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 I think part of it is the pr campaign other platforms have waged against it, saying things like there's some sort of eldritch signing-up process that involves Byzantine bureaucracy, and part that we need cool people to show the way, as we saw in the case of #forkiverse their audience in.
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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.
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.
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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 on my walk just now I was thinking of making cards to pass out to people in person. Ya tired of the ads, tired of the AI slop, looking for a community? Here we are and we don't ask you to sell your soul (or privacy).
The instance I support is very niche but I think it's worth it to spend a small amount on some distributables to get a few more converts.
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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@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. -
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?
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@taylorlorenz one thing, the decentralized nature means there is perhaps too much choice. Do you get an account on mastodon.social, mstdn.ca, mastodon.com, tusky.whatever.... And also what app do you use to access it? When there was Twitter, there was one official app. With Mastodon, there are a multitude. Sometimes too much choice is counterproductive.
@hfinyow @taylorlorenz what if someone created a step-by-step choice menu followed by some more stuff?
E.g.
Are you interested in
*Safety
*Hobby
*LifestyleAnd split a few times from there.
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@graydon@canada.masto.host @futurebird@sauropods.win @aurochs@todon.eu I'm genuinely curious, so I'm not asking this to sound facetious: do you really have to make that decision? I mean, I see it in the moment-to-moment interaction/use of the platform/app, but I'm not convinced I see it in the design of the platform/technology itself (maybe in clients, sure). Could you explain what you mean (or point to some write up where it's explained already if you have it)?
@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird Entertainment is art. It might be folk art, it might be socially unacceptable to call it art (like cooking or gardening), but you want people to have an emotional reaction that sticks.
Conversation is communication; any emotional reactions that stick (which they plausibly shall) are a side effect of the information transfer attending on the common interest or interests being communicated about.
Where the control of what you see goes differs between those.
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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 and
Another thing
People are already feeling displaced when they realize they're in a nazi bar, so when they sign up on a nonsustainable server like mastodon.social and then discover they need to now migrate to another server, it can feel like further displacement. This is when it's easiest to give up on this platform. The first landing spot immediately feels hostile. Eventually we all find our alt accounts with beige jorts infosec and such, but it's only with sincere perseverance, a major journey and multiple side quests that we find a scroll worth interacting with. -
@hfinyow @taylorlorenz at the same time, this isn't a problem with email. Everyone uses email and they're not tripped up by there being dozens of email service providers. The big problem is Mastodon resists commercialization by its nature so there's no giant corpo spending big bucks pushing the "one" canonical version that everyone flocks to
@jbd @hfinyow @taylorlorenz apart from that bloated elephant in the room called mastodon.social
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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).
Counter point, many tech savy and privacy enthusiast young people I know have heard or even actively use the fediverse.
The big difference is that many arent clearly differentiable due to using the service in a way traditionally older demographics interact online (e.g. using long paragraphs, no videos).
Sadly, the mainstream remains unaware or unwilling as per your point.
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@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird Entertainment is art. It might be folk art, it might be socially unacceptable to call it art (like cooking or gardening), but you want people to have an emotional reaction that sticks.
Conversation is communication; any emotional reactions that stick (which they plausibly shall) are a side effect of the information transfer attending on the common interest or interests being communicated about.
Where the control of what you see goes differs between those.
@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird This is why the number of characters is significant (more purely conversational setups support many characters; short character totals are biased toward entertainment in a sort of pithyness contest that's encouraging a semi-poetic form).
How quotes are used and controlling who can reply (a highly desired feature) are Team Conversation.
I don't think this is a case where both is possible; the objectives are different.
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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 think one of the best ways is to recommend specific instances to people, that helps with being overwhelmed with options, etc. I've recommended this one I'm on (c.im) to several people and have had a couple join up that way.
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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 hot take: smaller communities of intended audience is fundamentally betted than this town crier model of social media. In models like Discord (or the forums and IRC of old) because communities are smaller and separate from eachother, shared interests and values result in generally more intimate relationships where users still feel responsible for themselves as social community members. Large networks necessarily create massive hubs, individual users with many orders of magnitude more reach than the average user. The resulting emergent phemena are almost always negative for the user base and human behavior as a whole. Smaller networks like a discord server more closely resemble historical human communities and by being smaller, hubs (central popular people) are less common and held accountable by the small village of users they interact with, and are necessarily not orders of magnitude more popular than anyone else.
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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.There's a place for ads on Mastodon, but only within a particular feed that is trying to do business. If you don't like it, unsub from that feed.
Fedi is like a public street with homes and businesses on the sides. We just don't want the road itself privatized.
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@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird Entertainment is art. It might be folk art, it might be socially unacceptable to call it art (like cooking or gardening), but you want people to have an emotional reaction that sticks.
Conversation is communication; any emotional reactions that stick (which they plausibly shall) are a side effect of the information transfer attending on the common interest or interests being communicated about.
Where the control of what you see goes differs between those.
@graydon@canada.masto.host @aurochs@todon.eu @futurebird@sauropods.win Ok, that's what I meant when I said I could see it in the moment-to-moment interactions, but not in the platform technology design. An art-feed and a communication-feed could share the same technological basis/framework, and be "separated" by a click.
Of course, I could imagine doing something to inhibit/prevent one or the other somehow, or to mandate mixing them up like other social media do. -
@taylorlorenz I think one of the best ways is to recommend specific instances to people, that helps with being overwhelmed with options, etc. I've recommended this one I'm on (c.im) to several people and have had a couple join up that way.
@taylorlorenz also, TikTok is so LOUD. You open it and everything is screaming at you. And it's so not like that here, it's nice and quiet, just people talking to each other. It's not that whole 'influencer trying to get rich and famous' crap you see on all the other social media. If people want constant streams of screaming video, that's not here, it's still on the other socials.
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@bovaz @aurochs @futurebird This is why the number of characters is significant (more purely conversational setups support many characters; short character totals are biased toward entertainment in a sort of pithyness contest that's encouraging a semi-poetic form).
How quotes are used and controlling who can reply (a highly desired feature) are Team Conversation.
I don't think this is a case where both is possible; the objectives are different.
@graydon@canada.masto.host @aurochs@todon.eu @futurebird@sauropods.win ok, I see what you mean. Thanks. -
Well, lot's of positive things that make the fedi is that it isn't mainstream ..
Always remember, the biggest celebrity has it's own mastodon server spreading asocial truths. And guess what, he not only doesn't federate, if he would, he'd be as blocked as gab by the rest of the community.
@bitpickup oh wow who are they?
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@mattdm @futurebird @aurochs Wouldn't an easy way to setup bots that boost according to your algorithm largely do it?
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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?
The way to answer this question would be, I think, to describe the pattern by which successful networks grow—not just digital social networks, but any kind. The fediverse is failing at one or more of the steps in the pattern (I propose).
At the minimum, a person joins a network only if they know it exists; it appears to offer valuable benefits; they meet the requirements of joining, be they cultural or skill-based (or both); and there are other people in the network with whom they want to engage, either actively or passively. Beyond this, they would also need available time to engage.
If any of those fail, they don’t join. Or they may drop off early.
