For those that have poked around other fediverse stuff beyond Lemmy, and been around the spaces awhile, what’s stuck out to you as stumbling blocks, or basic user experience fumbles? Which parts do you think may be technical, and which may be cultural?
netsplits/defederation.
You can’t just tell someone to register for any server, and they will be able to see everything. So they then have to choose a server, which takes effort, and can cause analysis paralysis.
Maybe that is exactly what we need to do, to spare them from the indecision. Recommend them to a specific instance to sign up and follow you (if in doubt, the instance we use). I suppose we can mention there are lots of choices, and those who are inclined that way will want to explore other servers, many are not, and for them pointing them at a server may be best.
I’m just thinking that trying to say there are lots of networks, each with lots of servers etc, may be the problem.
Alternatively, should ask them some questions like do they want to post short format or long text format, and take into account a specific interest they have, and then we still recommend a server instance to them to join.
So for fellow ham radio operators, I just pointed them all to the ham radio Mastodon instance and said sign up there.
The ability to “float” between servers would go a long way to improve this. Make an account on one server, then come across another that you vibe with more, and single button press and you’ve transferred. All you subs, comment history etc are preserved (for overlapping federated servers). No idea how to implement this, but it feel achievable, perhaps with a quick step to set up a new password and username if it was taken.
We can compose a list of instances with sane blocklists for each software and audit from time to time.
Yeah, but then the blocklists themselves become a centralized feature. I’m not saying “don’t block the fascists”, just that it’s going to be hard to maintain a blocklist.
I can totally see the Fediverse going the way of email, as in you need a reasonably large amount of capital to maintain a well-respected, not defederated-from server.
By ‘sane blocklists’ I meant small and auditable blocklists actually. There are instances like programming.dev, lemmy on sdf and the instance I’m on that don’t preemptively defederate from other instances. That’s what I meant.
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what’s stuck out to you as stumbling blocks, or basic user experience fumbles?
For Lemmy:
- Onboarding. Newcomers should not have to decide which instance to use. They know nothing to make that decision. An algorithm should make an educated guess. Even a random pick might be better than forcing them to choose. Manual choice should still be available as an advanced signup method, but the default should be as quick and simple as possible.
- Account Migration. The lack thereof only increases the pressure for making a good choice for your first instance. If we could easily migrate accounts, this would also ease the signup burden. 3rd party tools exist, but this should be a core feature.
- Discovery. There exist dozens of tools for discovering communities, which shows how bad the built-in search function is. This should be a core feature with no need for 3rd party tools. I should not have to care wether someone else from my instance already searched for the same community or wether I’m the first.
- Stream Aggregation. I signed up to loads of niche communities (which do get new posts), but never see any of those in my stream, no matter which mode I choose. I even started to unsubscribe from big communities to give smaller content a chance, to no avail. This effectively hides original and interesting content from view, and makes the overall experience more boring.
- Remote Instance Posts and Comments. When looking up a specific post or comment, I probably cannot do so while being logged in. Which means, I can read it, but cannot interact with it.
- Remote Instance Communities. When browsing the communities of another instance (for example, a themed instance like mander.xyz), I can only do so while being logged out. When I find an interesting community, I have to manually copy the link, search for it in another logged-in tab, find it again, to finally subscribe.
- Lack of Niche Content. It’s getting better, but we still have a long way to go. This probably needs more general growth, but some technical aspects (like Stream Aggregation, Discovery and Remote Instance Browsing) also make it harder for niche communities to gain traction.
- GDPR Compliance. A private person and a public institution (which publishes educational content and videos) explicitly mentioned to me that they cannot join Lemmy since Lemmy cannot assure GDPR Compliance. I don’t know wether that’s true, just reporting the reason.
Overall, it still requires significant willingness to either accept missing features and content, or jump through technical hoops to regain some.
My experience on other fediverse platforms was similar, which most often resulted in me staying away from that particular service for now.
@Spzi @ALostInquirer Stream aggregation would be huge for me. It’s the main reason I don’t spend as much time on lemmy.
Controversial and probably unpopular opinion:
- the biggest hurdle the fediverse faces is that it’s not run by a business with monetary incentives to make it more popular and doesn’t have any marketing / market research / product managers focused on gaining users.
I’m someone who hates advertising with a burning and seething passion, and I’m no lover of capitalism, but from a systemic standpoint there’s a reason most open source projects burn out and go nowhere, and for-profit businesses have a higher chance of survival, because there’s direct incentives (you know money/food) to keep making commercial software and increasing it’s user base, but there isn’t for hobbyist and open source software. Especially in the case of a social network that is only as valuable as the content and users on it, this might be a long term systemic issue.
most open source projects burn out and go nowhere, and for-profit businesses have a higher chance of survival
You know like 50% of new businesses fail within 5 years, right? I don’t have stats on open source projects, but it seems to me those are more likely to fail because they’re run by one person who loses interest than because they don’t have a profit motive.
You know like 50% of new businesses fail within 5 years, right?
