If email were invented today people would complain about how complex and annoying it is to sign up.
In college I had to write a program to send emails. This was around 2012. Basically we had to send the low level commands of an email for it to go through. After doing this I realized something weird. The email gets to say who it is from. There are obviously ways to sign the message and verify it and most email servers block messages that don’t have these because of how trivial it is to fake. It’s basically like putting a name tag on that says “Joe Biden” and everyone believing you’re the president.
I didn’t do anything malicious but I did mildly prank my girlfriend. I don’t remember what I did but I’m pretty sure I told her before I did it. I really didn’t want to end up getting expelled for “”“hacking”“” so I didn’t do anything remotely bad. The irony is the assignment wouldn’t have worked and been as interesting if my campus had the proper security measures to block the messages.
It could be that the web client for our email mentioned something about the sender being unverified and not to trust it but I don’t remember.
Basically we had to send the low level commands of an email for it to go through. After doing this I realized something weird. The email gets to say who it is from.
I remember realizing this and thinking it was weird too when I was reading about SMTP. Specifically, the MAIL FROM command.
Also related.
Spoofing email is hilariously easy. GPG signing really needs to be made easier
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They probably tried to get back to you but used an internal we form that filled the from header with their email address. 💀
When I was in schoola classmate set up an instance that is designed for hacking. But another classmate took it in another direction. Instead of following the clues to the answer (it’s a game) they instead hacked the instance and created a folder bomb but named the folders with the Mongolian space separator character. So removing them because a task. No body got upset because well… Hacking can be fun!
Second: hacking is the term used when you break into something to make it better.
Cracking is the term used when you break into things for malicious intent
Most orgs have an internal SMTP server that will accept and send mail to other internal addresses without any special authentication or validation. It’s almost essential for automatic monitoring software and that sort of thing.
Where the barriers go up is at the border to the Internet. And thank goodness, just a couple decades ago it was sheer chaos.
I was on the school network, so maybe they accept ones from within and reject ones from outside.
GPG let’s you choose a email too. I always use fucktrump@whitehouse.gov as my email when generating GPG keys for dark net markets
Using your email address as username is a common problem for a lot of users.
Some of them are even completely shocked that they can use a different password and don’t understand, that their mail is just their login credentials for this specific site.
The feature “login with Apple/Google/Facebook” exists for a reason.
When it was invented, it was complex and annoying, even by today’s standards.
Email has always been awful
I flirted with journalism before getting my degree in CS.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the faculty and many of the students were almost proudly “bad at math” and basically bad with tech too, other than learning the basics of a Macbook.
Doesn’t have to be that way and many journalists are smart, great people, but there’s a weird self fulfilling culture when it comes to tech. Not totally sure about how tech focused writers would be similar or different.
Edit: Just googling “journalists bad at math” and got this from the Columbia Journalism Review:
“In many cases, they got into journalism to stay away from math.” Journalists love to joke about how we suck at math.
Edit 2: I guess I was bringing up my experience to be an example of how many journalists do not have a strong grasp of technical concepts and sometimes are almost proud of that. So it doesn’t surprise me that many may have struggled with Mastodon.
That being said, that attitude is far closer to the average user than, say, the user base of this platform, which is likely far more tech savvy. Streamlined user experience is not a bad thing if you desire mainstream use and is something that could be improved, though Mastodon has been making strides in that regard.
It’s interesting to me how often “math skills” are conflated with “the ability to understand technology.” Like I’m passionate about HCI/social computing research, comfortable navigating the Fediverse, jailbroke my iPod as a teen, modded Civilization (DOS) as a kid — I’m also “just okay” at math lol, didn’t even take Calculus in HS. I wonder how many people (like the journalists you describe) feel discouraged from exploring technologies because of the false “math skill = tech skill” narrative, even if plenty of people who suck at math excel at understanding technologies!
(I also wonder how many people who “suck at math” don’t actually suck at math but weren’t given a good math education during school — but that’s a rant for another thread 😂)
One of those computer people that family/friends bug to do all their computer stuff here. Been the designated technology fixer person since the 90s. I’m absolutely atrocious at maths (funnily enough, given a terrible education for it in school).
