People are educated to not learn too much.
Both are exaggerated, but fediverse apps absolutely need better onboarding and it’s a totally fixable problem, but not if the community continues to ignore it.
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.)
Even if you can figure it out, it’s still just unintuitive and a hassle. Theres a lot of friction and friction is the enemy of adoption. I’m a datacenter engineer and despite know exactly how Mastodon works it would just be too much time and effort to get the content flowing. I setup my account, figured I’d get around to it and never did. I wouldn’t blame any average person for just not feeling. Like putting in the effort.
The only reason I’m on Lemmy because I followed specific subreddits here so I didn’t need to go looking for anything.
Except facebook used to be like that, and somehow we did just fine. Shit myspace just gave you Tom when you signed up for a new account and nobody found that confusing either.
Standards have certainly changed, but it’s really not that hard to follow a few people that look slightly interesting and grow your network based on who they post.
Facebook had an advantage in that you very likely already knew 98% of the people you wanted to add as a friend by name, and only had to search their name. After adding your friends, most of the work of setting up facebook is done
Yes clunky, unintuitive social media platforms did just fine back when they were all equally immature, clunky and unintuitive. But social media has changed a lot in the past 20 years and it’s grown to be more intuitive, usable, and relatively frictionless to adopt.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every Tom Dick and Harry who are used to modern social media platforms built on decades of improvements to form and function, to just dive in head first to an experience that rivals the social media of a bygone era.
Lots of bots on both of those sites….
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.
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.
Yeah, everything has to be a visual aid, when it’s easier to just read one page of instructions.
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 honestly think this talking point is so dumb anyway. The whole concept of generations is actually stupid. They’re just younger people dealing with their own flavor of the bullshit we all had to deal with. Their lives wouldn’t magically be enhanced if they were latchkey kids that struggled to install a hard drive without the internet. I thought we wanted them to have better and easier lives? Isn’t that the whole point? Why would we want them to struggle with our bullshit AND all the new stuff in the world that they’re dealing with now? Plop them in one semester of a beginner computer/programming course and they’ll know as much (if not more) as the average millennial it’s not that deep.
It’s wild that every generation gets dunked on by the ones that came before and so many people still grow up and repeat the cycle. Why? Just be kind to your kids and educate them if you think they’re lacking important knowledge ffs. I’m especially disappointed in millennial parents doing this shit. We’re still getting blamed for idiotic things to this day and you all didn’t even hesitate to pull the same bullshit on your kids. Do better.
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.
Remember going to the library and trying to find things in encyclopedias lmao
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 think you’re also basing your opinion on your limited world view. Morons have been anti vaccine since they were invented that’s absolutely not even remotely new. Honestly most of your complaints can been seen throughout history in various forms because it’s all just human stuff. I would caution you to try to avoid this thinking if possible because, frankly, it’s some boomer shit. You picking up a sense of superiority and dunking on “kids these days” is just following the same pattern of every generation before you with slightly updated complaints.
I’d love to see humanity as a whole grow out of it and realize that the “kids these days” are just inexperienced people navigating the world exactly like we did. They have similar AND different challenges that they’re reacting to. Many of them behave exactly like you would if you were born in the same gen.
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/
Some?? In my experience ALL.
The older generation grew up in the time that you had “to get it” on some level to do anything.
The current gen ((my) kids 12,15) just don’t use it the moment it doesn’t work. Zero effort, zero will to learn. Because there’s always another option which does work instantly. Fuck privacy, fuck my rights.
No offense but I feel like as a parent theres a lot you could have done and can still do to mitigate that. Like, it’s reasonable to be mad at the exploitative reasons for tech being the way it is but you’re the parent and you’ve had a lot of control over those things for their entire lives. Not to mention that we’re the generation that embraced the easier tech as a whole. Kinda wild to blame the kids that are literally products of us and our actions.
Hey I was born in 2001 and use both Mastodon and Lemmy. Stop with the juvenoia.
The fact is most people of any age don’t care how things work and don’t like putting in any extra effort into tech. Imo old people are sometimes worse with this.
People who want to understand how technology works are a minority, and those who actually do understand are an even smaller minority. Nobody can understand how everything they use works to a reasonable level of detail anyway. You either have surface level details of lots of stuff, or more detail about some specific things. Modern systems are just too large and complex to completly fit in a human brain.
Edit: When the comment I was replying to was first written it didn’t include the age of the people they were talking about. Now that I know those it sounds less like a generation issue and more like the behaviour if children and teenagers. I think the person I am replying to needs to understand the difference between generations vs just still being a kid. Although personally I got into the technical side of things as a teenager.
Imo old people are sometimes worse with this.
100% this. We were paranoid that facebook would melt our kid’s brain, but in reality it’s messing up our parents’ generation.
My 9 yr old is conflicted because all his friends are on Messenger Kids and he wants to talk to them, but doesn’t want to give facebook access to his data.
You pretty much need a parent or some other reference person (which can be people in the internet) to teach you that, though. The chance of that having happened is a bit higher the more mature you are, just because you had more time to also figure out the other important things of life.
