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1. Embed this notice
   Mike Fraser :Jets: (mike@thecanadian.social)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 23:35:12 JST Mike Fraser :Jets:

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs Tend to agree, but moving isn't as trivial as it should be.

   • Embed this notice
     HeppyCat (heppycat@mastodon.heppycat.com)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 23:37:53 JST HeppyCat

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs OMG my IRC client defaults to Freenode!

   • Embed this notice
     Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈 (lazarou@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 23:44:16 JST Lazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs this is the "Action on Onboarding" that people wanted, now they get some it, they hate it.
     I'm all for making it easier for people to sign up, too much choice on the 'first day of school' is intimidating for most.

   • Embed this notice
     Virginia Murr (virginiamurr@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:10:08 JST Virginia Murr

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs

     Nailed it -- at least in my case. Gratefully, I found sign-up via .social to be incredibly easy.

     Had "picking servers" been required, I very likely would have passed. Single, working mom here ... I don't have much leisure time and I do not consider social media to be a necessity.

   • Embed this notice
     Andres Jalinton (andres@mastodon.hardcoredevs.com)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:11:35 JST Andres Jalinton

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs
     The issue I see it's centralization, we all know what happen when one "garden" get them all.
     We should encourage decentralization, we already tried the convenience of centralized services.

   • Embed this notice
     Torge Rosendahl (torgeros@norden.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:47:19 JST Torge Rosendahl

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I am certain that this does not apply to the general public without a tech background, but I originally had a mastodon.social account. Once I had figured how all the federation and stuff works (couple of days I guess), I created my current account and started posting. What I missed (even though it did not apply in my case) was taking your previous posts and followers etc with you...

   • Embed this notice
     curmudgeonaf (curmudgeonaf@mstdn.ca)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:17:10 JST curmudgeonaf

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs it also sucks being on a small server, because federation doesn’t really work as well as you imagine, and small servers don’t “see” very much content. You need to be on a large server if you a full timeline.

   • Embed this notice
     Ben S. (hunterz@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:25:59 JST Ben S.

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs yeah I have no doubt that having to understand federation up front is a huge point of friction (and those who say that's a good thing can f*** right off). Moving servers isn't a perfect answer either though - people get frustrated/confused by that process too, and your posts don't go with you - but maybe improving the migration experience is a better place to put effort than on figuring out how to get new users onto a "forever server" up front.

   • Embed this notice
     draNgNon (drangnon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:40:21 JST draNgNon

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs OTOH this SSL error is really not OK and Gargron should fix it before driving more traffic to it. Uncool to have an invalid cert.

   • Embed this notice
     draNgNon (drangnon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:49:18 JST draNgNon

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs interesting, I've definitely asked others about this and they confirmed similar/same issue. I will drill down later when work is less distracting.

     (unrelated aside: the "f" in your font is distractingly weird)

   • Embed this notice
     Foxside (foxside@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 03:00:14 JST Foxside

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I for one am glad the system defaults as it does. I'm semi-tech literate, and found the initial learning curve steep. I can't imagine there could be wide adoption if the barriers to entry were much higher.

   • Embed this notice
     Bill0004 (bill0004@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 06:00:35 JST Bill0004

     • Shawn King
     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @KingShawn Perhaps these folks should save their outrage energy for something that …. actually matters?

   • Embed this notice
     Luke Kanies (lkanies@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 06:36:25 JST Luke Kanies

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs ?

   • Embed this notice
     chihuamaranian (chihuamaranian@tech.lgbt)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 08:47:39 JST chihuamaranian

     in reply to

     • Mark Shane Hayden
     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @msh @thomasfuchs

     First off, thanks for the well thought out reply.

     I dont think I disagree with much of the substance of your post. Your concerns are valid.

     I do think the scale of these drawbacks is up to interpretation and that is where i believe the majority of our differences of opinion sit.

     To your "users can move is a user hostile stance" point, I agree that you are correct today. I hope (and believe) we will reach a point where migration is such a non-event that this concern goes away.

     As for vertical vs horizontal scaling, I believe there is more to be gained from vertical scaling than you are considering. Performance that can handle millions of users on a single instance will also lower the hosting bills on a hundred-user instance.

     I also think that there is a finite amount of horizontal scaling that is possible without fragmenting the network. Imagine the extreme: putting every user on their own instance would itself burden the network.

