Me: “Having to choose an instance makes people not join Mastodon”
Pundit: “They should have to choose an instance”
Me: “They won’t. They just don’t sign up.”
Pundit: “They should just choose an instance”
How do you even logic
Me: “Having to choose an instance makes people not join Mastodon”
Pundit: “They should have to choose an instance”
Me: “They won’t. They just don’t sign up.”
Pundit: “They should just choose an instance”
How do you even logic
@RetroWizzard No, people won’t go through that.
Let it default to a generic instance, have people experience Mastodon and if they like it they can move instances later.
@thomasfuchs
The huge directory of instances isn't helpful either. It's just overwhelming.
A "setup wizard frontpage" which chooses the instance for you would be great.
Answer 3-5 questions (or choose 3 topics you're interested in) then get presented with a choice of 2-3 instances to click on and boom sign up.
@zperretta correct. Don’t come up with elaborate confusing schemes. People can pretty easily move somewhere else later.
@thomasfuchs at most if you were to be an absolutist about everyone being on different instances you could have a random lottery where they are given a random instance chosen from a short list of the most reputable instances, (and then hide that from the user to avoid confusion) although the simpler option of just defaulting to a single instance is probably easier and better for getting people on board
@thomasfuchs People choose grocery stores. People choose streaming services. People understand choices.
I don't think the problem is choice or choosing. It's the fact that it's different from corporate social media that is controlled and managed by a single entity.
Like email -- and people don't have a problem with email.
Not having to choose an instance means only having one instance, and I don't want corporate social media anymore.
@mshiltonj You’re comparing apples with oranges and are coming up with ridiculous pearl-clutching “reasons” to gatekeep.
Think about how grocery stores and social networks are completely different things.
And no it doesn’t mean they’re locked into some corporate silo. That’s just bullshit, I’m sorry.
@peteriskrisjanis the choice is literally right there, it’s two buttons that have the same size
@thomasfuchs you can make that choice easily accessible. Which was not done in this case. Much easier railroading was chosen, which irks lot of people considering we now see fallout of one place controlling conversation.
Yes, it is annoying to have this conversation, but I think it is justified, even if design was well meant.
@thomasfuchs I also feel like it would be easier (for getting people on board) if Google and Apple were to make their own instances in the same way that they have with Email,
As much as I disagree with it, I've noticed that alot of people will be fairly afraid of new tech unless it has a massive corporate backing.
@zperretta I don’t think either of these companies are super interested in running social networks, their own attempts flopped spectacularly in the past.
The replies here: “They should choose an instance”
Ok, then. ?
Some replies are at least honest and literally spell out that they’re pro-gatekeeping
@yatil I was wondering if people will tell me that it’s an “idiot” filter or that they “don’t want everybody here”. It’s very telling.
@thomasfuchs Lovely how people also use ableist language for people who don’t want to or can’t engage with the complexity of this system.
@alienghic Sure, but do that after they’ve used Mastodon for a while and know the lay of the land. A large generic instance is great to get started.
I sometimes wonder how effective a quiz "what mastodon instance are you?" might be at helping pick an instance.
I think what's most important is ending up somewhere where you'll agree with the moderation, and thats kind of a combination of politics and community.
There's also some instances offer a stronger local sense of community.
I feel like there's the possibility of making a good recommendation using the silly internet quiz format
@DualWieldingDad @RetroWizzard After a while you can also make suggestions for them, based on which people and hashtags they follow.
@thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard I like this idea. Get them in an account with the least friction possible. Then they can choose a server later when they learn how things operate.
@JonnyT @RetroWizzard there’s always downsides, but it beats them not signing up at all
@thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard I don't disagree with you but how would that work in practice? A 'generic' instance in this case would get very large, very quickly. And that would mean that people's experience of Mastodon would also have the potential to get very shitty, very quickly due to the prospect of a lack of or poor moderation. Thus the experience could be worse than they would have had from randomly being assigned an instance or choosing their own.
@JonnyT @RetroWizzard a small percentage of people having a bad experience is still better than most people not signing up and telling everybody that it’s impossible to even sign up
Btw I didn’t have a bad experience on mastodon.social where I had my main account for 5 years.
I think you’re fishing for reasons to support your belief. Think about that maybe you’re wrong about this, it happens.
@thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard But it doesn't though. They'll go back to where they were before and tell everyone that this place is terrible - and they'd be justified in doing so - and you'd get more people not even bothering to try joining.
I don't think the instance problem is one that is trivial to solve.
@JonnyT @RetroWizzard still beats them never signing up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard Again, I'm not disagreeing that being assigned an instance rather than having to pick one is the wrong approach but just shoving everyone into the same 'generic' instance may also not be the best way to do it. Using mastodon.social as an example - they did struggle back in November with moderation when the first and second large influxes from Twitter occurred and it almost got them defederated by a lot of other instances at the time.
@GrumpusNation true though this happens with modern audio codecs sometimes too
@thomasfuchs "Like a broken record" is just one of those metaphors that don't make sense to teh kidz anymore… Sad!
@jonhendry @JonnyT @RetroWizzard I assume you suggest this because of langauges, but languages aren’t a strictly geographic thing.
@JonnyT @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard
Spin up a bunch of instances based on geography, and put people in the instance that corresponds to the region they're located in.
@chronos I agree that it’s not a perfect solution and there’s problems with mastodon.social (moderation, rules) that are independent of the signing up part.
I don’t know how a solution for that could look like. Maybe some sort of oversight board with elections etc; but those have their own issues.
But it’s still better for the network to not lose people forever at sign up.
@thomasfuchs I'm less concerned about having a default instance -- yes, it's true, I'm concerned about that, but it's a pretty minor concern. I'm more concerned that that instance is m.s, which has had massive moderation problems because Eugen has historically behaved in a way consistent with the idea that only coding counts as "real work", not moderation or community management. While he's far from a full-on "freeze peach"-er, he seems to have a lot of unexamined Reddit/HN-adjacent libertarian ideas that come through in his behavior, and he's burned a lot of bridges with people who were volunteers or employees because they didn't write code.
@thomasfuchs this is 100% the largest problem for adoption. Email has the same issue, except: email is now required for basic everyday things, and gmail/outlook.com exist, so they ARE the system defaults for email.
@thomasfuchs "choose an instance" is definitely a hurdle to wider uptake & that's a bad thing.
Do you have opinions on solutions? Better directory / lookup / search that hid the decision behind questions about interests in might work but feels a bit clunky.
Wider uptake might come if orgs set up their own instances & people joined the one for their work / sports team / newspaper / political party etc. So that interests led to an instance rather than finding an instance that matches interests.
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