I think it’s only a small difference though, because the unwillingness to learn new things also increases with age. I think the highest chance for someone to want to know how things work is around 25-35 or something. However, as you say, people of all ages generally don’t care how things work, and all ages have people that do care how things work, it just depends on the person.
But probabilities are still a thing and I think it’s a bit more likely for teenagers to not care to understand how something works.
They didn’t specify the ages when I first replied. Now that they have specified they are kids I think it’s even less of a generation issue and more of a teenager or child vs adult issue that’s being wrongly framed as a generation issue.
Yeah I think they just used “zoomers” and “very young people” interchangeably.
“they just give up” - I mean, sounds like a them problem?
Back in MY day my shiny new gadgets had about a 50% chance to work out of the box without tinkering! Plug and play? Pft naaaah. Get off my lawn!!
I mean, Linux does make that percentage lower nowadays tbh. I know some manufacturers care but the grand majority dont see the 0.something as their audience
Honestly lemmy shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes if you’ve created accounts for stuff like reddit or discord before
If email were invented today people would complain about how complex and annoying it is to sign up.
OMG another account?! Why can’t I just use my discord smh
When it was invented, it was complex and annoying, even by today’s standards.
For a small period of time I was a god that would bless people with gmail invites lol. That brings me back. I remember compuserve and Hotmail but I don’t remember them being especially complicated at all. Maybe that was before my time…? Which would be nice for once
Yeah, email existed long before GMail/Hotmail.
Tell me more about the before times oh wise one
Back in my day, we had to deliver each packet by hand! In the snow, uphill both ways!
Hotmail was already the easy-mode stuff.
Before that you’d get your email account provided by the ISP, and before that you’d have to find someone who ran an email server and ask nicely for them to make you an account.
And regarding ease of use: The reason why e.g. SMTP is human-readable is because in the early days SMTP wasn’t the protocol that your email client used to talk to the server. It was the email client.
You’d just
telnetto your server and type in the SMTP commands manually.
Still is if you’re not using a product like gmail or outlook that auto enters all of the incoming and outgoing servers.
How many of us have spent time on our ISP’s help page trying to find the damn STMP server domain?
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.
Email has always been awful
Saying that times have changed doesn’t negate the fact that times have changed.
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
I sent my gmail address an email from [email protected] and it worked.
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
I almost got kicked out of school for this! I sent an email to my girlfriend from some girl that we didn’t like, saying something like “you’re a huge bitch, haha just kidding this is actually jballs not the chick we don’t like.”
Problem is that I wrote my girlfriend’s email address wrong, so it bounced back to the sender (the girl we didn’t like).
So I had to explain to a university dean exactly what I did and how I didn’t actually “hack into” the girl’s email account. That was fun.
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 [email protected] as my email when generating GPG keys for dark net markets
I tried to send a message to support for a company with a form on their website. I got an email back saying it didn’t pass SPF because they used my email address in the
From:header.I did manage to find the email address their PHP script tried sending it to. I emailed them about the problem with solutions to fix it. And of course they never got back to me.
They probably tried to get back to you but used an internal we form that filled the from header with their email address. 💀
I don’t get the email analogy.
People did and DO complain about setting up email. ISP email is a great example of this. People forget their IMAP and SMTP address configuration stuff all the damn time. Always have.
I used to do home IT, and I had to help people through that crap constantly.
That said, these days people have gravitated to clients like gmail or outlook. Those push the user onto a certain domain, which makes setup dead simple. This is what mastodon.social is doing now. Making it so people don’t have to think about the instance at sign up.
I used my isp email address for a brief period and it was always super annoying in some way or another. Not to mention I lost it when I had to switch providers because I moved out of their area. It was a long time ago but they wanted to charge me to keep it when gmail/Hotmail etc already existed lmao bye
Yea I’m with you here. I’ve done a good amount of things with computers and setting up email with clients and setting up printers are probably the two “what the fuck why is this so hard!” things I’ve had to do with a computer.
This is what mastodon.social is doing now. Making it so people don’t have to think about the instance at sign up.
TBH, I don’t find that all too bad. As long as users can easily move at any time, getting them set up on a popular one first where everything “just works”, they can learn the concepts and get used to the federation stuff. Then after some time, they may realize that a smaller server might fit them better and can then move there. Choosing a server without ever being registered somewhere (in the fediverse) was even hard for me.
Yeah I agree email kinda sucks. But everyone still uses it, and (as far as I’m aware) people aren’t writing articles about how confusing email is for people and why that makes it a failure. Mastodon and Lemmy are, in comparison, much better and way less confusing but you see that said all the time about them.
When email came out the alternative product was the post office or a fax machine. Even though configuring a client was difficult for some, instant digital messaging communication was new. It was a BIG motivator for people to either figure it out, or hire someone like me to figure it out for them.
People are comparing Mastodon to Twitter, a fairly similar core product. The gap between email and mail was much wider.
Its easy to signup & get started, just have to be awake…
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.
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.