I’m a software engineer of 10 years. I’ve had a few roles during that time. Sr Engineer. Architect. Director of Engineering. Not only have I almost never used any math every time I did I copy pasted the algo to use from stack overflow or similar tech blogs. I did terrible at math in HS, never took calc struggled with trig and graduated HS with a 2.7 gpa and never went to college. Who the fuck started this meme of programming === math. The only thing close to math in programming I’ve done is when I learned the basics of lambda calculus when I was flirting with learning functional programming
it’s because computer science is essentially a branch of math. it’s just that you don’t actually need to understand computer science to use a computer
If you can write and have technical know-how, technical writing pays more than journalism.
I suck at math too. But isn’t the work of a journalist to at least double check? Calculators exist for a reason.
As someone who worked in IT support at a university and later as a sys admin: I believe MOST people (including young people) can not use the internet or a computer when it goes beyond installing and using a (popular) app from the App Store.
Many people can not, for example, look up a program via search engine, go to its website, find and click the correct download link and then install the program. Many people don’t even use websites anymore, they only use applications.
Their voices are missing online simply because they are basically tech illiterate. And I think that is a huge problem.
I’m sure it’s not lack of technical skill it’s a mental block, I’ve helped so many people set up software that is literally clicking ok a dozen times then they’re like ‘oh let me print this, hang on I need to compile a firmware update and flash it using a telegraph key…’ big brands have the shittiest software, but people feel they should be able to understand because it’s professional but something like an open source federated social network is nerd stuff so they feel the the shouldn’t be able to.
Case in point, I installed MPV on a friends laptop because VLC wouldn’t play the file without crashing, the install process is super simple but they have green on black hacker terminal output instead of a process bar and you type Y when prompted instead of clicking yes – it gave her anxiety just watching me do it, said maybe we should try uninstalling VLC and reinstalling instead… Of course mpv played the video flawlessly and used less CPU and ram doing so which warmed her to it. There’s no way she couldn’t have understood everything and done it herself but the fact it’s not as corporate as VLC would have written it off (and wow that’s a crazy thing to say, I love that there’s so much great open source software that VLC is middle of the road)
Definitely, some people have some weird kind of anxiety when it comes to this. I think in many cases they believe they aren’t intelligent enough to get it and that only really intelligent people can understand these things.
It is the same in math. It has this aura of being super out there. And, let’s be honest, it seems like some people in tech fields try to uphold that notion.
Their voices are missing online simply because they are basically tech illiterate. And I think that is a huge problem.
I’ve seen a number of polls on the age demographics on the fediverse, and they’ve all been pretty consistent … the fediverse is basically on average a Xennial place with a surprising amount of Boomer. There are younger folks, of course, more so on lemmy/kbin than mastodon it seems (which is interesting).
But generally, in line with your comment, there’s a generational filter here that attracts those who remember the value of and how to use the old internet and old computers.
Which, if you think there’s value in what the fediverse is trying to do (free our expression and ownership on the internet), is a problem. Another way of looking at it is that the failure of allowing big-private-monopoly-social platforms to dominate for so long1 will have long lasting side effects including the erasure of what the internet can be in many people’s understanding of the world.
[1]: I’d estimate 2008-2023 as the era of dominant big social, where the closing year of 2023 may be too early or even open ended. That’s 14 years. Which, if we take the web as having started in 1993, and being ~30 years old, is about half the age of the internet. So, it’s a decently objective approximation, then, to say that the web is Facebook etc, especially as the relevance of older things fades. Which only amplifies the harm we allowed to transpire.
Also … check it out … lemmy can do footnotes!! Click the
view sourcebutton to see how I did it if you’re interested.I don’t talk about age, though? As I mentioned in my post being tech illiterate is not necessarily a question of your age group.
Yes. Sorry if it seems I was distorting your message. I was just trying to draw a connection between different kinds of tech literacy and familiarity and how that might track with the demographics here and the history of mainstream tech.
Maybe a stretch, but also maybe I have a point.
No I do think you absolutely have a point!
That more young people than you would expect are missing from places like Lemmy I blame mostly on smartphones and tablets.
Over the last decades the numbers of students who own PCs/Laptops have dropped. When I first worked as a lecture assistant for computational statistics that was around 2011 almost every student had a PC or laptop and knew how to use it (to a different extent between them, of course).
The course is once a year, has about 90 students each time and, since it’s about statistics, there is a mix of students from different fields. Most are from STEM fields, a few from social science or psychology. I could basically watch tech literacy deteriorate over the years.
This years course had only a third of people in it who actually use a PC/Mac outside of the course. There was not a single person who uses Linux this year. For the university’s lecture platform or for online lectures they use their phone, tablet or a tablet computer which runs Android or iOS.
