2. I don't have to put my hand in the fire to know that it's hot. I can see a friend get burned, and learn the lesson through their pain. When they warn me that fire is hot, I believe them.
Said another way, the influential first Black women who tried to land on Mastodon got burned very badly, and told all their friends on Twitter that this place is hell.
@mekkaokereke@james Except this doesn't explain why people we had relationships personally, decided after zero experience on here, to wait and go to BS. The Twitter front end is the entire reason why all of these people went over there. They wanted something easy. Trust me. The vast number of people that just migrated last week are all of the notion that this is too complicated. They do not care as long as it is easy for them and they don't have to put any work in. And they care deeply about follower counts.
Even your response, without a shred of irony, says absolutely nothing about making Mastodon better, but is full of value judgements of your friends for choosing a better UX.
And we act like there's something noble about fighting through bad UX, and being "Willing to work for it." There's not. It's just bad UX, and a bad on-boarding experience.
You don't have 20 million friends. And I'm guessing that most of your friends aren't Black. So you might be extrapolating your friend group out to everyone else.
What I call "good UX," you're framing as "they don't want to work for it." On that we agree.
"They care deeply about follower counts." "They don't care about decentralization." On that we agree, for a subset of users. Again, empathy. That's why it's important to support early adopters who don't care about followers.
@mekkaokereke@james My reply is based in two years of concerted effort to get very close friends over here. This included making our own instance. Doing everything technically imagineable so that they wouldn't have to worry about that. They do not care about decentralization, at all. This must be addressed. The vast majority of people that are over on bluesky are never going to leave that server. That is important to understand. It has nothing to do with Mastodon or the Fediverse and what has been presented to them. Making the fediverse into Twitter 2.0 is not the answer. This still comes down to the fact that there are billionaires funding that entire operation and that it is a for-profit corporation.
@mekkaokereke@james the fact that I've wanted a way to subscribe to blocklists on Mastodon as a kind of "web of trust" feature that would be EASIEST to do with ActivityPub since
y'know
publishing payloads is KIND OF THE THING
and BlueSky just like does that from the jump...
It's baffling to me. That Mastodon has resisted this kind of idea for this long, I mean.
@mekkaokereke@noondlyt@james Folks do not realize the damage they did to Mastodon by chasing off the Black women who first came over when Elon bought Twitter. They went back, told other Black folks not to come here, and that killed any chance Mastodon was going to have to grow like Bluesky is now, my chasing off the culture-makers. I couldn’t get any Black folks to come over here after that.
Serapath, you've understood zero of what I posted and are without irony, doing exactly what I said in my original reply: * You're not talking at all about how to make Mastodon better * You're making unsupported claims about what the motivations of people that chose BlueSky are, based on your biased assumptions about what motivated them.
For example, you're going off about BlueSky marketing budget, when their user spikes are not based on marketing. 1/N
it's always the early adopters who see a vision who do it first and when everyone that made the old/previous place worth being there has left to the new place, those same uninspired that only go anywhere when it's FUN ...will follow, because they then recognize the FUN is in the new place.
People who only operate on the level of "fun" will definitely not ever be early adopters - they just dont understand much what things are about in this context
The "mainstream" loves "pop music" even though the industry is abusive and all the people supporting it without knowing. You could say the same about capitalism.
Now the thing is, at least those who learn more should lead by good example to be connected to their peers in better ways and keep doors open for others to join.
"we should educate people" is doomed from the start. People don't need to use Mastodon for their job or to get government services. They are on socials for fun--they aren't going to take a class to learn how to make it work for them! Either it's easy and fun or it isn't.
"must show commitment to federation by putting up with broken shit" could be a valid entry requirement to keep out the shallow riff-raff if you want a more exclusive club. But you can't at the same time complain people would rather go somewhere else.
You're making unsupported claims about people who like fun are never early adopters. What? That's so silly I don't even know how to start to address it.
Your making silly claims about people who like pop music. Like, what?
You lack empathy, and you don't even pretend to listen to why people make the choices that they do, so you have no hope of understanding it. I'm not going to try to persuade you to listen to people, or to improve Mastodon.
I'll leave you to your fundamental attribution error:
BlueSky users are bad. Because they only seek fun. Got it. Unlike you: the good, unfun, noble Mastodon user! Saving the world, one federated post at a time!
(In a shocking twist, the world can only be saved in a place that is hostile to Black people. Who knew!)
No, you're not sharing your "observations." Because you haven't even bothered to observe. You're sharing your biases and preconceived notions about people you view as inferior to you.
Take a few moments to read the conversations about the lack of starter packs and shared blocklists on Mastodon, and why those are so important for community. Observe. Empathize.
Then read that the Mastodon team *is* building these features, but going is slow. Funding...
Not what i said. Bluesky is bad. Bluesky users who are into people controlling their own data and means of communication with each other probably are just victims of bluesky influencer marketing or they might actually not care - hard to say - they would know best.
But everyone who does care should definitely avoid bluesky.
Mastodon isnt perfect - i'm not even a big fan, but it is more decentralized. #nostr would be even better.
🤔"many people are ...something naive?broken?privileged?... you name it."
🤔"People who only operate on the level of "fun" will definitely not ever be early adopters - they just dont understand much what things are about in this context"
This is you saying things about people.
In my thread about improving Mastodon and having empathy for why people choose BlueSky.
And yes, I said stuff about you. Specifically, that you without irony, did a Mastodon.
I am making statements about bluesky. You are making statements about me.
biases, preconceived notions ...and argue about superiority and inferiority.
If you like hiking, you might prefer a national park over a crowded city... so in the context of hiking, hikers might say cities are inferior to crowded cities.
@mekkaokereke@james You are correct in that I am definitely speaking from my own experience. I am not trying to delegitimize anyone's actual experience on here. I saw the issues that many had and they need to be addressed. This place is far from perfect but it is better suited for change than Bluesky.
Popular and easy is what got us Trump. And yes, I am judgmental when it comes to people picking the billionaire funded social platforms.
@mekkaokereke@james I'd go as far as saying that the fediverse is kinda shit in ways that are invisible to the majority of the people who thrive here. The mix of deep survivorship bias and folks who are actively abusive to keep things the way they like it means that Mastodon will never be the network to fill the niche that Twitter and Bluesky fill
@mekkaokereke@james the VC rug pull is coming, but the Mastodon rug pull is present and perpetual. This post is only exemplary of, not particularly special:
- small instances are perpetually being fucked by the big ones. - your social graph exists at the whim of every damn site it touches - and we get a "you're doing mastodon wrong" for using it the way that even the algorithm averse ex twitter person wants to use it