Fingerprint Software reshared this.
The official Mastodon app is doing something new which is potentially very dangerous to the existence of Mastodon and the Fediverse.
The official Mastodon app now prompts users to join mastodon.social by default, when previously it prompted them to pick a server. If you're new this may sound harmless, but let me explain.
The entire point of this place is to be a social network spread out on as many servers as possible (the reasons are here: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/).
(1/6)
The official Mastodon app now prompts users to join mastodon.social by default, when previously it prompted them to pick a server. If you're new this may sound harmless, but let me explain.
The entire point of this place is to be a social network spread out on as many servers as possible (the reasons are here: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/).
(1/6)
Why is the Fediverse on so many separate servers? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediversefedi.tips
Fingerprint Software reshared this.
Fedi.Tips
•There is technically still an option on the official app to "pick my own server", but it's much harder to read or notice, and new users will probably click the mastodon.social button without even understanding the other button.
Mastodon.social just passed 1 million registered users about a week ago, out of a total network of approx 7 to 11 million users (dependiing on how you count them).
Most of these users probably signed up via the official app.
(2/6)
Fedi.Tips
•For the first time ever, the most common way to sign up on the Fediverse is now directing people to sign up on one specific server, rather than making them choose.
This will make mastodon.social grow even more quickly than it has before, and future waves of new Mastodon users may end up mostly there. It's very plausible this one server could become the majority of the Fediverse in the near future.
If that happens, the Fediverse would no longer be protected from buyouts by nasty people.
(3/6)
Fedi.Tips
•But as we have seen from Twitter, such a setup leaves you at the mercy of Musk-type takeovers. For-profit social networks do not like federation, they hate it as they see it as competition. It is very likely that a commercial takeover of a majority server would defederate it, to prevent people leaving and simplify its maintenance.
(4/6)
Fedi.Tips
•But eventually most people in that position will crack. Ever larger sums of money can make even the nicest people sell out.
If most of the Fediverse is on mastodon.social, it WILL receive more takeover bids. If it grows even further, these bids will become even higher.
(5/6)
Fedi.Tips
•1. Tell new people to use third party apps, they are better anyway and have more features. More info at https://fedi.tips/which-apps-can-i-use-should-i-use-the-official-app-or-a-third-party-app/
2. Tell people to sign up on the website. Mastodon's official site at https://joinmastodon.org is still asking people to choose a server, and is very professionally laid out. (I've also got my own amateurish effort at https://fedi.garden.)
3. If you're comfortable using github, give a thumbs up at https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon-ios/issues/1023
(6/6)
Which Mastodon apps can I use? Should I use the official app or a third party app? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipsOutOnTheMoors
•(Yes, I'm on mastodon.social, but I joined when it was smallish.)
Seth Goldstein
•Matt Stratford
•Ferles 🏳️🌈
•First Dread Pirate Roberts
•Kevin Karhan :verified:
•It really comes close to the ancient #TweetDeck #mobile app and @mariotaku's #Twidere...
GunChleoc
•Lee 🌏
•Doesn't this help do this this, while also providing a way for people to just as easily pick their own server?
Your thoughts, people 🙇♂️🙏❤️....
David Slifka
•Here's why I welcome the change.
We are losing *so many* users to server choice. I only have anecdata and wish I had more. But just last night, a tech product manager emailed me his whole list of hobbies and interests, saying he was "at a loss" for how to join Mastodon.
If we don't grow the fediverse now, centralized competitors will win and nothing will change. (1/2)
Rodrigo Gambra
•His solution would effectively transfer data ownership to every user, who could host his data anywhere and then authorise what applications can access it. It would ruin once and for all the "American way" of corporate-bully culture.
Andres Salomon
•Baruch Katz
•June Blender
•Complexity of systems
•I desperately hope this kind of thing doesn't happen to activitypub/Mastodon
nEo
•Charles Herold
•So what is your solution?
Tadeo D'Oria 🇦🇷 💚🧡
•It's like Linux, want to get more involved or dig deeper? You have ton of options!
Want to just use your PC and not be bothered by the OS? Install Ubuntu like the vast majority of users.
