With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
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@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes "Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing."
LMAO no. Lies folks dependent on advertising tell themselves. Sigh.
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The young people I know are mostly about phones, multimedia and each other. Less typing, more video, and easy sharing. So TikTok was a good fit.
But when it comes to data privacy and censorship, they are unconcerned lambs to the slaughter. Fedi's #1 selling point is lost on most of them (and US adults too, to be fair).
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take. If anything it's the other way around. Being "about phones, multimedia, and each other" doesn't imply you're a fool about privacy and safety.
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The fedi is slowly becoming a NORC (naturally occurring retirement community)
Only facebook has an older userbase.
And being more old than young that isn't a personal problem. But I wish there was more interest in making it a place younger people would care about. And that would mean listening to them.
@futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs
I think part of the NORC-ness of Fedi is that the Venn diagram of people who've been around long enough to grok the value of privacy, & of people older than N, is a circle.You can bring a GenX to the facts about privacy & freedom from the oligarchy's algorithms, but you can't make them give a $#!+.
Y'know, like horse... water... drink.
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@Wyatt_H_Knott @bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes Um, no. Young people hate ads. Probably more than old ppl do.
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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 big names to follow. It's a shame that I keep seeing threads on Reddit about how social media is so corporate and nobody mentions the true anti-corporate platform.
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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 Some of the earlier issues and complaints have been addressed (like quoting). Discovery is still a big barrier, but being worked on. And one of the big issues is following a link to a mastodon post on the web and not being logged in because it’s not your server. I imagine only browser/extension support could solve that one.
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I think "no ads" is a much more popular selling point than "privacy"
I mean ... even for me, it's the quality of the content and people (the fact that it's lively here) that matters most, after that? It's that there are "no ads"
The privacy is nice, but I don't think many people care about this much, or as much as we should.
@futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs No ads and no bloated JavaScript trackers in order to collect data for more ads (I'm thinking about Reddit which lately started to lag on my M1 MBA).
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@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes I mind them so much that I'd rather pay for a service. Just saying.
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True no ads is great. But that leads to the question of, how do we get a high quality modern-feeling UI without an economy?
Ads are a f'ed up business model IMO. They create political pressure toward cowardice. And the 'marketplace of ideas' is totally corrupted by: marketing.
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs To me Mastodon's UI is snappy and looks modern.
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@Wyatt_H_Knott @bovaz @aurochs @futurebird @Phosphenes Maybe you have examples in mind that disagree, but it sounds like shared culture, not success of advertising. Unless there's some formula that guarantees a toy go viral, attribution to advertising sounds like survivorship bias.
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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
I fear that the changes required to attract the masses to Mastodon would ruin it for those of us already here. Let them enjoy their nazi bar. -
@Phosphenes @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take. If anything it's the other way around. Being "about phones, multimedia, and each other" doesn't imply you're a fool about privacy and safety.
@dalias @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs
'This is a "clueless olds look down on youngs" take'
My data is accurate but my sample size is 2.
But seriously have you tried talking to people of any age about digital rights? 90% roll their eyes and go to sleep.
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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
Never came across mastodon before. After trying to find a European browser came across this. Exploring it -
Curating content is real work. Tiktok didn't talk about it a lot but they put a great deal of effort into making the first experience users had with the app fun.
Showing them things they'd never seen before that were funny, or exciting ... using the spy data to tailor it to the particular user. Using the way the user scrolled to improve that experience.
I felt very self-conscious when trying tiktok for a bit a while back. Just because I watched some middle aged British weirdo filming police officers and asserting his right to do so, I got more and people filming police officers content. Not the content I was really wanting to look for. Maybe I am too old, but for me the decide what I want to see by who I follow model works so much better.
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@futurebird @bovaz @aurochs You eventually have to decide if it's a conversation or entertainment.
(You're presenting as so completely on Team Entertainment that it's not clear you're aware Team Conversation is an option.)
Much of the design and much of the "not welcoming" is because Team Conversation's objectives generally include "this is not entertainment"; that is, it's a social interaction rather than a performance.
"Social media", commercially, exists to confuse that distinction.
@graydon @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs
Fedi isn't all that good at conversations either. Since it's arranged by posts rather than threads, it's a firehose of out-of-context comments. I miss stuff I want to see because it gets drowned in the noise or comes in at 2AM. -
@Bumblefish @futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs Yes and no, I spent many of my early days online in a fan community for the Animal Crossing videogame saga made by people 10-15 years older than me at time (even because a 12 years old is very unlikely to have the skills and the money to rent and host stuff on a server).
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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 please stop telling people about Mastodon. They might actually listen one day and all come here and ruin it for us hahaha
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What if we had a kind of mini-app where users could create their own algorithms and then share combine and trade them?
I might design a mix of hashtags, users, and hand picked posts and call it "Ant News" someone else might pick a group of users and hash tags and create "Italian Football Bloopers"
Then we could share and rate these feeds and new users could just click on the popular ones?
@futurebird @aurochs But how it is easier to pick from all these user-created feeds than it is to pick between all the actual user-feeds?
You still got a big directory you're asking people to look through rather than spoon-feeding them by having a robot spy on them and deciding what kinds of things they might like.
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@futurebird@sauropods.win @Phosphenes@mastodon.social @aurochs@todon.eu Honestly, I love the "no ads" thing, but not everyone I know agrees. Sure, they complain about ads, but it's mostly where they interrupt what they are doing. Often, they don't mind, or even enjoy, well done ads that fit with the flow of what they are doing.
The ad industry thought that making people numb by forcing more ads at us from everywhere all the time was the solution, but in truth well made well placed ads turn out to be seamless, and people don't mind them.@bovaz @futurebird @Phosphenes @aurochs I work for a magazine publisher and I agree. I’ve seen really bad print ads but they don’t prevent you from reading the stories.
Exception: perfume sampler ads. The person who invented them should be in jail.
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@graydon @futurebird @bovaz @aurochs
Fedi isn't all that good at conversations either. Since it's arranged by posts rather than threads, it's a firehose of out-of-context comments. I miss stuff I want to see because it gets drowned in the noise or comes in at 2AM.@trachelipus It could certainly be better if the formal design process didn't keep trying to say "both" when both is not a real option and shifted the design to "supports conversation".
(Note that emojis, tiktok, and probably things I don't know about work by supporting socially encrypted conversation that relies on knowledge of visual media that allow conversation without using your words. "Cannot be comprehended by olds" is important to the kids.)
