!!!
Lemmevangelists really like the email analogy because they think literally anyone knows or cares how email works. 99% of people lose you the moment you say the word “protocol”
The vast majority of email address domains aren’t chosen, they come from your ISP, Cell phone/computer OS manufacturer, or employer/school. That’s the opposite of the fedeverse account creation process.
ISP, Cell phone/computer OS manufacturer, or employer/school
What is this? The 90’s?
What UX friction? Lack of Taylor swift on the platform? Delusional.
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Understanding what the Fediverse is. This is time people can use for other things.
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Finding a server that you can reasonably trust and is relatively troll free. This is time people can use for other things.
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The default UI is ugly, and I can’t easily share a Photon UI link with friends from my phone.
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Having the same content appear across multiple servers and there’s no way to just have 1 common thread/linkage to it. Some things start to feel spammy and drown out other items.
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The link sort system has too many options and some are not intuitively named. Yes, I can look at the wiki, but you’re making me look at a wiki.
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NSFW content default on. Not exactly a winning option if you’re trying to get new folks to join.
Understanding what the Fediverse is.
It’s a good thing. Understanding things you use is a good thing. Knowing things is a good thing.
This is time people can use for other things.
They shouldn’t. Understanding what you’re using is the absolute bare minimum and I think it’s absurd to consider this a UX friction, when the same cannot be said for e.g. someone who makes the decision to buy a car or a bike or a plane or a gun or a computer or a phone, all require some skill and some knowledge to operate.
Finding a server that you can reasonably trust and is relatively troll free.
Just like finding a social media of choice today? It also doesn’t really matter, Lemmy instances aren’t Discord “servers”.
The default UI is ugly, and I can’t easily share a Photon UI link with friends from my phone.
What’s wrong with it? I think it looks really cool actually. It’s clean, simple, and the colour scheme and it’s use is great. I’ve honestly no idea what “photon UI” is. After I signed up, I only browse Lemmy on my phone via Jerboa.
Having the same content appear across multiple servers and there’s no way to just have 1 common thread/linkage to it. Some things start to feel spammy and drown out other items.
That’s an issue of sorting and subscribing. Unsub to duplicate communities and change filter to something like “Scaled”.
The link sort system has too many options and some are not intuitively named. Yes, I can look at the wiki, but you’re making me look at a wiki.
Huh? Do you mean the sort in the feed? If so it’s all fairly intuitive. I’ve not heard anyone say otherwise until now either so I think this is just a personal issue.
NSFW content default on. Not exactly a winning option if you’re trying to get new folks to join.
I’ve not seen any NSFW comment on Lemmy period. I think if you don’t seek it out it’s not there. On the other hand - I think previously NSFW content was actually a large pull to sites like Twitter and Instagram, and lack thereof caused an exodus of users from sites like Tumblr. I’ve also anecdotally heard from some IRL friends’ (men especially) that they got into Reddit as a porn site, then branched out to become more active users overall, so this may be less of a hurdle than it first appears.
It’s a good thing. Understanding things you use is a good thing. Knowing things is a good thing.
Totally, but why should someone learn this thing over all the other things they can learn with their limited time in the day? Everyone has different priorities in life, and I’d expect this would rank very low for many people.
I think it’s absurd to consider this a UX friction
It sounds like you haven’t had much exposure with respect to UX design (which is understandable, it’s still a growing field). A key thing to consider is knowing your target user base. If Lemmy is meant exclusively for those that are fans of FOSS or are in the IT field, then it’s probably doing ok. If Lemmy is meant to be something for anyone to use, then it’s got a long way to go to meet the needs of the general population. What is considered simple or easy to understand for an engineer can be interpreted extremely differently by the target user. To get the right approach, options need testing and evaluation, and the design engineers need understanding and humility when they go back to the drawing board.
Just like finding a social media of choice today? It also doesn’t really matter, Lemmy instances aren’t Discord “servers”.
People gravitate towards the social media their friends and family are on. The corporate sites make it very simple. 1 corporation, 1 server, an email, a password, and you’re good to go.
What’s wrong with it? I think it looks really cool actually. It’s clean, simple, and the colour scheme and it’s use is great. I’ve honestly no idea what “photon UI” is. After I signed up, I only browse Lemmy on my phone via Jerboa.