Asking too many questions or choices is an immediate negative for most people, having an easy default is great! It wasn't the end for Linux to have it, and it won't be the end for the Fediverse!
hollie
•AT-AT Assault :verifiedtrans:
•IMHO, the website is better than any app. You get the full functionality of Mastodon, and the site is coded to display really well as a mobile webpage. I tried using like 3 different apps, not liking any of them. Why? Because I've been trained to assume the mobile webpage is dogshit.
Then I finally had the notion "what if I look at a mobile webpage?" IT'S REALLY GOOD.
skllzrmy
•AskPippa🇨🇦
•Rodion Borisov
•This wording is lethal, what were they thinking?
Joachim Ziebs
•Florencio ⭐⭐⭐
•Lasse Gismo -🖕Meta
•THIS is NOT the intention behind our common network.
From my point of view, it's a less trustworthy decision.
Buyout planned?
@Gargron
Jax
•My first thought on reading this is that I should move servers. Perhaps a push to get people already on .social to move would help?
Rand Strauss
•Mastodon is good. But it's designed to communicate without profit, not to actually fix anything. It's a piece of a good future. But PeopleCount is designed to deliver that future.
Jona
•Jeroen Baert
•Educating them on how to move their account afterwards and having that process be seamless is the way to go, imho.
taymaz :verified:
•Andreas Ringdal
•Kokichi (🇵🇱)
•Not a whole separate big colorful privilaged button on main menu 🤥.
Talya (she/her)
•Gustavo 🎮🔭🇵🇷
•serklarvel
•Maybe @Gargron could clarify if possible.
JW prince of CPH
•It's definitely correct that concentration increases vulnerability, but the remedy isn't to change the users - it's to give them the best possible entry & path to the preferable solution. This is what we/the 'verse must do.
Ministerofimpediments
•The points of concern being (in no particular order);
That the instances in the list are/can take large amounts of new users gracefully and/or have capacity to support them. These can be updated/changed over time.
And that the mobile app has only a small amount of real estate to work with.
Urzl
•Is there a trustworthy way to do load balancing and spreading across open servers? Make the default "the lightest loaded non-dead instance in my preferred language" rather than any particular server but still provide a default.
I signed up where I did just because it was neither full nor empty.
Zekovski
•- People who want as much users on Mastodon as possible -> let's make the onboarding really easy.
- People who want to keep it spread and federated.
This is a time we have to choose between the two.
Wil
•By the way, “@mastodon.social” is really long.
Stewart Tolhurst
•sunandshadow
•If the size of the default instance becomes unmanageable, idle members could be auto-culled.
NeonkAaa
•mastodon.social The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
And the next one is mstdn.social
I see no real difference here — you afraid of concentrating people on a single server without choice. But new people will surely tend to choose the 1st or the 2nd one, even while they have a choice.
J.M. Bond
•There needs to be more focus to explain the system & simplify the process or people are going to move past Mastodon. Just my two cents as a newbie, I could be wrong.
Insider UA
•Dimitris Kardarakos
•Unfortunately, the same pro-centralization approach has been adopted by the @spreadmastodon campaigners.
https://floss.social/@dimitrisk/110247540562264634
David Slifka
•@dimitrisk @spreadmastodon Here's some background on our thinking behind that decision.
https://medium.com/@davidslifka_86286/how-to-decentralize-social-media-6ae35a49ac46
How to decentralize social media - David Slifka - Medium
David Slifka (Medium)Fedi.Tips
•@davidslifka @dimitrisk @spreadmastodon
I'm sorry, but with all due respect, that "Growing the bars" chart is incredibly misleading. I don't know whether you are doing this deliberately or accidentally, but it's a terrible approach.
Presenting promotion of mastodon.social as equivalent to promoting Mastodon is just "fediwashing".
Asking people to choose a server is a goal in itself. It makes them aware of the issues involved. Skipping that step is missing the point completely.
Fedi.Tips
•It would be like an environmental group deciding that lifestyle changes are putting people off the environmental cause, so they drop the lifestyle changes and decide to just "greenwash" instead.
You're using the same "let's get the supporter numbers up, damn the cause" logic.
Fedi.Tips
•Yes some servers will let you down, but that's why it's important to use curated lists and not just choose something at random. (I've tried to start my own at https://fedi.garden and there's nothing to stop others doing the same.) Curated lists can demand reliability etc.
Your suggestion is like saying we should all eat at McDonalds because it has the most consistent standards, and independent restaurants might give you food poisoning.