78 % of them did never write a line of code in their lifes, or so they say. The ones who did say they have programming experience often only had one of these “Learning to Code” Apps on their phones.
Most of them need extensive instruction and hand holding to install the programs we use (which is R and RStudio). You do not want to imagine how it is to teach these students basic coding in R. It is both my biggest joy and my biggest sorrow. The stories I could tell…
I highly doubt many of these students would find their way to the Fediverse. They do not think about privacy or freedom online because they are disconnected from the online world, in a way. They are simply consumers who do not feel as a part of it.
Reminds me of one time I was running a course in how to user git for uni students. Setting people up at the beginning, getting them just to install GitHub desktop, and someone puts their hand up having trouble installing the app. I get to them and see an iPad in the desk. Sighs, I explain that’s not going to work (maybe it does now?). They don’t understand why, because they can install so many other apps. I convinced them eventually. Not that I blame them, but it was interesting to see the user friendliness of a device basically block them from doing things and even understanding how that was happening.
For many with laptops, the course often became a gateway to the terminal and not finding it scary any more.
Also, thanks for your response!
Given the number of people I’ve had to walk through downloading my store’s loyalty program app and set up their accounts, I’d believe it.
I had students (at university!) who, instead of starting the program, would either go through the whole process of downloading and installing the program or at least start the installer and installing it again each time they wanted to start the program.
i couldnt count how many times my younger brother has asked me to delete files for him
My brother is a grown-up with a degree in finance and his own company and he also isn’t able to do this.
He also refuses to understand that the photos he took with his phone are actual files on his phone. When he got a new phone and transferred his phone number he didn’t understand why the photos didn’t magically appear on the new phones camera app as well. (I think he was confused because he also uses Google Drive.)
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Microsoft tried, they have the Windows Store and certain programs push you to use it, but UWP is an absolute disaster both from a user and a developer perspective so nobody wants that.
Microsoft took a good idea (software repositories) and turned it into a bad idea (software repository controlled by microsoft and you’re not allowed to add/install/validate other repositories).
They could have built (hell, even USED) apt, but they built Store.
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To be fair, if you want content on Mastodon, you have to actively go out, find people, and follow them. After you get past that Step 1 of signing up, your home page is empty. There’s no algorithm that automatically deposits content on the main page. You have to do a little bit of work to get anything. As you say, doing this work is not that god damn hard, but sadly for about 80% of people (maybe more), this is an impassible barrier.
On the bright side, once you do get past this barrier, none of the Mastodon content that you are getting is from that bottom eighty percent.
Also the first barrier of picking a server (how it works, the rules of every instance, checking who they federate with) and an app (the will to test multiple apps, learning that to login you have to input the server url manually since most aren’t listed in the apps), to the people who read all the things it’s tedious but doable, for the rest it’s “Which one is the RIGHT choice?” and just stay at the door.
Also servers with poorly written rules don’t help (example: mstdn.mx says porn and politics are forbidden, but in reality they allow them as long as you tag then properly).
These kind of posts don’t help either, because it makes people feel like they are too stupid to join and rather stick to the known services, but omit all the actual process that someone has to go through.
to the people who read all the things it’s tedious but doable, for the rest it’s “Which one is the RIGHT choice?” and just stay at the door
Exactly. I’m a programmer and I do server administration on a small scale, but when I went to sign up for Mastodon my first reaction was, “How the hell am I supposed to know what instance I want my account to be on?” and I left. After a couple of weeks of absorbing random bits of information about how federation works I went back and completed the account creation process, but I really doubt that the average user who just wants to sign up for a service and use it is going to get past that step.
Apps need to automatically assign users randomly to one of the non-controversial general instances, and letting them change it if they want.
Lemmy and other fediverse clients need to do this too imo
I agree. The information should be easily available if they are interested, but end users shouldn’t be required to know about the underlying mechanics of the fediverse simply in order to create an account and browse.
Great thing about lemmy and most of the apps being open source is we users can add those features in ourselves. I’m sure they will be later, the fediverse is only now starting to grow after all.
I really don’t understand what’s so difficult about picking an instance you like. Find an instance- Like the content? Rules look okay to you? Boom, done.
the will to test multiple apps, learning that to login you have to input the server url manually since most aren’t listed in the apps
I don’t get why everything needs to be an app. Mastodon’s (and Lemmy’s) web UI works perfectly well in a mobile browser.
