Chris Trottier
This take is annoying.
But it's also not entirely @gruber's fault because the media doesn't really talk about the Fediverse, and when they do, it's as a synonym for "Mastodon".
How would @gruber know about the massive development efforts to build more user-friendly alternatives to Mastodon?
No one in the media talks about the growth of *key apps, and how they're now the #2 most used Fediverse platform.
That story isn't being told.
Chris Trottier
Whenever I tell people that Mastodon isn't the Fediverse, the Mastodon stans start saying, "Oh, you sound like a guy who's complains that Linux isn't called GNU/Linux."
No, there's a massive difference.
To most people, whether you call something Linux or GNU/Linux doesn't affect the user experience of using the OS.
Referring to the Fediverse as "Mastodon" definitely affects the user experience of using Mastodon.
si_irini
@atomicpoet @gruber @fediversenews
It is quite simply mainstream....
I don't understand the debate about usability.
Yes it is different, not as easy as Twitter....
But hey who knows, maybe that's just fine and better that some don't understand how it works....
The mainstream promotes mainstream, maybe we should not follow it and be glad that it is so, let others follow the mainstream.
Chris Trottier
If Mastodon users don't know about the Fediverse, they don't know why the messages they receive look wonky sometimes.
"Why is this guy allowed to post with more than 500 characters?" they often wonder.
"Why are there links in this post? Why can't I see things that other people can?" they'll ask.
And then they realize, "Hey, that guy can quote post! I thought Mastodon didn't allow that! How is that possible?"
Well, yeah, because those deviations require the context of the Fediverse.
Chris Trottier
@Sbectol Most *key users are Japanese. The culture is inherently different.
But English-speaking *key culture is also different from Mastodon. It's more whimsical and fun.
I haven't seen many CW issues. But then again, *key doesn't have quite the same reach as Mastodon.
Sbectol :twt:
@atomicpoet I've not used *key but presumably the negatives are similar there as here?
The issues of moderation etc must be similar across the Fediverse.. or have they somehow dealt with the CW issues that POC pointed out were unfriendly to them?
Chris Trottier
@randulo I don't know if anyone has written something up, but here's a comparison graph.
Chris Trottier
@j_bertolotti The https://calckey.org site just came online. Here's an explanation: https://calckey.org/blog/en/calckey/
j_bertolotti
@atomicpoet
To be fair, even by specifically googling it, it is not easy to find a decent explanation of what calckey&co are, and why one should bother.
And this is a problem common to a lot of the fediverse: there are a lot of options out there, but for a newcomer it is almost impossible to learn about it (and I am speaking from personal experience).
Chris Trottier
@j_bertolotti But of course, it would probably be a better idea to just try #Calckey. Seeing is believing.
Benjamin
@atomicpoet Are you suggesting there isn't a massive difference of user experience between using Linux vs using GNU/Linux? WOOOW. 😬😉
Definitely trickier to market the "network" though. Every time I've brought up Mastodon/Calckey etc. it's been as an entry-point to discussing the Fediverse. By which point their eyes have glazed over and they're doing that nodding thing that indicates that they wish to walk away now.
Chris Trottier
@gr0k But this is what I'm saying. Perhaps it's wrong to call Mastodon *the* social network. It is server software for the social network, which is the Fediverse.
It's only a social network in the same sense that nginx is the Internet.
gr0k
@atomicpoet @fediversenews There's definitely something to what @gruber is saying. With manual account approval on mastodon.social and it being pushed as the default, I'd love to see the abandonment rate... Perhaps it's different when signing up through a phone? But getting someone all excited about trying a new social network is hard enough. Now they have to retain that excitement for an unknown amount of time, and then care enough to engage at some later date... Not much fun...
Chris Trottier
@rmattila74 Point is, you can. The limitation is only such because *your* server sets it.
Riku Mattila
@atomicpoet Even if you can, it doesn't necessarily mean you should. I think the 500-character limit is good.
Chris Trottier
@BenjaminNelan I find it easy to explain.
Have you seen this website?
Chris Trottier
@randulo The default character limit on #Calckey is 3,000 characters.
Benjamin
@atomicpoet Yes of course! That website's fantastic.
Unfortunately as I've discovered though everyone doesn't understand email.
Chris Trottier
@dilectric It's not ease of use if the social network doesn't behave as the user believes it should.
Let me give you an example.
Joe on Lemmy is commenting on a group post.
Sally on Mastodon sees that comment, makes a reply, doesn't understand the context -- because she doesn't know that Joe is talking to a group.
And why would she? Mastodon doesn't support groups. She doesn't expect people on her social network to make use of groups.
Dilectric
@atomicpoet All true, but:
Why, as a user who just wants to do some social interaction, would I want to know about all these differences?
Ease of use ist king, and while some features of the Fediverse may be great for a group of geeks, they keep many other people from embracing it.