   • Embed this notice
     chihuamaranian (chihuamaranian@tech.lgbt)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 08:47:41 JST chihuamaranian

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs

     I understand the resistance to indirectly causing the user distribution to be more centralised, but this solves way more problems than it causes.

     - people can move

     - when the biggest server has scaling issues and lag due to size, the technically literate will move

     - having a big instance helps the developers make mastodon more scalable. In a world where the "medium instances" have 10x more users than today, this is helpful trail blazing.

     - having a large mastodon-first instance is a good hedge against corporate entities joining the fediverse and flooding it with their existing userbase. We want a large "fediverse-native" population to push back against corporate EEE strategies.

   • Embed this notice
     Mark Shane Hayden (msh@coales.co)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 08:47:41 JST Mark Shane Hayden

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • chihuamaranian

     @chihuamaranian @thomasfuchs I agree for onboarding purposes deciding on what server to join is a serious impediment, but I think defaulting to the oldest, largest one is a terrible approach. The "what if Garg sells out to a Musk-like being" argument is kinda ridiculous but the concern is real if overblown.

     A better default would be an "I feel lucky" or "pick a server for me" that randomly picks from a curated list of a hundred or so general-interest instances.

     Some counterpoints:

     - "people can move" is a user hostile attitude, especially when moving is still an arduous process

     - when The Big Server going sideways drives mostly savvy users away it turns The Big Server into a ghetto of sorts...it is already "the AOL of fedi"

     - vertical scale is the wrong kind of scale for federated services. We really need horizontal scale with smaller simpler servers that are easier to deploy and manage

     - thousands of smaller servers vs one server that dominates makes it less resilient to hostile players, not more.

   • Embed this notice
     Maltdogg (maltdog101@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 08:56:06 JST Maltdogg

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I’m on here cause I’m finished with Twitter. Not sure what to do for selecting a server

   • Embed this notice
     Log 🪵 (log@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 09:05:49 JST Log 🪵

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs It's not like a 51% attack on some encryption network. It could all be easily solved with a "What Mastodon server are you?" personality test.

   • Embed this notice
     Shawn King (kingshawn@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 09:06:20 JST Shawn King

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • Bill0004

     @bill0004 @thomasfuchs Outrage energy is only really useful on the internet….??♂️

   • Embed this notice
     Bill0004 (bill0004@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 09:19:51 JST Bill0004

     • Shawn King
     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @KingShawn oh heavens no. I’m not that self-loathing :)

   • Embed this notice
     whereami (whereami@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 11:51:15 JST whereami

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @thomasfuchs They can move servers later, but they largely won’t. If they wouldn’t have signed up at all without being told which server to use, they’re either not going to think it’s important to move, or they’re going to keep putting it off because it’s too complicated and they’ll lose their account history. I still haven’t moved, after signing up more than 2 years ago.

   • Embed this notice
     Jeff ♨️ Darcy (obdurodon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 21:58:14 JST Jeff ♨️ Darcy

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs If mastodon.social is OK being the psu.edu of the era, shouldn't that be OK with the elitists too? Seems like they'd *want* to have a place where n00bs have to prove themselves before joining the cooler instances. They're doing elitism wrong. 😆

   • Embed this notice
     CaptainMalu (captainmalu@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 06:33:37 JST CaptainMalu

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I read on GitHub a good idea: the app coulde rotate through the servers in the list of joinmastodon. So not all new users arrive on mastodon.social.

     I think this is a really good idea and the best compromise.

   • Embed this notice
     it's B! Cavello 🐝 (b_cavello@mastodon.publicinterest.town)'s status on Sunday, 23-Apr-2023 12:16:04 JST it's B! Cavello 🐝

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I agree that making it easy to join is super important, I also feel like pointing people to an ever-growing gravity well is dangerous. I think it would be cool if there was a way to have people try out a server temporarily to start before forcing them to move on once acclimated.

   • Embed this notice
     valiant8086 (valiant8086@mindly.social)'s status on Monday, 24-Apr-2023 01:25:00 JST valiant8086

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I think the bigger issue they have with it is not just that the people get encouraged to make it centralized by joining Mastodon.social, but that in having done so successfully, the network will be disproportionately reliant apon that one server, and a failure on the part of that server would have a greater impact on the whole fediverse than otherwise it should have. What ever million people just disappear from the fediverse or what ever.