I find it hilarious to watch people struggling with doing things on their phone… while sitting in front of their desktop computer. My phone is for taking calls, sending texts, and playing solitaire. Anything else can wait until I have a real screen available to read it on.
I think the trickiest part is finding people on other instances and needing to copy/paste their links in your home instance’s search bar before you can follow or reblog, especially if you’re following a link someone’s shared elsewhere. It’s a small nuisance, but it adds up over time, and it’s already more work than most social media consumers want to bother with. For Mastodon to truly take off, that needs to be automated or hidden, because most people are going to give up before they even get an explanation.
@seansand @vis4valentine Yeap first thing they do is say test or hello… And nothing. Then they wonder why there is no one, or why only 1 tab with news especially non English speakers are dumbfounded. I just look at live feed if in mood> see someone asking for help or test> explain # and how important to use them to find people or be found qnd how only # works in search bar. I don’t blame them because not every top boosted post has # but a little proding, use # local language and voilà progress
It’s not that bad though, lemmy is worse but at least with relays misskey and Mastadon etc are easier to aggregate a starting list of content
There are some ways to see some trending stuff but yes, it is slightly hidden away and still very different from the algorithmic recommendations we’ve become accustomed to.
It’s pretty obvious 99% of users bounce off the signup page. People who think otherwise simply are too disconnected from normie reality
Here is what happens
Let’s join this thing
I have to choose a server ? Ok which one ?
Wow that’s so many, is this important or cani pick at random ?
If you pick wrong, everything you write could be deleted or never seen by anyone.
Ok, well I better choose properly
Read server rules pages for 2-3 minutes
There’s a distraction
Later, joins threads
I wouldn’t even go that far to be honest.
server
“wtf is this”?
“I never had to pick a server for twitter!! What are they doing wrong? This is too much, I’m off”
And those who don’t, bounce off the fact that it’s not intuitive to follow someone from their user page.
Mastodon is not as complicated as it is sometimes made out to be, but it’a disingenuous to pretend that it’s simple, either.
there should be a service that redirects registrations to random servers from the “trusted” list.
Like nextcloud’s signup page.Yes, in a world where migration is seamless and preserves your reputation and relationships on the network.
Yep … agreed all round.
While decentralisation has advantages, the fediverse will probably have to learn the hard way that from a user perspective, without a layer on top that polishes the UX experience, it’s a net negative unless you’re a nerd and interested in it for its own sake. It’s a classic case of tech people making something that works for them and not for others.
The parts of the fediverse that are truly valuable IMO …
- FOSS platforms,
- diversity and experimentation of platforms and UXs and communities (all of which feed on each other IMO)
- Freedom for the user to chose and create spaces and interfaces in the ecosystem, which again comes from the above, but is something the fediverse is struggling with. Overall the user is a second class citizen on the fediverse and there is insufficient glue between the pieces for them to come together as a cohesive whole for the user.
And it wouldn’t have been a problem at all if accounts, their history, content, identity, relationships and reputation were seamlessly migrateable between instance. Whatever happens, you could just migrate to your own personnal instance.
But right now, while you can copy your old bulk text, you basically lose everything from what little of a migration you could even do.
All relationships are lost and you start back at square one. And that’s what makes choosing the right server important and that’s what bounces people right off mastodon and lemmy.
And it also drives re-centralization because one way to side step the problem is “just join the biggest instance”
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Pretty much how it has been for me for both lemmy and mastodon. I think I went to the sign up page for mastodon several times in the days that it was blowing up, and I just didn’t know what server to pick, and even when was at the point of “I will just join one” I still had issues picking one because a lot of the site names sounded untrustworthy, or like specializing in a community I am not really part of. Like the one I ended up on gave me vibes of being for people into astrophysics.
I am also not sure if people would read the rules pages, but more skim them for keypoints in maybe 30 seconds. Think went that route with lemmy that I skimmed the rule of a potential instance and saw the rules and went “nope, not for me” and was back to step 1. Though this time I was more familiar with the rodeo and have made more users on more instances
You forgot the step where you write three paragraphs explaining why you want a server account and get denied because you didn’t supply sufficient detail for them to approve your application.
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To prevent spammers ? Yes To prevent grandma ? No
Depends on whose grandma. My own nice sweet grandma returned to life for some reason? Sure! Somebody’s deranged racist grandma who used to bring casseroles to the local neofascist meeting? No thanks!
