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   mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:15:12 JST mcc

   I don't know who to hear this but the reason why Bluesky is beating Mastodon among many broad communities is because Bluesky did a better job of anticipating user desires

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:15:11 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP

     @mcc Perhaps. Bluesky also didn't bother with decentralization when it launched, skipping past the hard problems of onboarding and discovery that are unique to decentralized systems. Sure, no normal person cares about "decentralization"... until another billionaire buys your favourite platform and turns it into a right-wing propaganda machine.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:26:32 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • masukomi

     @masukomi @mcc We did switch it up to a big prominent "Join mastodon.social" button in the official apps and the landing website around 2 years ago (to the chagrin of many a hardcore fediverse enthusiast) but unnfortunately a little late as by that point the opinion that Mastodon was "too difficult to join" already had inertia in the press and public consciousness.

   • Embed this notice
     masukomi (masukomi@connectified.com)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:26:34 JST masukomi

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @Gargron @mcc Yeah, people just bounce right off the "I have to pick a server?!" onboarding step.

     Mastodon could have anticipated everyone's desires perfectly and It still wouldn't "win" because of that.

     I don't know why that's so 🤯 for folks when it's the exact same thing as getting an email account BUT it IS and I think ALL decentralized systems are going to loose out to centralized ones until someone comes up with a solution.

   • Embed this notice
     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:27:18 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @Gargron @mcc All the more reason to treat the user experience problems with Mastodon seriously, so that the people who are at the mercy of network effects and get sucked into new sites like Bluesky are relatively less harmed by them.

     I agree with your point here but when you say it it smacks of defensiveness. I understand the impulse to be defensive here but the better thing is to double-down on making the UX better, particularly in terms of making public statements.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 08:36:46 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Glyph

     @glyph @mcc We've had a professional designer on the team on a freelance basis since 2021, recently we hired a full-time Product Designer to replace him. I'm not sure where the idea that we don't treat user experience seriously comes from, so it's difficult for me to address it.

   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 09:03:28 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Glyph
     • rakoo

     @rakoo @glyph @mcc This is also something we've worked on for the past year: Fediscovery. A protocol for delegating discovery, search, moderation and other tasks that benefit from aggregation to external service providers. A Mastodon admin could connect their server to a FASP of their choice and receive an up-to-date trending feed, account search etc. It's not something you can't do on the fediverse, you just need to respect the consent mechanics.

   • Embed this notice
     rakoo (rakoo@blah.rako.space)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 09:03:30 JST rakoo

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko
     • Glyph
     @glyph
     There were experiments to provide a network-wide search. To create a thing so that you could look for people you know, or what was happening in the wide, across instances. But a part of the community disagreed with the very idea so no one wants to take the risk to run it again. Mastodon has problems, but to think that only the software or the project is blocking adoption is just deflecting blame.
     
     @Gargron @mcc
   • Embed this notice
     mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 10:19:11 JST mcc

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @Gargron Yes, I'm having a very interesting experience with that right now myself.

     https://bsky.app/profile/dryad.technology/post/3lwft53ppf226

     I self host my Bluesky account. But the other day they locked me out of the website, because I haven't agreed to the new site rules yet. I can keep using the phone app because I turned off updates (until it breaks), and I can do *some* things on PC using open source tools like pdsls, but that only works for viewing my *own* posts, not things like notifications which require the "Relay".

   • Embed this notice
     LillyLyle/Count Melancholia (lillyherself@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Aug-2025 13:11:30 JST LillyLyle/Count Melancholia

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @Gargron @mcc A big problem was the "advanced" UI being the default when people signed up. ➡️ I hope that's been changed now!
     At least half my contacts took one look at that UI and fled to BlueSky.
     It's better to give newcomers a more normal interface at the beginning.
     Additionally, those who were used to compulsively quote posting everything felt hand-tied. I personally think it's better without, but for several of my friends it was a game breaker.