Yes, that is a remarkably low failure rate. 99.9% of open source projects sit unused and abandoned after 5 years.
those are more likely to fail because they’re run by one person who loses interest than because they don’t have a profit motive.
They’re run by one person because they don’t have a profit motive, so they don’t need to hire QA, market research etc. etc. All the parts of a software company that help to keep continuously developing their software and make sure users are happy.
Dude, yes, they’re run by one person because it’s a hobby. This is like saying 99.9% of stories don’t get published because there was no profit motive. There usually isn’t when it starts, just a drive to create or fill a perceived void, or even just practice. I write damn near every day with zero profit motive.
Linux wasn’t started with a profit motive. None of the open source BSDs were either. As far as I can tell, they’re still not particularly profit motivated. Neither are a lot of other open source projects that have lasted ages. Where’s the profit motive behind Bash? It’s been around for 34 years.
An inability to pay bills can stop a person from working on a project, but at the end of the day it’s usually not profit that keeps an open source project alive. It’s popularity and passion.
None of what you wrote argues against what I wrote. I didn’t say that open source projects can’t be successful, I pointed out that they do not have the same structural incentives to continue or to keep changing to suit their users.
There also haven’t been many open source consumer facing applications that have seen the success that backend and low level systems have. Largely because stuff like Linux / BSD / Bash / etc are built to serve specific functions with clear technical criteria that can be specified, met, and checked off a procurement list. Social networks and consumer facing applications on the other hand have to delight their users and keep them opening them up rather than any competitive distractions. That’s not a clear technical problem that an engineer can crank away at and implement, that’s an ongoing fuzzier problem that requires more stuff along the lines of continuous market research and product development.
And while yes, in some cases it’s just purely popularity and passion that drive open source projects, in many many many ongoing open source projects it’s in reality, corporations funding their development (directly or through employee eng time) because they’ve built some of their infrastructure on it and it’s cheaper to pool infrastructure resources than try to build their own version.
It’s a nice narrative that Reddit became Reddit just because it was this greatly built platform that served as the perfect forum for everything, but the reality is that during Reddit’s growth face they did a ton of stuff to juice usage, like create fake comments and manipulate upvote downvote counts to make it seem like more people were engaging with your stuff, etc. And Reddit still exists as a competitor that is actively trying to take Lemmy’s user base back. Don’t get me wrong, I’m here because I prefer a transparent, non-engagement driven algorithm and am doing my part to contribute here and not on Reddit, but I’m also not blind to the structural headwinds that Lemmy / the wider fediverse will have to overcome.
There are a lot of fediverse projects that could really really use some marketing to explain what they’re doing and who they are for. And for developers, hey, I hate corporations but I’m generous. I would absolutely subscribe for features or perks or whatever.
There is this trend of mass downvoting your account if you disagree with political propaganda on any spectrum and they follow any instance. We need a workaround for mass downvoting.
The platforms copied the design of centralized services without making enough adjustments to accommodate the different UX that a decentralized federated system brings. Some things that I think should be standard that currently aren’t:
- I want to be able to send search queries to other instances from my instance and have the results displayed back to me.
- I want to be able to browse the timelines of other instances from mine.
- PeerTube has a “remote subscribe” option where you fill in a little box with your @username@domain and it’ll open a window on your instance where you can follow the channel; I think this should be polished and then it’d be great.
- Every platform should support hashtags and instances should be aware of each other’s hashtag usage so the search can be smart and recommend sending queries to instances where the hashtag you’re looking up is most commonly used.
- Links to known Fediverse instances should open on your instance where you can interact with it rather than taking you to their instance where you can’t.
Implement these and the experience would be much better.
Once the fediverse gains significant traction there will be a huge coordinated media smear campaign to associate it with extremism, CP, violent crime, terrorism etc… The “won’t anyone think of the children” attack will be leveraged to ““regulate”” the fediverse (probably by legacy social media like Meta alongside the security state), aka transform it into regular old centrally controlled social media. Upload filters, encryption back doors, know your customer laws etc… Non-regulated decentralized social media will be attempted to be made illegal, not sure if it will succeed.
So yeah eventually any true decentralized social media will have to move completely into the “darknet”.
Onboarding. The fact that you have to choose an instance to join while creating an account is essentially forcing people to make a decision for which, unless they’ve done some reading, they’ll have no idea of the implications. It’s such a weird concept for new users - they have to know about a thing before they’ve had experience with a thing.
Even if it doesn’t really matter which instance you begin with, the experience will be different, and there’s a sense of “pressure” at the point of signup, which doesn’t exist outside of the Fediverse.
Even if it doesn’t really matter which instance you begin with, the experience will be different, and there’s a sense of “pressure” at the point of signup, which doesn’t exist outside of the Fediverse.
Would you not say it’s more like it doesn’t exist to the same degree? Not that that diminishes your point, mind, only that in my experience online I’ve found similar when it comes to other online communities, say when deciding different Discord servers to join and some requiring waiting, reacting to be able to chat, or more rarely, have 2 factor authentication enabled of all things.
Before that, and more a sign of my age I guess, it would have been different forums, different chat rooms, and the like. Each similar in basic functionalities, but different experiences and a different sense of “pressure” to each.