I’ve been at soo many jobs where they change something like timesheets to have an extra click when filling out and it’s always “it’s jUsT oNe cLiCk”, and then they’re inevitably sending out a company wide email three months later all mad that people aren’t filling out their timesheets.
@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
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.
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.
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.
Hmm, maybe if an app’s creator hosted their own instance just for accounts (i.e. with no posts of its own). That way, a new user can download an app, set up an account on that app’s dedicated accounts server, and start browsing all the other instances from there.
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 disagree, majority of my interaction with Lemmy and Mastodon is on a app on my phone. The mobile site is just okay. Let people choose their interface on how they want their content.
sure, but they listed testing multiple apps as a step people have to take.
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.
Lots of people don’t have much use or time for a computer. You use the small screen when you can - during work breaks, commuting, doing errands. Shit I used to be a geek and I don’t even have a proper computer.
I mean… That’s certainly a take. A “real” screen? What on earth lol
I just mean a screen big enough to display a decent amount of information. Trying to browse websites on a phone when you can only see a little bit of text at a time, or you have to keep swiping to see different products because they can only show one image at a time… I honestly don’t know how anyone deals with the incredible waste of time. You figure a typical computer screen is at least 2-4 times larger than a cell phone screen, and many of us are running two or more monitors on their computer, and using a cell phone screen starts to feel like looking at the world through a ten foot length of pipe.
At the laziest level an app stores my login info.
So does a mobile browser?
Maybe handling multiple accounts is easier with an app but that’s beyond basic use
Not if your browser is set to incognito and/or you close the tab.
“If I take deliberate steps to inconvenience myself, I feel inconvenienced! Grrrr I’m so angry at this thing that I used to inconvenience myself!”
If someone explaining why they use an app instead of a website (in a literal comment thread about why people would prefer an app to the mobile site) triggers you in such a way that your only response is to make up an irate strawman… it might be time to log off, step outside and practice interacting with people like an functioning adult.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Can confirm am a Twitter slave trying to use glue to get high and it ain’t working 😔
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.
I can kinda get it. There are tons of servers, all with different rules, and I’m guessing some don’t federate with eachother. I compared ~20 servers rules and how fast they loaded before chosing one.
Search sucks. Home feed is only chronological, so you need be careful about who you follow. I.e. if you follow someone that posts important stuff, but only weekly, it will get drowned out by following people that post every hour. Then there’s the weird design issue that all replies aren’t necessarily synced between servers, which is unituitive.
Mastodon needs to implement some kind of better search, and a better algorithm for the home feed, and make it the default.
Journalists are just going to go where the most people are because it’s their job to self-promote.
deleted by creator
Thanks didn’t realize that.
So effing true.
It’s quite obvious they don’t want people to join networks without gatekeepers.
I think it’s a mix of the way journalism works in the age of overstimulation (everything is the best/worst anyone has ever witnessed) and old(er) people being unfathomably tech-illiterate.
And I don’t even mean that negatively. I often really am unable to fathom how disorienting even the slightest change in a software they’re used to is to them.
If my mother were to use the birdsite, and they’d change their theme from blue to red one day, she would literally be unable to use it, because “it’s all different now”
Also, mastodon does have some usability problems, though they are not that big imo.
Most people outside mainstream social media such as here tend to forget that 99% of the population are normies. Normies are tech-lazy. The technologies need to work like a microwave. It’s easy, it works and users don’t care about the underlying tech.
I’ve been a developer for over a decade and I can say for sure I’m tech lazy. Not ‘normies’(wetf that means) nor anyone else should waste their time on tasks that could’ve been automated.
If you came here, it is not because you are interested in the underlying protocol, you came here since it is a social media.
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.
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.
You can’t be following the right people then, I have tons of people speaking the 3 languages that I know well, talking about interesting and fun stuff, sharing things they learned and cool things they made. It’s all about curating your feed.
That’s the thing though, I can’t find anyone interesting to follow in the first place. I never was much of a Twitter user honestly, but I still decided to give Mastodon a shot. Maybe it’s just not for me.
I don’t know what stuff you are interested in, and yeah, it’s not a platform with algorithms that will push stuff that the site thinks that you will like on you, so you’ll have to do some work to find people you like. If you tried mastodon.social or some other humongous instance that doesn’t really have a culture itself also it makes the whole thing more difficult, joining something like mastodon.art or hachyderm.io or some other one with an a bit more focused theme will usually be a bit better for getting started since your local feed will not be so random.
I guess you’re looking at the global feed? I haven’t used that since my first few days. I’d start following people and using the Home feed. Then you’re not getting the everything-firehose.
Probably? Admittedly I’ve only used it on Tusky, the Android app, and not much on desktop. It has a single feed which it calls “Local”, which I assume is activity from the same instance I’m on. I’ll give that a try on desktop.
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
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.
I had to get used to it, but then again, I never really used Twitter. I’m not a big fan of Mastodon (the format) but I really do like kbin. I was a reddit user, and this is much more familiar. Nice that it’s all really just the same thing just presented in different ways and of course, no single entity controls the whole thing. 😊👍
