Just reached 20 millions today

The how-to-search-for-people-to-follow thing caused me trouble with Mastodon. I could handle getting a client and an account, but actually finding people not on the same instance as me was a challenge. Discoverability was pretty broken.

Bluesky doesn't seem to have that problem.

Lemmy I've stuck with because it handles that better.

Download "Mastodon" from an app store. Create an account. Post.

It's been a few years since you last tried, right?

install an app and make an account

Mastodon is pretty much the same now

There is an option to pick another server, but non-technical users are probably going to glance over it entirely

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/04/official-apps-now-available-for-ios-and-android/

AFAIK, Mastodon has exactly the same experience as BS if you just download the Mastodon official client and pick the main mastodon.social instance.

And as far as finding people to follow, just follow some hashtags to start with. Like #boston should immediately got you local users and news and #mac for computer news, etc etc. Following 5 or 10 hashtags will get you a pretty strong initial feed on mastodon.social, I suspect.

This is either outdated information, or purposeful misinformation.

The general user base is off putting and creates a shit experience. The fediverse will unfortunately never grow beyond a niche platform. It’s a great idea, it’s too bad so many of the people are such shit. Even in this thread another user calmly pointed out what non technical users care about and sure enough, someone with their head so far up their ass they probably haven’t been able to walk outside in weeks is blasting off while smelling their own farts because it’s so inconceivable that some portions of the population may not be as technical or similarly vested in things as they are.

And full of propaganda, especially from Lemmy.ml

Not surprising to me that its faltering, but very disappointing

Something that could be fixed if creative types and fun people would just flood the place already. The place is being held hostage by social misers and digital HOA Karens.

My Lemmy experience is kinda shit, but Mastodon is alright

where are you primarily getting your fediverse access, because that's not my experience at all

Hey, I'm depressive and not very fun, lack creativity too.

I'm not disagreeing, just voicing my well, fuck you too over here.

(But bring some people over, post lemmy links on that skytwatter before it turns toxic)

I’ll miss you when you’re gone… hope you find a comfortable place that tailors to your specific wants.

I tried to explain the Fediverse to the marketing department at my company and the looks of confusion just made me gave up.

ATproto is way more over-engineered than ActivityPub, and due to its crypto currency roots using merkle trees it simply cannot scale decentralized.

The analogy the other day works well, aside from the LaTeX one which still feels like a stretch

• Firefox : Chrome
• Linux : Windows
• LaTex : MS Word
• actual Fediverse : Bluesky's Fediverseᵀᴹ

However I'm happy to be here. Mastodon is getting a boost right now too. Even if they didn't, and everyone on Twitter moved to bluesky, I don't expect those instances to close up shop

Twitter is taking punches but far from dying. 586M MonthlyActiveUsers

Users: ermagerd, I haVe to ChoSe a SeRveR! tHiS is SO diFFicUlT!!! 😭😭😭

"but you need to do the same for email..."

Lol, I think you haven't explored the furryverse, my friend.

What does Loona from Helluva Boss have to do with this?

Yay! I'm part of the problem!

yet onto another centralized platform

Yeah, let the project serve a few thousand then die off entirely well before 2030. That's what this should be.

Let's barely be a blip on the radar and make no difference at all to how the future of Internet fora goes.

Let's do to the fediverse idea what some families do to a discounted grill, use it a few times a year then throw it in a dumpster when it gets rusty.

Fiddling while the first real chance at breaking the corporate capture of the web burns because you want to feel intellectually superior to the normies is kinda shit, ngl

Programmers either don’t understand that “nice to look at and use” is actually a really important aspect of an app/program, or it’s a lot harder to do that well than it seems from the outside. I really don’t know. When it’s just one person making the whole thing, it makes sense that they split their work where they can.

It could be both. I guess the former is widespread amongst Linux-based hobby coders who use a minimalist window manager or even a terminal multiplexer instead of a full-blown desktop environment. They don't see the appeal in good UIs.

But they may also fall victim to the latter because they see good UIs so rarely that they simply don't know what good UIs look like. That, and most hobby FLOSS coders are backend devs above all. Even if you assemble 20 hobby coders for a project, you may have to appoint one who'll begrudgingly have to make a UI without actually knowing how.

At least, some Fediverse server applications can not only be themed, but you can replace the entire Web UI. And there are capable UI designers in the Fediverse, just not so many as capable full-stack devs. Granted, they may not be on the same level as frontend devs with Apple paychecks, but still.

For example, Pleroma and Akkoma have gotten to a point where, I guess, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE only see so much use because not everybody has heard of stuff like Mangane yet. But people who have gotten a taste of Mangane usually don't want to go back.

Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are so extensively themeable that a user-selectable theme is very close to an all-new frontend. In practice, Hubzilla's themeability fell victim to the effort of keeping Hubzilla's monstrous backend maintained, and so it's down to one theme whose name is not the only hint at it being stuck in 2012. Well, enter people who make new third-party themes to stop Hubzilla being as unuseable as it's being made out to be.

You must do some pretty niche searches on PornHub.

Because for some reason people in the fediverse are obsessed with getting others off of mainstream socials

I usually go with "Elon's Musk" cos it sounds gross and he is gross

That's preferred. I remember when reddit absorbed all the outflow of Boomers from Facebook, and they slung shit on the walls with abandon until every corner reeked.