I don’t think it’s the same with Discord because you already know which server you want to join, even if there are hurdles.
With federated instances you are told they all do the same thing and that it doesn’t matter, but in the same breath you’re told there’s still criteria to consider (number of users, location, some have a main theme etc.)
I know it’s old, but MMO servers used to have this kind of criteria.
You would just a server next to you, speaking a language you did, with a reasonable amount of users
very similar to IRC also
The biggest problem to me, seems to be the lack of ability to block people, communities, and instances. It’s built into some apps, but really needs to be part of the platform.
I block all porn instances, for example.
Extremist political propaganda from instances like Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and Exploding Heads.
I won’t recommend it to anyone in it’s current state.
While I don’t fully share that sentiment, I acknowledge it’s a point frequently brought up.
So, looking for a compromise … is there hope in growth? Like, with numbers big enough, it should become feasible to have an instance which strictly blocks all political leanings of ‘your despised flavor’, and still have enough content to look at.
Would that be a solution for you, for example @awwwyissss@lemm.ee or @PP_BOY_@lemmy.world? Lemmy as a whole would still have ‘bad stuff’, but there would be a ‘clean instance’ which you can recommend, from which no ‘bad stuff’ can be seen.
I simply skipped thinking about better wordings for ‘some expressions’. Please bear with me. I didn’t mean to judge.
Yeah if there was a stable instance that filtered political extremism well I might recommend it to others
I’m a little surprised across the responses so far that there’s been no mention of the adoption of or migration to a fediverse platform of some prominent creatives or communities.
It’s understandable why they haven’t given many of the issues already mentioned thus far, but in terms of others jumping in to federated services, among the least technical stumbling blocks by far is probably the absence of those (or those communities) they’d like to continue following (or participating in) here. Some of that may fall under discoverability/onboarding & content or critical mass mentioned, but it still caught my eye that it wasn’t specifically mentioned.
I suppose by its lack of specific mention this mightn’t be seen as being as much of an issue?
I talked about this with someone else a few days ago. Professional content creators aren’t going to like the Fediverse very much, as the decentralization fundamentally means that there’s going to be a smaller audience for them to reach due to users being more spread out between instances in addition to the lack of ads and recommendation algorithms to spoonfeed their content to new viewers. There’s really no reason for them to prefer the Fediverse over the centralized corporate platforms that basically cater to their use-case. I don’t think it works as a profession here, at least in its current form. The Fediverse is good for hobbyists and everyone else though, whom I happen to prefer for the most part.
There’s really no reason for them to prefer the Fediverse over the centralized corporate platforms that basically cater to their use-case.
Wouldn’t a couple, maybe niche admittedly, reasons be less advertiser-influenced rules/moderation and in certain cases more control? E.g. YouTube’s notorious for its algorithms affecting views abruptly & near inexplicably, whereas something like PeerTube (or for streaming, Owncast) lacks those and enables less restricted content (fewer worries about automatic ContentID noise).
Similar situation with Pixelfed instances not having to fret over folks post nudity 'cause advertisers supposedly don’t like their adverts next to nudity in some regions. Don’t get me wrong, I see where you’re (and they’re) coming from on this, you go where the audiences are & where, give or take, certain features play to your benefit (i.e. recommendation algorithms), but I’ve also seen so many creators also chafing against the awkward antics of the corporate platforms, be it YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
The loss of money matters more, to the point where it’s better for them to just put up with the annoying rules that pop up. They’d have to make this switch out of pure ideology, which considering that this is their job, that’s not going to win out in most cases.
The strange aversion to moderation by means of defederation.
For me, aside from picking initially between kbin and Lemmy and then picking an instance (and the whole concept of instances), it was not having an algorithmically created feed. It took a bit to wrap my mind around since all of the social media apps and sites I was used to (and still use) provides this.
I was confronted with building my own feed by topic of interest (aka community or magazine) or else.face a firehose of all content from all local or federated instances. I mean, I did it, so it wasn’t that big a barrier, but it still required effort and conscious decision making on my part just to set up the thing to be usable. It’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t use Mastodon that much, because it’s easier to join/subscribe to topics in kbin and Lemmy (at least in my experience). Mastodon seems to be for following individuals and organizations, and that’s even more work (for me).
For me, aside from picking initially between kbin and Lemmy and then picking an instance (and the whole concept of instances), it was not having an algorithmically created feed. It took a bit to wrap my mind around since all of the social media apps and sites I was used to (and still use) provides this.
This is kind of an interesting one to me, not because I disagree or anything, but because at least personally, when I’ve tried to use corporate social media, I felt like I also had to do a lot of manual feed building/curation to get it to be worth anything. However, I do think where some of the algorithmic stuff helped a little was in the suggestions of similar or related pages/users, albeit somewhat rarely.
More than the algorithms it was simply the fact that it was a single platform where you knew they might be & so could search for them, so maybe it was a mixture of those details for you too?
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defederation. Set up my own instance to choose myself on who I want to defederate with