The base browser UI feels dated and maybe a step up from a wireframe design. I’m on Lemmy.world, so they offer a view different variants that look like a modern UI (like Photon and Alexandrite). It’s nice because they’re available on desktop and mobile browsers, but they don’t always work, My friends don’t use Lemmy, so I generally just send the base link from my Lemmy app of choice. They’ve learned to deal with it, but I doubt they’ll be joining the Fediverse anytime soon.
That’s an issue of sorting and subscribing. Unsub to duplicate communities and change filter to something like “Scaled”.
This is UX friction. Why should someone need to set this up to get rid of duplication. If everyone is sharing the same article, then why shouldn’t there be away to just see it once automatically? Why can’t they see all comments from all federated instances in a single common link? Why do they have to do all this extra work just to get a simplified feed?
If so it’s all fairly intuitive. I’ve not heard anyone say otherwise until now either so I think this is just a personal issue.
Again, this is a UX design issue. What works from your perspective or sample size of users may not reflect the larger target audience.
I’ve not seen any NSFW comment on Lemmy period.
Your instance may not be federated with instances like Lemmynsfw. By default NSFW content is shown on Lemmy.world (at least if you’re logged in). Yes, you are able to filter it out, but it’s something you need to do yourself. I’m not saying having the content is bad, but it should be hidden by default from people’s feeds.
What works from your perspective or sample size of users may not reflect the larger target audience.
The inverse is also true, and what you’re saying is indicative of a personal issue on your behalf as stated.
learn this thing over all the other things they can learn with their limited time in the day?
Because they want to use it? What?
It sounds like you haven’t had much exposure with respect to UX design (which is understandable, it’s still a growing field).
I’ve taken UI design and UX classes at uni like probably most people here, thank you very much Mr. Expert man and we all know what a fucking target audience is.
What is considered simple or easy to understand for an engineer can be interpreted extremely differently by the target user. To get the right approach, options need testing and evaluation, and the design engineers need understanding and humility when they go back to the drawing board.
Generic statements of no substance. We all know what UX is lol.
The base browser UI feels dated
That’s a totally subjective statement.
maybe a step up from a wireframe design.
Modern
More subjective nonsense. You don’t actually know even a layman’s basic gist of UX so you could parrot something half-way intelligent, yet you speak on it like an authority.
You want to criticize then give specifics - too many clicks? Too many buttons on any screen? Confusing flow somewhere? Jesus Christ at least watch some breakdowns of UIs online.
This is UX friction. Why should someone need to set this up to get rid of duplication.
This is nonsense. Reposts are just how the internet is and I get duplication on my Instagram feed due to them all the same.
then why shouldn’t there be away to just see it once automatically
Because there isn’t anywhere else either. Have you even ever used social media?
You just seethe and seethe because you can’t read or are choosing to respond to a strawman of some Ignoramus you conjured in your head when the plain naked truth is you are wrong and you can’t accept that.
People gravitate towards the social media their friends and family are on.
Which has nothing to do with
The corporate sites make it very simple. 1 corporation, 1 server, an email, a password, and you’re good to go.
That’s just a non-sequitur from the family/friends thing. Plus having the email already makes it 2 servers, 2 corporations etc.
Your instance may not be federated with instances like Lemmynsfw
Yes it is but you have to browse those instances and sub to them to get it in your feed.
You wrote a lot of words but said absolutely nill, it is the very antithesis of meaning and sense, worthy of my time only as an impressionist’s abstract portrayal of AI slop. Blocked.
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Existence of snobs.
And yes, lack of recognizable people on the platform. Why tf should I follow some randos?
Bluesky has Susie Dent😍
“following people”, including whoever “Susie Dent” is, is fundamentally an incompatible concept with a forum structure of Lemmy or the “thousand niche spaces” culture of Mastodon.
I would go one step further and say all celebrity culture is fundamentally incompatible with decentralisation of power as a principle when put into practice architecturally and ideologically
No u
It wasn’t an insult.
Is u
Tech enthusiasts vastly overestimate how much hassle people are willing to put up with in order to do something, and this is a classic example.
