People don’t know what choosing a server entails, because it does matter and a lot of people aren’t exactly helpful when they say “just pick any” or “it’s like email”
Server choice matters because:
Server might federate with a limited number of other servers;
Server might be blacklisted by some servers which you might want to interact with;
Servers can be running different versions of software, so people might think about security;
Servers can go offline
Server choice can significantly impact how people perceive you. “Oh look, another tankie from ml”
So, server choice matters and people coming in from corporate shit don’t know how much they need to know to make an informed decision, thus giving up.
Yeah, figuring out Instances with Lemmy took several days for me. Lemmy.world simply wasn’t fit for my purposes, and potentially could have made me tune out the entire Lemmy ecosystem. I was like “this is it?”.
Yeah I was pretty disappointed when my server started limiting what political servers I see by default. I want it to show up and then choose for myself, not have to sell out every community. Their supposed to just showvup. It’s not like they were nazis or porn even.
Your server is your algorithm. That’s what the local feed is for. If you pick a server that caters to your interest, then the local feed becomes a potent discovery tool. That’s even more true for non-English communities because English language content is probably going to drown out everything else on the all/global feed
It is simple: nowadays security awareness is drilled in for most of the online population. If presented with a choice people can’t oversee, the default safest option is not to chose. I mean, how many new Mastodon users know any of these servers?
So, as couter-intuitive or even ironic it may seem, the “problem” is choice. People need to learn that social media is no longer a single entity, but more like email or choosing a bank.
I’ve just “joined” the Fediverse a few days ago.
I’m somewhat tech-savy I’d say. I still find a lot of it confusing.
"Most people don’t conceptualize it like that; they conceptualize it like the postal service. "
I think this was and still is in part true for me.
There’s the term “Fediverse”, which suggests that there’s one continuous “universe” of things. But actually - and please correct me if I got this wrong - there’s just servers connected/interlinked with other servers, which (strictly must, due to how it works) form bubbles/webs or islands of all sizes.
There are practically no postal service bubbles, because I can send mail to anyone I’d realistically wish. There are different postal service providers, but a “-verse” term would be better applied to postal service (-> “Postalverse”) than to federated servers, imo.
So ideally as a noob coming from reddit or twitter, I’d like to know what the biggest bubble of connected servers is and where I can enter.
A thing I haven’t figured out yet is why I can’t find a decent feed feature on Mastodon.
On Lemmy there are local/all filters for communities a server is federated with, if I understood this correctly.
My mastodon home instance (mastodon.social) doesn’t seem to have a feed, really. There’s a “trending” filter, but it has very few posts - afaik just the ones I specifically subscribed to - and it doesn’t differentiate between local and all federated servers.
Am I doing it wrong? :P
I’m expecting to have filters like in Lemmy, where I can just consume anything new, trending or controversial.
I don’t think so. way too many people approve sensitive permissions and cookie tracking without a thought, and even more just go for a gmail account no matter what
I initially looked up a few servers, then I chose one with decent size and no prohibitive policies. Less than 24 hours after creating the account I got banned without reason. I appealed. No answer.
I guessed I was just unlucky, so I found another decent looking server. After creating an account, it took around 2-3 hours and I was banned. I appealed. No answer.
I guess the username was a bit too random andmaybe looked like it was created by a bot. It had a lot of random letters, but it was my usual username. I would assume an appeal would sort it out. Or atleast lead me to an answer.
So my third attempt, I chose another server which looked fine and created a user with a simpler username. A few months later, the server shut down.
So now I’m on my 4th account.
It’s not like it was a huge hassle to create the accounts, but it’s also not like the system is without issues.
Well I was used to MMOs with different servers and I thought I’d have to create an account for each if I wanted to be with my friends.
I didn’t know Mastodon was NOT a mere Twitter alternative, and I wasn’t familiar with the concept of the fediverse.
Because the term is loaded. There are technical implications (who will you be federated with and how do I connect with them?), and it’s jurisdictional (which laws apply when I post here?). Also, for non-technical people, you only hear the word “server” in techno-babble word salad from movies. I don’t blame them at all for being confused.
I wonder why people see selecting a server as a hurdle when that’s exactly what they’re asked to do when making an email address
Problem is, younger people don’t even do that when they make an email address.
They just “create a Gmail”.
