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
@mcc@mastodon.social 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.
@Gargron@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social 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.
@Gargron@mastodon.social 
@Gargron@mastodon.social 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".
@Gargron@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social 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 it is coming from you, personally, 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.
@Gargron@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social 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.
@glyph@mastodon.social
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@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
@glyph@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social 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.
@rakoo@blah.rako.space @glyph@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social 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.
@masukomi@connectified.com @Gargron@mastodon.social @mcc@mastodon.social
If people can't cope with picking a social network server, how do they cope with picking a phone provider? Phones are federated and everyone uses them.
Obviously there's room for improvement in the process of picking a server, but it's kind of weird to say people will NEVER be able to cope with picking a server.
@masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social 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 unfortunately 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.
@FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social I agree with you in principle, and e-mail/ISP is the correct way to conceptualize this to other people. But to play devil's advocate, most areas don't have more than 2-3 providers available to them, and there's a lot more review/comparison material available to them on the web and in traditional media. It is an unfortunate truth that for a brand new user, no matter how many signals we put on the screen, there is no way to make an informed choice until much later.
@Gargron@mastodon.social @FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social That makes me wonder…
Have you considered, or is it even possible to have an on boarding process where the country of origin is selected and nearby instances that have already agreed to accept newcomers are presented? That way it might reduce the amount of choice paralysis?
@FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social I agree with you in principle, and e-mail/ISP is the correct way to conceptualize this to other people. But to play devil's advocate, most areas don't have more than 2-3 providers available to them, and there's a lot more review/comparison material available to them on the web and in traditional media. It is an unfortunate truth that for a brand new user, no matter how many signals we put on the screen, there is no way to make an informed choice until much later.
@Gargron@mastodon.social @FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social That makes me wonder…
Have you considered, or is it even possible to have an on boarding process where the country of origin is selected and nearby instances that have already agreed to accept newcomers are presented? That way it might reduce the amount of choice paralysis?
@Gargron@mastodon.social @FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social That makes me wonder…
Have you considered, or is it even possible to have an on boarding process where the country of origin is selected and nearby instances that have already agreed to accept newcomers are presented? That way it might reduce the amount of choice paralysis?
@Gargron@mastodon.social @FediThing@social.chinwag.org @masukomi@connectified.com @mcc@mastodon.social That makes me wonder…
Have you considered, or is it even possible to have an on boarding process where the country of origin is selected and nearby instances that have already agreed to accept newcomers are presented? That way it might reduce the amount of choice paralysis?
mcc
Eugen Rochko