Every Reddit and Twitter user over the last few months: “OMG The Fediverse is so hard and complicated how can people figure this out!!!11eleven”
My brother(s) in data: It takes like 5 minutes to understand how it works and you’re good to go (maybe 10 if you were the paint-chip-or-glue-eating-type back in school.)
I feel like yall are also overestimating the tech comprehension of a lot of the younger generation. Every action has been so simplified some young teenagers are as tech illiterate as some of their grandparents. If its not inmediately obvious or requires a workaround, they just give up.
Yeah, especially when you imagine that they are accustomed to not having to seek out knowledge or even entertainment. When algorithms feed you everything and your attention becomes a commodity you don’t need to develop the skill to actually find it, or the wherewithal to even imagine that you need to go out and find it.
I believe those of us who were online in the 1995-2010 era remember what it was like to have an internet full of possibilities that you could explore and discover, but that was the exception.
I hate to be the guy to say it, but its a genuine lack of curiosity about “how things work.”
Because all they’re growing up with is dumbed down corporate black boxes of tech devices, along with a narrative that it’s wrong and evil to build, fix, copy, and be curious
Literally just referenced this elsewhere to make the exact same point.
Corporations make things easy so when you have to learn how to do it on your own, you’ll see that the cost of time/money/effort as too great and go back to the simple, effective, easy, low-cost corporate solution.
In many ways, it’s not really their fault, it’s driven by corporate control. Of course, it would be nice if they could break free and see that learning how things work is a useful means to an end (fuck, it’s why I know how to sew and have clothes that have lasted over a decade), but you can’t win over everybody.
I disagree, I have a 9 yr old son and he’s all about how everything works. I think the problem is that it’s too easy, for most of his questions it takes literally a minute to find a youtube video that explains nearly any concept. I certainly don’t mean to belittle that but he’ll have some question like “how can a cluster of satellites observe the entire planet” and he can have that question answered in seconds, and be force-fed ten more youtube videos on more of the same.
When I was his age (would have been 1989) that’d be a very difficult question for me to answer. Even though that problem had been solved for hundreds of years, I’d have probably needed to start with an encyclopedia and try to find enough about orbits to dig more. My dad knew a bit about space, maybe he’d have been able to point me in the right direction, but there was never an easy video to answer that.
There’s an ability to access knowledge like there never has been before, the breadth and depth of knowledge on the internet is something we could only have dreamed of 30 years ago. The dream was that this equitable access to information would create a more informed and more inquisitive society, but somehow it’s just made us lazy.
I’d like to see my kid realize there’s not an easy youtube answer and actually go do more digging and synthesize an answer. I think he’s well-placed to develop that skill but it’s not something most people posess.
I think the problem that comes with that is overstimulation and a lack of boredom. In my experience kids (and perhaps adults as well) learn best if they have to learn in their own speed. Having everything spoon fed to you, especially when it’s an overwhelming amount of information, can get too much and people shut down.
Maybe it’s conspiracy theory territory, but I sincerely believe that the combination of overstimulation, decision fatigue and FOMO by the thousands of entertainment and information sources really doesn’t work well with human brains. I don’t think that people have become more lazy, it’s a form of mental overload.
That’s very true too. I like the way Matthew Crawford talks about the Attention Economy and how we’re essentially selling our attention to websites in return for “free” content.
I also think there’s a real difference between actively sourcing information and mindlessly consuming it. Going to Netflix to specifically watch Black Mirror or Orange is the New Black is substantively different from opening Netflix and letting the algorithm suck away a few hours of your evening. Youtube tutorials are amazing and I’ve used them for all kinds of home, work and personal projects but it’s also very easy to watch a bunch and feel like you know how to do something. I expect watching a really satisfying video of someone hand-cutting a dovetail joint between two pieces of wood releases a good chunk of the dopamine of actually doing it yourself, but it’s not the same… not at all.
I don’t think you necessarily disagree as much as not seeing your own child as the outlier they are. When you surround yourself with others who are willing to do bare minimum amounts of research to find an answer, it’s easier to act like it isn’t a problem.
Yet, I live in a country where massive amounts of people are rejecting things that are insanely simply to research and to prove like the efficacy of vaccines, for instance, or whether Donald Trump is a grifting buffoon. These people have no interest whatsoever in doing research that will undermine what they’ve already chosen to believe. Motherfucker we have flat earthers out here building rockets to “prove” the earth is flat. Even some of the ones who do research, like the flat earthers, just move the goalposts and don’t seem to learn when science proves them wrong.
