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Top-level
 Rather than trying to head off the unusual unpleasantness about clout-chasers and the ritually/technologically impure, I will just say this: I wrote this up for fedi people who are actively curious and interested in other people, and I'm not going to worry too much about how it lands for those who aren't. 171 comments
something I didn't have room for in the post itself is that a non-tiny group of people have had instances blow up on them over the years, leaving them starting over again and again—this is especially destructive for newer folks, who don't always understand what's happening Lastly! I squeaked this post in under a rapidly dropping door—I'm going to be really busy for a day or so and then offline for awhile. If you ask questions after today and don't hear back, that's probably why! Please be cool with each other and don't make me come back to screaming fights in my replies. <3 Re. the second "couldn’t find people or interests" group, I viscerally feel this. I set up an alt-account to indulge in therapeutic socialising around the (big) football (soccer) team I follow. The experience has been excruciatingly difficult in many ways. It's been a job. I'm two week into relentless *work* to drum up even a little consistent sociability. It's been almost zero fun. If I were normal, I'd have given up on day two. Two idea I think would make it easier (cont)... I said "lastly" but then my replies become almost immediately overwhelming. It's great that a lot of people like this/want to argue about it/are thinking about it! But I am just one brain so I'm going to miss a lot of things, apologies.  @kissane this would never happen with one of the established big players like say twitter @kissane Yeah, this. Over the years I have had a couple of instances just disappear, and it has taken a few tries to find an appropriate instance. At this stage I think it works better for me than twitter ever did, but I can see why folks find getting established and sticking round a non straightforward experience. @kissane yep, and this is why I tell friends to avoid servers where the admin is also the sole moderator. Amusingly, I've been accused of being "against" small servers for this stance - thus demonstrating your first point about being yelled at. Anyhow, thanks for putting the work into this. Hopefully seeing it all gathered in one place will result in some self-reflection in certain quarters. Do you think that the ability to transfer an account to a new instance would at least help the "fedugee" problem?  Really appreciated this info. A thought I've been having recently is that perhaps part of what makes people so burned out on politics is the media's tendency to accompany stories with "authoritarian strict father (in the Lakoff sense)" images. As someone who consumes a lot of politics content, since about 2016 my feed has been filled with these images. A feature like Slack's of option to suppressing link previews, and a norm of using it, could help. 1/2 My personal and professional reasons for being on social media are such that CW for politics did almost drive me away. I believe this political *information* needs to be more widely known. But I've recently had the realization that the supporting visuals are a different thing. We don't need to be spreading those. 2/2 @JMMaok This is extremely interesting and something I've literally NEVER seen anyone raise, which is one of the reasons I really value this place. @kissane I really think the whole instance thing is needlessly stressful. Masto makes a big deal about it, but honestly it doesn’t really matter. You can follow people across instances just fine. The only thing that matters from a new user perspective is number of characters per toot and bespoke emojis. Instance picking felt like I had define my identity by one thing. Then it turned out, it doesnt seem to matter, which is exactly what you’d wonder if the instance was well run  @robotmonkeys @kissane yeah, I suspect the most important factor in picking an instance is what they block - pick one that will be safe for you. But they tend to make themselves after communities, giving the impression that's what matters. Who actually checks their instance feed and so on? @kitten_tech @kissane even then, you don’t know, and you certainly don’t know who anyone is when you sign up.  @kitten_tech @robotmonkeys @kissane I’m new to the fediverse. And the 1 thing that is confusing to me is, you say you can follow others and read posts across instances. But how do you find those people? Where do you go to see them or to follow them or to read posts. Something like Instagram or Twitter has an algorithm that shows you things that it thinks you might like. here you have to go looking. @Tekk @kissane same way you find them anywhere else. Look at who gets boosted and people you know and who they follow. My experience is that you need only one or two seeds to create a decent follow list. I say that as someone that managed to import a partial list from Twitter before it was shut down, but honestly I try not to look back, and instead find all new people. @robotmonkeys @kissane that reminds me. By the way, thank you for the info. But that reminds me what does boost and favorite do I’m using the Ice Cubes app. @Tekk @robotmonkeys @kissane I use Icecubes too. Boosting is sharing the toot with everyone who follows you, giving it wider exposure. Favouriting is just letting the toot author know that you liked it. Your followers won’t see it.  @Yup_Its_Holly @Tekk @robotmonkeys @kissane it's not mentioned but worth mentioning: the Local and Federated timelines on an instance of any size should give you a public feed to start off with. Apparently that got hidden by default on some clients which is silly and confusing. @robotmonkeys @Tekk @kissane it is absolutely not the same as anywhere else. The actual process of finding people across instances is unique to the fediverse.  @robotmonkeys I think instance-picking doesn't matter until it does. You've had no problem with the instance you chose (and TBH, Hachyderm looks like a solid choice!), I've had no problem with mine, either, but I've heard stories of plenty of other people who ended up with awkward mods, or on the wrong end of defed drama or whatever. Smaller instances miss more messages, etc. In short, I'd be wary of saying "instance choice doesn't matter" in general, just because it didn't matter for you! :)  @kissane So much of this just feels like folks who would have otherwise gravitated to AOL and never leave AOL discovering the actual internet for the first time 30 years ago. @BalooUriza @kissane yeah as much as we like to opine, the fact is that one piece of software can't and shouldn't be for everyone. That said many of these are basic UX complaints that should be considered, like discoverability and communication. @kissane While being yelled at is not fun and likely needs to be cut down, a lot of these other things subtly point towards key differences in what people want from a social network. I'm noting two big divides. Number 1: a lot of people want to be tracked. They don't say it explicitly, but they're asking for features that only work if the network is doing tracking. Number 2: people want the "right to post", but they really don't want to be partake of the governance required... @kissane Some examples for Number 1. > ...the way it could throw things in front of me that I never would have even thought to go look for on my own That's tracking. > Discoverability/self promo is limited Tracking > Quote-replies ... is how I decide are important follows. Tracking Likewise, Number 2 pops up a variety of places. But note how not a single quote includes lines like "I helped fund my instance but disagreed with the board of governors" ... @kissane ... sadly, some instances of Number 2 were actually just misrepresented. > I was told picking a server didn’t matter... migrating is easy Of course it matters. > I’ve set up 4 accounts, each on a different server, and don’t know how to amalgamate all the people As above. Like why would you want to amalgamate all of the people? Unless you had some misinformation at the start that made this seem like a good idea. > the federation model is a mess and it’s impossible to use ... @kissane ... yes, the federation model is messy. It's trying to replicate human social structures, it's going to be messy. > discovered I was on some kind of different continent from my friends, and could not follow them, nor they Immediately felt frustration and disgust and never looked back But you didn't move to the new continent to be with your friends? To me, Mastodon participation is citizenship, not "userdom". A lot of the quotes belie that people don't want citizenship?   @kissane Maybe try speaking more for yourself, as I find NONE of the things you mention stressful about this place, and definitely DON'T want an algorithm showing me posts it calculates are in my interest, since 99% of the time, it will be wrong. Instance picking is a literal 5-minute issue that disappears as soon as you pick an instance, which is not difficult to do. And since most of the rules AREN'T RULES, they're opinions, you can ignore those just as easily as anything else. @whknott I just read and summarized 500+ replies from other people talking about their experiences. That is literally what the post I linked to is. 🤦🏻 @kissane There still a bunch of us that don't have a problem with anything you mentioned. Think that it might be you for like 10 seconds. More rules are going to mean more #enshittification, especially begging for an algorithm. @kissane 500 people out of ... what? 2 million? I might also think there's some response bias there. Don't act like you're speaking for all of us, because you are definitely not. @kissane I'm not insecure and there's no need to start with name-calling. Users can learn to manage their own timelines and stop trying to dictate experiences for other users. THAT is the biggest problem here. @kissane @rolle But I have to say, I would never be this active on Twitter. The atmosphere there is just too oppressive? (don't know if that's the right term). It feels like that every time you tweet, you have the obligation to provide some value to your followers. You have to either create quality, professional tweets or entirely shitposts and parody. It doesn't feel like microblogging.  @raikas @kissane @rolle Ah yes, I had the jitters crawl my brain for months after leaving Twitter. But it’s now ex-twitter, literally. I like it here. Most for the calm of mind actually. Not feeling like an algorithm is watching your every move is liberating. You stop performing when you get here. And that is great. @kissane This makes sense. I work in software as a product owner specifically around making UI people friendly. I was able to stand up my own instance and threw myself in. However, I want people to join my instance for these very reasons.   - make norms more obvious when signing up Thank you for doing this work. 500 is a lot of data collection and takes quite a bit of time. Loved your tl;dr, too.   @kissane I hope people listen to this because mastodon is currently a pain in the ass and it's obnoxious to have people lecture me about how I both need to work harder at the platform and am a bad person for expecting anything from the community here  |
Gregory's Server
The tl;dr (because TL! it's TL) is that, for this group:
- people feel stressed and anxious when they get yelled at for breaking rules and norms they didn't know about
- it's hard to find people and conversations, and specifically hard to follow people across instances
- people want better organic and algorithmic ways to connect with each other
- instance-picking stresses people out, and a lot of the sign-up and settling-in processes are confusing and/or too much work for unknown returns