With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
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Answering this in the off chance you read replies 🤪
Biggest barrier to courting new users: we are culturally hostile here to influence peddlers and people who are trying to broadcast and don't want to interact. (ie, we treat them like the person invited to the small cocktail party at the house, who jumps up on a table and starts yelling).
Technically, users are used to being force fed content (through viral algorithms and suggested content)... i.e. passive (like TV). Mastodon is not built like that, which means people don't know how to find things they like or people to follow.
Finally (deliberately so), Mastodon is not built to tickle the endorphins... i.e. "likes" "followers" "virality" and that often turns people off, who really would like to use social media like a gambling junkie uses a slot machine (pull the lever, hope for a big payoff!). Fundamentally, non-addictive to that kind of thing.
I don't know if we want to fix any of that, though 🤪
@ai6yr @taylorlorenz There's also more than a bit of tone policing and "here's the right way to fediverse" greetings to new visitors. And then there's the way minorities get treated ...
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@taylorlorenz one thing, the decentralized nature means there is perhaps too much choice. Do you get an account on mastodon.social, mstdn.ca, mastodon.com, tusky.whatever.... And also what app do you use to access it? When there was Twitter, there was one official app. With Mastodon, there are a multitude. Sometimes too much choice is counterproductive.
You are reasoning against the constitution of the fediVerse and FOSS @hfinyow itself.
Dictatorship is way easier than a democracy, no elections, no choice, none of the troubles independence comes with ..
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
I think the product is just fine. Wonderful, in fact. I'm glad that Taylor Lorenz and Corey Doctorow and George Takai and Lisa Melton etc, etc are the local celebrities on this site. I also think scarcity and "being cool" (in other words, not trying) are the ultimate signifier of where folks should want to be.
It ain't broken.
Let's not fix it.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
There really is a HOA here even if it's not fashionable to mention it. And there is a harassment problem that is made worse by no reply controls and the terrible, terrible misfeature of followers-only replies.
@taylorlorenz -
@taylorlorenz Black users have consistently reported hostility
@NickGates
> Black users have consistently reported hostilityIs that still so @futurebird & @IveyJanette or is this a tale that persists because of events in the past?
The most important detail of the fedi is decentralization. Moderation problems increase with the size of instances. Communities protect themselves best by creating their own instances.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz I feel like the only way left is to set up huge armadas of influencer bots from the established social networks to draw people in and then delete them all once we've reached a certain threshold of network effect.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Users of social media have been *deskilled* to the point where they expect a platform to essentially do everything for them: grab an app, put in your name, maybe tap some circles or something, and bang zoom, you get a feed.
The barrier is that Mastodon--and to a lesser extent Bluesky--are slightly less easy. Now, I'd argue that if you take five minutes to choose an instance that matches your tastes, it provides a feed right away, and then you can build your follow list, but...
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@NickGates
> Black users have consistently reported hostilityIs that still so @futurebird & @IveyJanette or is this a tale that persists because of events in the past?
The most important detail of the fedi is decentralization. Moderation problems increase with the size of instances. Communities protect themselves best by creating their own instances.
@bitpickup @futurebird @IveyJanette @taylorlorenz
ButBlack users still consistently report hostility
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@taylorlorenz Users of social media have been *deskilled* to the point where they expect a platform to essentially do everything for them: grab an app, put in your name, maybe tap some circles or something, and bang zoom, you get a feed.
The barrier is that Mastodon--and to a lesser extent Bluesky--are slightly less easy. Now, I'd argue that if you take five minutes to choose an instance that matches your tastes, it provides a feed right away, and then you can build your follow list, but...
@taylorlorenz For a lot of people, "choose instance -> get feed -> build follow list" feels like it's in the wrong order. They're used to an algorithm "serving" them.
So. If the goal is to get new users onto the platform, then what you want to build is a gateway that says, "What are your interests?" and then new users put in three (let's say), and then it offers a few instances that match their interests, and they pick one. I think something like that would make them feel "served."
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@stefan @taylorlorenz Yeah, I think that's it. People want (among other things) community, and having an entire community move here at once makes a lot more sense than having individuals try to build up a community. That's why, when I tried mastodon in 2019/2020, it never took off for me; but during the twitter implosion of 2022, when a bunch of my twitter-using friends moved here as well, I stuck around. The forkiverse is just the latest example of that.
@Andres4NY Absolutely! It also helps with the choice paralysis of having to pick a server.
I think overall it just makes sense to promote communities rather than bog people down with technical details of how the fediverse works. (There's always time for that later.)
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The lack of an algorithm is the biggest advantage and the biggest disadvantage - it makes it hard to discover new content and people to follow. I know people are working on "starter packs" for Mastodon like they have on BlueSky, which I think will help.
But I wonder if we could find other ways to make discovery easier - a "followed by people you follow" or "favorited by people you follow" feed, or something. Also, I wonder if the interface shouldn't suggest boosting a post when you favorite it... We need more people boosting more stuff, with no algorithm.
You have to follow 200+ people to get a decently full feed on Mastodon, and everyone has to boost a lot. Reducing the effort required to do those things would increase engagement on Mastodon, I'm pretty sure.
People don't understand the basics of a federated system. To boost is to spread content across the network, not just to share it with your very own contacts.
It's crucial for the fedi!
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@taylorlorenz Black users have consistently reported hostility
I don't think this is the "biggest barrier" to reaching new users.
The biggest barriers are:
* Popular content creators who ought to care about building independent social media don't know it exists or why it's important. What if Emma from MR were here? For example.
* Sign up remains hard. I know why people don't want to integrate google auth... but if it were an option for some servers it'd make a big difference.
* UI needs more work. -
@taylorlorenz Black users have consistently reported hostility
If the fedi were more popular it'd be more diverse and the lack of diversity bothers me more than any "hostility" ... which every online space has.
I worry that the focus on "hostility" points to a problem that's hard to solve.
There are some good idea for moderation that could help, such as better reporting and sharing tools between servers. But I think the login/sign-up issues are much bigger.