Chris Trottier
@ahausb Bluesky's onboarding experience isn't even worth comparing right now because:
1. It's just as hard, if not harder, to join as Mastodon -- you need an invite code
2. Bluesky only has one node, it's not decentralized yet
3. Bluesky hasn't build so many basic things (like DMs) that of course Bluesky seems "simple"
Why not wait till Bluesky is mature and then compare?
Andreas Hausberger
@atomicpoet The difference is if people go "Hey I want to be on Bluesky" the platform says "yes sure, join here". If people go "Hey I want to be on Mastodon" the platform (and its users) say "Well actually, it's The Fediverse and Mastodon isn't even that good compared to XYZ, and you really shouldn't join the most popular server".
The Fediverse is probably the best and only truly viable form of social media. But so far, we've done an extremely poor job creating a good onboarding experience for people who aren't into tech stuff.
Chris Trottier
@BenjaminNelan Is it, though?
Because most people know what the "Internet" is.
They also know what "email" is.
They know what an "chat app" is.
It's fucking easy to just say, "Hey, imagine if someone could see your Facebook posts on Instagram."
The real problem is that no one wants to socialize a new mental paradigm.
Benjamin
@atomicpoet So many people just see 'the app' - ie. the Gmail icon for so many people is 'email,' they don't necessarily know or care what's going on under the hood or the 'fediverse' of other email servers.
Whether it's bluesky, cohost, spoutible, t2 social etc. a lot of these places are 'one thing' - 'Join the Fediverse' is a far more taxing decision.
Chris Trottier
@dilectric Whatever the case, the fact Mastodon doesn't tell users about the other parts of the Fediverse makes it *less* usable, not more.
If people simply had an icon that indicated the message came from outside Mastodon, that would make a world of difference.
Dilectric
@atomicpoet That is exactly what I mean. People don't like it because of such experiences, call it varying feature sets or missing ease of use or whatever.
You simply don't have such experiences in the cozy one-size-fits-all context of other social networks.
Benjamin
@atomicpoet @j_bertolotti I personally love the design here by the way.
It would be interesting to hear from folks who aren't familiar with the Fediverse whether or not this kind of stuff makes sense though.
As I was saying before, it's harder to market the network.
'Connected to the Fediverse' I imagine would be ambiguous to people who don't know what it is. It could be easy to draw the conclusion that you can 'Log in with Mastodon, PixelFed, etc' rather than what it's really describing.
Benjamin
@atomicpoet I agree with you, I'm just communicating my experience explaining it to folks.
I've asked people what email service they use and they've said, "what do you mean?"
"Well how do you get emails sent to you?"
"Just on my phone,"
And it often ends up being Gmail or .me and they've typically signed up for stuff by pressing the 'Sign in with X' button. Or they have it written down somewhere because they type it in so infrequently it's not important to memorize.
Chris Trottier
@markrprior @dilectric Sometimes Mastodon renders the original message correctly, sometimes it doesn't.
For example, on https://calckey.social, people might be sending you emoji reactions. Mastodon doesn't show that.
Mark Prior
@atomicpoet @dilectric does a message include that sort of information or would it need to be fetched?
Chris Trottier
@markrprior @dilectric Yes, take a look at the top right corner of this screenshot. There's an icon that tells me this message came from Mastodon.
Mark Prior
@atomicpoet @dilectric but could Mastodon know that via some mechanism? i.e. is calckey sending something that mastodon just doesn't understand?
Chris Trottier
@rmattila74 @jo Yeah, that's a problem. Most Mastodon users expect 500 characters. Then some guy comes over with 5,000 characters.
Too bad you don't know what you're in for because Mastodon doesn't tell you!
People came here because they were sold on a Twitter replacement. Little did they know that someone's very long blog post would also join the party.
But that could be fixed *if* Mastodon set the expectation that other apps use the same protocol.
Riku Mattila
@jo @atomicpoet It is an accessibility issue. For people with physical limitations, participating in discussion gets increasingly unequal, the longer the posts become. I for example can only type 200-300 characters before pausing to rest my eyes. Anything over 500 is practically off-limits for me. Which is OK if done on purpose but something many people don't automatically realize.
Jo
@rmattila74@mastodo.fi It's arbitrary and is only seen as good conduct within parts of one part of the Fediverse, which has existed longer than Mastodon has. Even if you limit your scope just to the bunch of microblogging services alone, it's still not the norm.
@atomicpoet@mastodon.social
Riku Mattila
@atomicpoet True. But nevertheless sticking to it seems like good conduct.
Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한🦣
@jupiter_rowland @randulo LOL. I've been thinking about doing this too, but it's too daunting. For one, we have to manually test each feature to be able to present it correctly and be fair with every project.
Glad you started it already! ^_^
Jupiter Rowland
Randulo.com
@youronlyone @jupiter_rowland
This was my starting point, but it obviously lacks federated sites, Mastodon and DIaspora are on it for the moment. Is there a federated documents sharing site?
Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한🦣
@randulo Good question. Sadly, I don't think there is one (yet). A wiki, or git, is still the best option.
Xantulon :mastodon: :pixelfed:
@atomicpoet clearly these people don't understand GNU, Linux or GNU/Linux. A better analogy would be comparing different Linux distributions. Tails for this, Ubuntu for that, Fedora for something else, and then there are the desktop environments on top of that, like all of the clients for each of the fediverse apps
Kevin Davidson
@csolisr @maegul @atomicpoet @markrprior It’s a difficult problem. It’s one Bluesky claim they know how to do, but absolutely do not when you check into it. CalcKey is close to having a minimally functional version, with some of the problems I discuss in this post
https://metalsamurai.wordpress.com/2023/03/26/more-on-mastodon-and-portable-identities/
(They tried it and turned it off when they hit the timeline spamming problem I talk about in the post)
Chris Trottier
@MetalSamurai @csolisr @maegul @markrprior The timeline flooding problem with post imports can be solved if users are put on silence while they undergo the process.
A bigger problem is that when you have a critical mass of users, all trying to import their posts, this becomes incredibly taxing on the server.
Kevin Davidson
@markrprior @maegul @atomicpoet Once you’ve seen Emoji reactions and the parallel world you’re missing out on, it feels restricting to go back. CalcKey is promising to let me transfer all my posts as well (with different URLs, but that’s another issue the Fediverse as a whole needs to address).
Carlos Solís
Mark Prior
@MetalSamurai @maegul @atomicpoet I'm pretty sure that IceCubes handles long posts OK, you've just got to be on an instance that has increased the toot limit. There are a number with it set at 5,000 and then there is infosec.exchange at 11,000.
Kevin Davidson
@maegul @atomicpoet I’ve got accounts on Mastodon, Akkoma, CalcKey, Friendica (and a couple of WriteFreely instances). I almost entirely use mobile (iOS), so a good app experience makes the biggest difference to me.
So far Mastodon/Ice Cubes wins. Fast, slick, power efficient (I used to use Metatext and that drained my battery quickly). I’m missing long posts and emoji reactions.
CalcKey/Kimis is close. Give me post editing and updated Kimis and I might switch.
maegul
Just trying to be neutral here, of all the fediverse platforms I've tried/looked at (Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, calckey, Akkoma(?)), Mastodon might be my least favourite (which doesn't mean bad), though there are probably features that I'm taking for granted.
Chris Trottier
@Cassandra Yes, this is the problem. They’re not being told about the Fediverse, they’re being told about Mastodon.
Cassandra
@atomicpoet
Because when people see "Mastodon can't" they are thinking of Mast the platform, not Mast the app.
Chris Trottier
@jupiter_rowland The Calc part is because @thatonecalculator started the project.
Jupiter Rowland
E. Hatt-Swank
@j_bertolotti @atomicpoet
I have to jump into this very interesting discussion to ask one semi-related question: why "Calckey"?
I'm new to the Fediverse, using Mastodon & loving it, eager to try out some of the other Fedi apps. But "Calckey" sounds like some math application or perhaps a spreadsheet. It's freaking me out! 🙂
j_bertolotti
@atomicpoet
Trying a new social media is an enormous amount of effort and time spent. You can't expect people to sign in and spend a significant amount of time in it just to see what it is.
The intro page to Calckey you linked is a start, but it assumes the reader already knows very well how the fediverse work, and how the different platforms there connect to each other. This might be obvious to you, but trust me, it is not obvious at all to most people (me included).
Chris Trottier
@ahriboy @ehattswank @j_bertolotti And further to that @thatonecalculator was the one who started the #Calckey project.
@thatonecalculator + #Misskey = Calckey
Ahri Boy 💙💛:blobhajtransprideheart:
@ehattswank@masto.ai @j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz @atomicpoet@mastodon.social Calckey is a fork of Misskey. Misskey is a Japanese product.
Jay Peach
@atomicpoet @randulo and i have an account on electronicmusic.social, a mastodon instance, that has some ridiculously hugh character count, too. No off topic posts allowed tho.
Jay Peach
@gruber @atomicpoet @fediversenews the *key apps are a bit bleeding edge for me. Most instances appear to have less than 20 users. Where’s a user instance that’s friendly to musicians. No, I don’t want to run an instance myself.
Chris Trottier
@jaypeach53 @gruber @fediversenews That would probably be https://calckey.art. I’m in the process of seeding that server with content. I’ll start banging the drum on that in two weeks.
Mark Britten
@atomicpoet @gruber @fediversenews Bluesky has it's own issues in terms of who is currently using it and such, which might put a lot people off. Whether it puts off the same people Mastodon / other fediverse apps attract is a different question.
Jay Peach
@gruber @fediversenews @atomicpoet. i’m liking calckey.art a lot. Interesting denizens and calckey looks to be a winner.
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