Seriously the number of people on here complaining about Windows bloat. I’m not even 100% sure what the hell that’s supposed to mean. I’m a normie and my windows runs fine.
Edit:spelling
And no matter how many times FOSS developers are shown that real people don’t care about products with shitty UX, they won’t put time in making their product accessible.
See how that goes?
Wanna fix federated platforms? Make the backend dumb and the frontend smart. No one that has a life wants to learn about instances and all that bullshit, decentralize the storage and let anyone create a frontend where people can connect and check the content, one credential to access everything, defederation doesn’t affect the users, no admins just moderators.
Apply that to Linux now.
posted from my thinkpad running Arch
btw
posted from my thinkpad running
ArchMint
ಠ_ಠ
(I use fedora btw)
Challenge level: impossible
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except. EXCEPT! i came here to get away from the other places. every other post is about reddit, bluesky, or fucking twitter. holy fuck.
linux is actually dope. i used debian btw
Lemmy’s become the place to talk about other places.
They would have come to Lemmy if it was the platform they wanted. We can bitch and moan about them wanting something that we think is against their best interests, but what’ll that do?
They would have turned around and went back to Reddit after realizing they signed up to an instance where the admin decided the users can’t check the content from certain instances.
I’m making fun of them the same way I’m making fun of Trump voters. They don’t like me pointing out that they’re going to get what they chose.
“But it’s my right to be ignorant and not have to learn about the issues!” -Bluesky users and Trump voters, somehow.
Are we
therefederated yet?Nice one!
Any social platform, from fb, to reddit and youtube worth only as much as the number of people using it. Less people = less creative mind = less potential friend = less incentive to come use the same platform = less public for creative mind. So social media can only work as a monopoly or quasi. Or it is of no one interest to come on it, if all your friend/favorite creator, are on the other platform.
Ergo, you have to do some proselytism so everyone join the platform you’re using. That being said: did you create your account on bluesky?
I currently don’t have a BlueSky account. Might do, but I’m not so sure. I don’t have a reason to yet.
For me, there is far more content available if I want to doom scroll, especially about a particular topic.
For the most part yes, but not always and also once it gets too big you lose those same creative minds to the sea of trash and mediocrity
Well that’s not true at all. I don’t think most of us are going on social media to communicate with billions of people. If we can communicate with tens of thousands of people, or perhaps less than that, but those are high quality communications, that’s good enough for many or most of us.
Which is to say, quality of other users, quantity of users, and quality of service are all important when trying to evaluate the overall quality of any social media provider.
Of course your goal could be different if all you want is exposure. If you want to advertise, then large numbers of users might be your priority. But most of us are not doing that.
If none of your family /friend are on facebook, you wont use it. If you cant find like minded people on Lemmy, you wont use it.
Less people mean on average you have less chance to have your friend/family there, or like minded people or ‘quality’ people. Just on average.
We can argue that some platform get all the good people, but I think that is mostly a false belief
I use Arch btw
A Slackware user and Gentoo user sitting at the bar both grunt and turn back around
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I feel the same way about linux. Every post remotely related to tech brings on the linux bro trying to convert you to their religion of linux
I used to be mad about Linux for the same reason. In more recent times I have a different feeling, but I can’t deny how annoying they can be.
I’ve just made peace with it tbh
And don’t complain about BS to get content, and then post it here, ofc
I don’t get it, could you explain?
Probably mean the weird double standard where a big portion of the content on lemmy is bluesky screenshots and no one complains about them, but somehow whenever you mention bluesky as an alternative to twitter people will completely ignore the features that make it more popular than mastodon and demonise it to make it sound as bad as twitter.
Thanks 😁😅
Structurally it is worse than twitter as it decentralizes the cost of running it but centralizes the profits. Content and moderation wise, sure it’s better than twitter…for now. IMO twitter was a shithole long before Musk bought it. He just made it worse.
You got the correct answer from the complicated pseudo 😅
That goes for everyones screeching about Facebook, x, ig, TikTok, etc right? Right?
Feels like something musky would say
No, musky would strawman the entire fediverse and slippery slope BSky, or some baby reaction like that.
Should have had the Mastedon logo on Shrek’s head
Is it Elon?
charge a sub for ‘special’ instances. take credit cards. extra emojis
Now at 22.3 million users.