The sad reality is that if there are simple answers in front of them, most people won’t look for harder ones. I simply think your child is an outlier in being willing to do any amount of research on things they are interested in. For many people it’s incredibly hard to get them to even consider doing such a thing.
I come across this a fair bit. What it seems to be, is a complete lack of critical thinking.
Once an end user hits any type of wall, they just freak out and ask the helpdesk.
You can really tell who uses technology, and who grew up with technology. There does seem to be a broadening gap.
I don’t think they’re tech-illiterate in general; there are certain things they don’t understand because they’ve never really had to - filesystems, for instance - but that’s no different from most Millennials not understanding CLIs.
I’ve seen that a lot at work. If there isn’t a YouTube video going over what they need to do, they are lost. They seem to get scared at basic debugging of output.
“they just give up” - I mean, sounds like a them problem?
Overestimating the tech comprehension of a lot of the younger generation
An apt article that goes right along with what you’re saying: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
Lots of bots on both of those sites….
Anyone who claims the Fediverse is hard… just ask them if they use email. Is that hard?
I know it’s hard for tech literate people to understand but choosing a server is daunting. Most people chose their email because it was linked to a service they were already familiar with like Google and Microsoft. There’s no familiarity with the Lemmy or mastodon instances and there are so many of them that people who already have trouble learning new technologies get to deal with decision fatigue on top of that. People like what is familiar and having a service that mostly works the same is still very confusing for them.
That’s what bothers me about these sorts of threads. We represent a completely self-selected group of people who have not just managed to create accounts on the Fediverse, but then decided to stick around.
Of course we think it’s simple.
We do not represent “typical users” (whatever that means) of mainstream platforms, and yes, Mastodon, Lemmy etc. have a lot of work ahead of them to make themselves appealing to those users.
It doesn’t really help to talk about how simple the Fediverse is, or to shame people who find it confusing. The only thing that will actually help take it mainstream is UX work to remove the friction and make it as simple to use as we claim it is.
I agree that UX work is important but the current state that mastodon UX is in is ready for the masses. It is simple. It will just take some time for people to wrap their heads around it, just like it took time for people to adopt email, facebook, twitter, etc. UX friction isn’t the reason your grandma isn’t using mastodon right now. These things don’t happen overnight.
If users need to “take some time […] to wrap their heads around it”, the UX is not ready for mass adoption. It’s that simple.
I consider myself relatively savvy in this area, and I still regularly run into walls with random federation-related issues.
It’s not that simple. Twitter and email are both just as complicated yet they enjoy mass adoption. You and I run into walls because we’re not accustomed to it. When you were new to other tech I’m sure you ran into similar walls.
This meme has to die. Federated services are not some black magic.
I would have replied to this earlier, but my Lemmy instance was unexpectedly down…
Federated services are cool. They’re not black magic, but they have their own issues that still need to be handled better for there to be mass adoption.
Every day, though, these federated platforms are being developed. Different users have different thresholds for what they’re willing to put up with, and slowly but surely, more and more people are going to be within the expanding bubble of acceptability.
I am tech literate and even for me the choice of “which instance to register on” delayed my Lemmy sign up for 2 weeks. I eventually just signed up on 3 of them but now I have 3 different accounts each with their own set of subscriptions and favorites.
Aside from that, the Lemmy UI is a usability disaster and needs an overhaul. I’ve been thinking of giving that a try but I already have other projects that are taking up all my free time at the moment.
Oh, and then there’s the bugs.
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It doesn’t matter what “instance” you sign up for with email, you’ll get all mail. But just the email for YOU. If you pick federated on Mastodon you get half a billion messages a minute and none of them are for you.
But that’s how twitter works too, so the concept wouldn’t be alien if you’ve used twitter before. I actually was pretty confused by how you’re supposed to use twitter when I first used it (how do you follow a conversation between multiple people, how do you find people in a certain field, etc).
I would argue that mastodon has a huge advantage over either email or twitter since it doesn’t bring any new ideas, it’s just a combination of things that people have been using for a while. It just “fixes” twitter, it shouldn’t have been centralized in the first place.
No, Twitter has an algorithm. As much as people hate them, algorithms are what make social media actually interesting. 99.99% of creators I follow on TikTok (for example) I would have never ever found if all I had was a chronological feed of messages.
@r1veRRR I was on social media both before and after algorithmic curation, and I find it no more interesting now (less if anything). YMMV.
