Mastodon was a mistake because it tried to be like Twitter and Twitter was never good
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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fediverse
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it’s related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
This is not the place to gossip about other instances.
founded 1 year ago
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Mozilla has decided to copy the most valuable part of Google’s business strategy: having a large product graveyard
I've always considered the federated stuff too clunky. Only data should be federated, presentation should be unified. As with newsgroups.
I agree, the whole paradigm of activitypub instances being treated as little local web communities that can interact with one another from their respective websites in limited ways is very flawed if the goal is for it to catch on as an alternative to existing social media experiences.
Although that's not to say that paradigm is innately bad though, since it works fine for more tech-savvy people and is basically what hexbear has and works well with, but it's a total non-starter for the average social media user.
Personally I think that something along the lines of what you said is the only way activitypub will ever be able to exit the niche space it currently occupies. The user should not have to learn how it works whatsoever. Ideally the process of getting a friend to join should sound more like "Install this app or go to this website(which is a server-agnostic frontend), click register and pick a service provider(not an 'instance')" rather than "Find an instance, go to its website(which all look slightly different), create an account, and then inevitably end up with a disjointed mess of browser tabs on different instances because you clicked 'View the full profile on the original instance' while trying to find people to follow."
I'm not a developer, but it really feels like the fediverse movement is sort of trying to reinvent the wheel in a lot of ways. Also sorry for the long rambling reply, I'm bored at work.
I’m of two minds. On one hand I agree, it’s gotta be dead simple. On the other hand I think the public is more capable than it seems. People figured out email and the mess that is Windows. The fediverse just feels like a lot because it’s new. Some better branding is in order though, like your example of not using the word “instance”.
I often think it would be better to obfuscate the federation aspect altogether. Most users don’t need to know or care that a post or user came from another instance. But I think that path will ultimately be more confusing than just having the small learning curve.
presentation should be unified
This is basically the "All" sort on lemmy isn't it? And since Lemmy devs are responsible for the algorithm that functionally determines what shows up there they have ultimate control over what rises to the top and what does not.
important to note mozilla is keeping their mastodon.social account, just not their instance experiment