The internet has become such a sad place.
not even that. when setting up their first smartphone, either them or their parents just accept to create a google account
A huge success for Google, I guess?
People don’t know what choosing a server entails, because it does matter and a lot of people aren’t exactly helpful when they say “just pick any” or “it’s like email”
Server choice matters because:
So, server choice matters and people coming in from corporate shit don’t know how much they need to know to make an informed decision, thus giving up.
Yeah, figuring out Instances with Lemmy took several days for me. Lemmy.world simply wasn’t fit for my purposes, and potentially could have made me tune out the entire Lemmy ecosystem. I was like “this is it?”.
Yeah I was pretty disappointed when my server started limiting what political servers I see by default. I want it to show up and then choose for myself, not have to sell out every community. Their supposed to just showvup. It’s not like they were nazis or porn even.
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you’re not wrong but you could’ve delivered that more nicely lmfao
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Huh, I could have sworn it said MrNiceGuy a minute ago
I’m guessing you haven’t gotten a promotion in some time.
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It is simple: nowadays security awareness is drilled in for most of the online population. If presented with a choice people can’t oversee, the default safest option is not to chose. I mean, how many new Mastodon users know any of these servers?
So, as couter-intuitive or even ironic it may seem, the “problem” is choice. People need to learn that social media is no longer a single entity, but more like email or choosing a bank.
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I’ve just “joined” the Fediverse a few days ago. I’m somewhat tech-savy I’d say. I still find a lot of it confusing.
"Most people don’t conceptualize it like that; they conceptualize it like the postal service. " I think this was and still is in part true for me.
There’s the term “Fediverse”, which suggests that there’s one continuous “universe” of things. But actually - and please correct me if I got this wrong - there’s just servers connected/interlinked with other servers, which (strictly must, due to how it works) form bubbles/webs or islands of all sizes.
There are practically no postal service bubbles, because I can send mail to anyone I’d realistically wish. There are different postal service providers, but a “-verse” term would be better applied to postal service (-> “Postalverse”) than to federated servers, imo.
So ideally as a noob coming from reddit or twitter, I’d like to know what the biggest bubble of connected servers is and where I can enter.
A thing I haven’t figured out yet is why I can’t find a decent feed feature on Mastodon. On Lemmy there are local/all filters for communities a server is federated with, if I understood this correctly. My mastodon home instance (mastodon.social) doesn’t seem to have a feed, really. There’s a “trending” filter, but it has very few posts - afaik just the ones I specifically subscribed to - and it doesn’t differentiate between local and all federated servers.
Am I doing it wrong? :P
I’m expecting to have filters like in Lemmy, where I can just consume anything new, trending or controversial.
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Cheers for the lengthy explanation!
Lol. Truth Social using Mastodon seems so ironic.
I’m thinking we should try and sell people on a particular community first, and let them figure out it interoperates with others on their own time.
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I think we’re just kinda early. Having redundant communities is good for resiliency.
Honestly you could pick 3 and tell people “these are all fine choices, pick one at random”
I don’t think so. way too many people approve sensitive permissions and cookie tracking without a thought, and even more just go for a gmail account no matter what
I initially looked up a few servers, then I chose one with decent size and no prohibitive policies. Less than 24 hours after creating the account I got banned without reason. I appealed. No answer.
I guessed I was just unlucky, so I found another decent looking server. After creating an account, it took around 2-3 hours and I was banned. I appealed. No answer.
I guess the username was a bit too random andmaybe looked like it was created by a bot. It had a lot of random letters, but it was my usual username. I would assume an appeal would sort it out. Or atleast lead me to an answer.
So my third attempt, I chose another server which looked fine and created a user with a simpler username. A few months later, the server shut down.
So now I’m on my 4th account.
It’s not like it was a huge hassle to create the accounts, but it’s also not like the system is without issues.
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Well I was used to MMOs with different servers and I thought I’d have to create an account for each if I wanted to be with my friends. I didn’t know Mastodon was NOT a mere Twitter alternative, and I wasn’t familiar with the concept of the fediverse.
Because the term is loaded. There are technical implications (who will you be federated with and how do I connect with them?), and it’s jurisdictional (which laws apply when I post here?). Also, for non-technical people, you only hear the word “server” in techno-babble word salad from movies. I don’t blame them at all for being confused.