Possibly an extreme take, but have you seen everything you need to see? As in, is there no need for you to discover and learn about new things, concepts, ideas, people? Sure, you can hope that something interesting pops up on your chronological page, but that’s a 1 in a million chance. You might say “just search for that new thing”, but that’s antithetical to discovery. How can I search for something I didn’t know existed? How many movies, games, books would I have missed out on without at least some algorithmic help?
For reference, I was around for the time of the forums too. It’s not the downfall of society to not have algorithmic recommendations, but it absolutely decreases discoverability of new interesting things, and conversely, the dissemination of important ideas. Sure, I knew about communism etc. before I started using TikTok. But only there did the algorithm give me great creators that explained stuff in an understandable way. Only there did I find out about coops, from an actual coop owner(?).
It is kinda hard finding interesting people to follow. Hardly anyone I would have followed on Twitter is on Mastodon.
The fundamental problem there is that. Finding people and following them is one click on twitter, on mastodon it’s a whole busy thing. I can’t stand it
I just read through my feed, and if I find people that look interesting I click the follow button, it’s not like it’s hard, I have a really interesting feed full of cool stuff.
Sure, but I never had that experience. I just read along and then tried to sub to Charles Stross but he was on another instance and then I had to do some convoluted thing which is supposed to make sense - I never found that the thing was transparent and functional. Like I said, Lemmy works because the main thing isn’t following people. The occasional hiccup with instances is not a problem at all. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not really difficult to use mastodon, it just makes my blood boil
If I find someone from another instance in my flow I don’t need to do anything other than click on them and click follow. As long as you search from your instance, and not somewhere externally you can just follow them. Also the process when it’s not your home server it’s just a box where you enter your user name, not really convoluted. So I don’t see what you’re getting so worked up about to be honest.
Sure lemmy is easy in that way, and if you like it more by all means just use it :) Nothing stopping you from that, but you are playing up non issues as “infuriating”
I think the annoying part of this is when you stumble across an interesting account you would like to follow outside of your home instance. You have to copy the username and the instance address, search it from your home instance, and then follow them. Or, login from a popup window and then hit follow. Nothing too complicated or long, but I can see how some people see it as unnecessarily clunky. No idea how it works from mobile though, maybe it’s a little bit more complicated there too
Yeah, sure it’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s not like it’s complex or difficult, that’s what I meant compared to how often I do it it has not been an issue, after you have bootstrapped with a couple of follows, and keep an eye on the local feed it’s pretty easy to get rolling, and then just following interesting people that the people you talk with boost, or people that you enjoy discussing with. I haven’t added someone from a search in years, it’s just a bit of work in the beginning.
Well it seems a whole lot of people are playing issues up - it’s a small thing but it really matters. And I’m just saying what my experience is, no big deal - I prefer this sort of place anyway :) But I think I saw somebody made a browser extension which is supposed to solve the random instance thing, so that it always forces you back to yours or something
@MayonnaiseArch There are extensions which make it easier to interact with remote instances, like Roam With Mastodon. https://fo.llow.social/roam
Nice! This is cool
My Mastodon feed is filled with complete garbage and I’m not even in a small instance. It’s all people talking about what they ate or about subjects I don’t care about, people posting in languages I don’t speak, and bot accounts for small news sites I also don’t care about. It’s very hard to find useful content there.
Sorry if this is a dumb but I legit never got into Twitter, and I only use Instagram to follow friends and bands I like.
How do I Mastadon? I’m not being sarcastic, not even a little. Like I literally have absolutely no concept of what I’m supposed to do on it or how to engage with it. Same with pixelfed tbh, like I open it, I see a milliong posts that have no comments or likes, I get confused and then I leave.
Like what do you do? How do you use it? Pretend I’m one of the idiot journalists this post is making fun of, happy to jump on that self-accepting sword!
Mastodon:
Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.
Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.
PixelFed:
Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.
Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.
To add on this:
“Searching for a subject matter that interests you” in Mastodon/PixelFed is all about hashtags. If you’re interested in science fiction, try #scifi. You would do well to either sign up for an instance relating to your interests (for example a dedicated scifi instance, like what startrek.website is for Lemmy), or a general purpose one (mastodon.social) where you can get a better overview. If you find an instance related to your interests later on, consider moving there.
As you search hashtags, you’ll find interesting people. Follow them. You’ll see some interesting posts. Boost them. Adding a star to a post serves no practical function, but it’ll make the poster happy anyway (it’s the same as upvotes here).
