adminFinal thoughts how to improve #Mastodon from ex-Twitter Designer Jon Bell @gargron
“I want to share some thoughts as an ex-Twitter designer and someone who’s been on Mastodon since 2018.
1/ I was lucky enough to soak in Twitter’s data for years. So I could see what features people actually responded to, and which we just assumed they’d respond to.
Buckle up, I have some interesting news that you, as a Mastodon user, are going to disagree with.
People don’t like reverse-chron timelines. (head explodes)
Let me explain myself. 2/ As a Mastodon user, you’re waaaaaay more likely than the average user to love reverse-chron with no algorithm. It’s one of the main selling points for Mastodon!
But it’s not rooted in what we saw in seemingly hundreds of different #designresearch findings.
The reason Twitter almost died so many times at the start is that normal people aren’t looking for an IRC or RSS experience. So people joined, got frustrated, and left.
It took THREE YEARS to turn users into “healthy users.” That’s bad.
3/ Designers love talking about #empathy , but it can be hard to walk the walk. What do you do when literally 97% of your users are saying “I don’t like trying to curate a good timeline, and I don’t like having to scroll to keep up with everything, and I feel like I’m missing out on the good stuff, and I’m confused?”
Bad designers say “Deal with it.”
Good designers say “Hm. This is a problem to solve.”
And that’s where algorithmic timelines, guide, moments, editorial content, etc came from.
4/ I remember when we moved from strict reverse-chron (which 97% struggle with) to “You might like” prompts (which 3% struggle with) and hearing from the VERY LOUD minority that we were destroying Twitter.
But we saw as the 97% had a much better time. We saw that every step forward we took (I have a whole presentation on this) was helping people more and more.
The data told us we were making a better product. And that reverse-chron kinda sucks. For most people.
5/ I remember when we added quote tweet, and we have the receipts. It does not increase abuse. (Source: I was the lead designer on the abuse team)
You know what increases abuse? Reverse-chron replies without any sorting or algorithm, because someone can say “Kill yourself” as the first response. It becomes a game. It silences people.
6/ My team rolled out mute keywords, which people SCREAMED at us about, saying it was killing the concept of “just show me everything” Twitter.
Victims of abuse, who aren’t nearly as loud, thanked us quietly.
We rolled out “hide replies” which almost caused an internal riot, and was shelved for three years, but eventually it went live.
Again, some people said we were killing Twitter. Again, they were wrong.
7/ Mastodon is exciting for a ton of reasons. I love it. I want it to succeed. But … have you read Animal Farm?
As Mastodon grows up, and tries to reach beyond the early adopters, please listen to your users.
They’ll guide you to some features that cannot be optional in a system like this. And, sorry, a lot of them will feel like traditional Twitter.
#inconvenienttruth Not because people have baggage, but because humans are going to human and certain things are inevitable. Good luck with everything. I hope sharing some of these opinions and experiences helps the fediverse in some small way.
I’m rooting for you. Goodnight. https://social.lot23.com/@jon
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