With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz In USA it is for sure artists and sports, it's a religion basically.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz the biggest barrier to join Mastodon is having more than two functioning neurons.
You know that's becoming rarer and rarer.
Ask yourself if you do really want the hordes of monocellular organisms to flood in? -
For better or worse mastodon has primary influence over what features are "really" a part of the fedi.
I feel they are far too adverse to change and stuck on pleasing existing users, not making the app, more accessible and popular.
There is this *false* idea that being popular is the same thing as being corporately captured, driven by a desire for profits, ads.
There are other good reasons to want your app to be fun and popular. Not esoteric and exclusive.
@futurebird@sauropods.win it still feels like those shouldn't be mutually exclusive. It's likely hard to achieve them at once without enough resources, but if a fedi project ever gets truly big it seems like the type of thing that would actually want to invest in doing this. Have sane easy to use defaults to keep a as a low barrier to entry as possible, but still allow easy tinkering and especially weird fancy features for those who want them.
Granted, building weird stuff on top of a system that was intentionally built with the idea to be very simple is a hard initative. But unlike corporate controlled systems, where each decisions needs to pass through a "is this good for profits through customer capture" filter, decentralized services can choose to add things just because they're cool and people will enjoy them.
@bovaz@misskey.social @aurochs@todon.eu -
@futurebird@sauropods.win @aurochs@todon.eu The analogy I keep falling back to when describing my ideal "social network platform" is a porch.
I choose what gets on my porch. I can see what's on the road over there, and what's on my neighbors porches. Maybe I'm interested in some of that, so I'd like it on my porch as well. But the stuff I definitely don't care about, definitely can't get on my porch without my explicit consent.
I think properly crafted human curation is a big part of that.Right now the people we choose to follow are doing that curation. And it works OK. If you follow enough people. If you weed out your list on the regular.
Most people do not want to do this just to see some social media posts and relax. I think it's a mistake to act like this is unreasonable. And it's a disservice to people posting great content here who are invisible. Why make good content if no one will see it?
I could be easier. It would make this a more welcoming place.
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For one thing, if your app is popular it can be because the UI is easy to use and the design is excellent.
Equally important? You can only build diverse, resilient communities if you can bring a wide range of users together. That cross-pollination between otherwise desperate communities is the magic of social media for me.
I often call the fedi "a nice college town" and it even has an HOA (an HOA that gets huffy and offended if you point out they are acting like an HOA)
@futurebird @bovaz @aurochs I genuinely wonder as well whether Mastodon is necessarily always the best gateway for newbies joining the Fediverse?
For some people, it might be better to point them to Pixelfed.social to get them started. Or if they're moving off TikTok, perhaps even loops.video once it becomes a bit more mature? ( @dansup has done a great job with them IMHO, btw!)
Perhaps Piefed or Lemmy if they want to discuss a particular topic? -
@futurebird@sauropods.win @aurochs@todon.eu that sounds similar to misskey antennas, but those don't really work for me and I don't know why.
@bovaz
I was thinking the same. I thought those were very good when I trialled CalcKey
@aurochs @futurebird -
J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