Mastodon is based a lot around boosts - if you see someone boosting a lot of content of the type you’re interested in seeing, make sure to follow them and your feed will be populated by content curated by humans, not algorithms.
You would do well to either sign up for an instance relating to your interests
Is that essential, though? As long as everybody is federated, it shouldn’t matter, except maybe it will take longer to see some posts.
As long as everybody are federated - but they are not. The bigger instances tend to be federated with everyone, but the smaller/more specialized ones might not yet have federated with each other. Of course you can still follow people from anywhere (as long as they’re not actively _de_federated), but searching for hashtags might unfortunately be less powerful for discovery from a smaller server. If you’re on a smaller instance not specific to your interests, you might do particularly well to start out finding accounts to follow through some third party list.
The greatest advantage of being on a specialized instance is, however, in the feeds: The “local” timeline shows you anything posted by anyone on your instance, while the “federated” timeline shows you anything posted by accounts someone on your server follows. On a large, general server both these feeds will be extremely crowded with all kinds of content. On a specialized instance, it’s likely that both timelines will be somewhat interesting, and people might be reading it and discover your posts there as well. :)
It’s just a different way to browse current topics that people are discussing. You can follow famous/not famous people, news people, musicians, artists, scientists and so on. You have to take some time to search by name or a hashtag like #music that is interesting for you and then follow those. They typically lead to more people and hashtags of interest that you can follow to build a more personal feed. It’s just a different way to curate the various things that interest you.
The thing is that it’s just another option for people to interact like lemmy/reddit twitter/mastodon pixelfed/facebook etc. Obviously the less popular options have less niche interests. Journalists see that these options can’t be used the same way, and need some work to figure out and navigate, so they critique the different and less polished things they see. If they don’t have what you are looking for, maybe check back in 3-6 months when there are more users and activities. Like lemmy, things are changing quickly right now.
Removed by mod
They should try navigating Facebook
Facebook is a fucking nightmare for people used to having control over their browsing.
yeah the new Facebooj ui is so fucking confusing.
they don’t even think of their target audience lolIt’s deliberate so they only see content Facebook wants them to see.
Maybe but I know some former facebook people and it’s at least as likely that they’re just retarded
Meanwhile, when you sign up for Threads your timeline is nothing but shitty influencers for the first few days, yet somehow they manage to press on through that without getting the vapors or whatever.
Social media is not social media any more. It’s a one way stream of thinly coated commercials and political propaganda, behind a veil of interaction so that people feel some false sense of agency over the whole thing. In the ideal scenario, everything is perfectly tailored to targeted groups so that the whole experience feels very “engaging”.
When people say the fediverse is hard, what I suspect they mean is that they don’t manage to make it addictive in the same way.
People leaving Twitter are slaves looking for a new master or junkies looking for a new high. Using Mastodon as a Twitter replacement is hard in the same way it’s hard to use commercial-grade glue as a substitute for heroin.
What do you mean that Mastodon promotes the discussion of complete ideas with room for context and citations?
I’m just here to be force fed hyperbole at a rate slightly slower than would pop a blood vessel in my brain.
Can confirm am a Twitter slave trying to use glue to get high and it ain’t working 😔
Hey I find Lemmy and Mastodon addictive enough. Then again I still use mainstream platforms too. Mainly because their are things I want to look at and people I folloe that haven’t or won’t move over.
I don’t use mainstream platforms much (other than direct messaging), and was pretty fine with Mastodon. I’m finding Kbin a bit too addictive though, maybe especially because I never really used Reddit in the first place.
I find it quite funny that so many people came from Twitter, didn’t have content instantly fed to them and were like “what do I do???” you mean I have to find things myself? the horror!
My account never made it through the first few days before they shut it down for community violation.
I never posted, I just want to be ready for if they ever start federating.
Personally I thought first impressions of Mastodon (and Lemmy) were abysmal. Being told to pick a server without knowing what that means or the consequences of that choice just scares people away. Unless someone has a specific server in mind they should not even be asked to pick one. Instead a number of existing servers should volunteer as curated core servers and new users are automatically assigned to one of those. There can still be a “let me choose” link that goes to a full list of servers if they prefer to browse them all
Honestly, how hard is it to understand the ‘multiple websites working together to sync their contents’ part?
Its easy to signup & get started, just have to be awake…
Not everybody uses social media the same way and some people need instant exposure to the community to get a better start. It doesn’t help that these types of posts just make people feel like they’re stupid.
