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by chefandy 1060 days ago
Anybody considering ActivityPub for a general-audience social media project should give the challenges section a close read with an open mind and not reflexively minimize the negative parts of their experience. Before the big spike at the end of 2022, critiquing Mastodon's usability was tantamount to heresy in the FOSS crowd. Oddly, that didn't change much after many (most?) of those new users dropped Mastodon in the subsequent months. There is clearly a disconnect between what Mastodon offers, and what general, non-technical audiences want it to offer.

ActivityPub and Mastodon are both fucking awesome, and I'm confident the Fediverse can support a social media tool painless enough for grandpa to confidently migrate his fly-fishing discussion group to from his Facebook group. I'm also sure all of the good work folks are doing on the existing tool set will still be valuable in that world; but it's probably not going to be the thing that makes decentralized social media the standard rather than a distant fringe alternative to most non-technical folks. I've got my eye on Bluesky but I'd really love to see someone figure out a way to tighten things up non-commercially. I've tried digging into the problem a few times, but the conceptual simplicity of centralized social media is a huge selling point for regular folks.
1 comments
versteck 1060 days ago
The answer to that is https://elk.zone atm, a fun and chef's kiss interface (built with nuxt). You can insert elk.zone/ before any Mastodon url. https://phanpy.social is also great, with multi columns even for lists.

A browser plugin like https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplif... to follow, favorite, etc. directly on any server has also improved my experience a lot.

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chefandy 1060 days ago
Elk.zone looks cool and is definitely a nice face for Mastodon-- glad to know about it!

However, the disconnect between non-technical users and what Mastodon offers is far deeper than the timeline layout and interactions. If users must practically understand how to negotiate federation to satisfy their most basic requirement-- nearly effortlessly finding and interacting with their friends, family and other sources within the interface-- then it's a non-starter for that crowd.

Most developers seem not to realize a) how much more resistance dealing with the practical complexity of federation adds for non-technical users trying to do what they want to do, and b) how little resistance those users will tolerate to achieve their goals when they have free options. As it stands, the cost/benefit ratio to switching to Mastodon is not even in the ballpark of what it needs to be for nearly any social media user. Mastodon's huge active user base fluctuation 5-10 mos ago comprises about half a percent of Twitter's active monthly user base, which entirely leaves out Facebook, Instagram, Etc... and most of Mastodon's new ex-twitter users left.

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stefandesu 1060 days ago
Honest question about Elk (and I guess all other web clients): How do people use it when it doesn't remember your timeline position? When I open my Mastodon client, I want it to be where I left it, not at the top of the timeline. Maybe it's becoming unusual to be a timeline completionist, but I can only use clients that reliably remember my timeline position.
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