Fedi.Garden
fedi.gardenFedi.Tips
•"If we reach a point where undue centralization became an issue, or seemed even foreseeable to become an issue,"
Undue centralisation is very foreseeable now.
Mastodon.social currently has about 14% of the Fediverse both by raw numbers and MAU.
If there is another wave on a similar scale to last November, that could push mastodon.social over 50%.
Why?
Because this time round the official app is telling everyone to just sign up on m.s
David Slifka
•Peter Merholz
•m. libby
•Coming from 25+ years of using email, usenet, IRC-- all things where you have to "pick a server"-- that part of joining Mastodon didn't phase me.
BUT I really picked the wrong server for me the first time around, then went through two more before finding the one I really feel at home on.
Get people in the door. They can worry about picking a server after they get their feet wet.
And while they won't be able to port all their posts (because of AP), they will be able to move their accounts to new servers if/when Eugen finally sees enough zeroes on the check.
taxet
•It still would leave the option for a simple solution for those who want it but makes picking a server the default and the first thing people see.
Stegosaurus
•mx amber alex
•rood
•JamesTDG
•Marco Vujevic
•Why would this be a problem then?
Algernon D'Ammassa
•Runyan50
•elle mundy
•ArdentArchivist
•Santiago Lema :amiga:
•And when / if mastodon.social becomes evil the rest can just defederate and it won’t be smaller that it is today which is already big enough to have cool interactions
MaryPot
•Mutiny Crinshaw
•🐌’s Pace
•Jeena
•First Dread Pirate Roberts
•Elias Mårtenson
•Don't take me wrong, I agree with you on everything you said. I'd rather see less people join the Fediverse than seeing more centralisation around m.s. But if the goal is to bring more people in, something like this needs to be done.
Perhaps an option would be for instances to make their own application (which would just be one of the common applications, but branded to their instance).
That way, if you wanted to join mstdn.social, you just download the mstdn.social application.
A lot of people these days don't know the difference between an application and a website anyway, so this may actually be more in line with expectations.
Folker
•Peque
•like other social media platforms do when you sign up). And then showed you a list of servers that for in that category.
Christoffer B. Tallerås 🇧🇻
•These umbrella type plattforms dont go well with normies. Something similar to email providers is the future.
Probably Paul 🌍
•I've also syndicated longer posts using Hubzilla, to which I've installed ActivityPub so it's interoperable with Masto. Nomadic identity, baby. Shut me down now! 😎
@reiver ⊼ (Charles) :batman:
•(And there are a lot of UX problems.)
I've been doing a lot of UX testing of various parts of the Fediverse (including Mastodon).
I think @Gargron has definitely (also) noticed one of the UX problems — having to choose a server causes many people to give up and abandon the sign up process.
...
Let me ask you this —
Metod Rybár
•Éamonn
•The Peter Pan of Nerdery™️
•petur 🔵😶
•You can still pick another server but at least to non-tech users have a clear way forward.
Hughster
•aismallard
•Dixzy
•Innes
•Louis :emacs:
•When I read it, it was clear to me in which direction Mastodon is heading. The app is just the beginning.
Mastodon's decentralization is key to safeguarding free speech and preventing greedy centralization (which is what happens right in front of us now). Central servers can easily become susceptible to censorship, surveillance, and data abuse. By supporting Mastodon's diverse community of servers, we can ensure that power remains decentralized and accessible to all. Let's prioritize decentralization over greed!
#Mastodon
jesuiSatire …ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ
•sad
Rye
•I wonder if a compromise could look like cycling through a different default general-interest server every app update
David Bleackley
•Chris 🌱 :verified_purple:
•Tim Chambers
•That would be to round-robin which server gets that central place every X days. And set the standard for quality of service, clear branding, etc, to get that spot.
Víktor Bautista i Roca
•twelve_floating_hands
•Kornel
•Maybe the app could suggest one of 3-5 top servers at random?
Luis M. Gómez C.
•Matt Ehler
•"The Eddie Show" 📷 🎧 ❤️
•Leisureguy
•This move seems definitely a desire for monopolization.
Matthias Rex 🦣
•stux⚡
•And only thing I wondered was..
Why…
pinecone
•Overall, the more people that join the app would be best for everyone involved
I definitely see the concerns though. And I also agree that this move kind of goes against the idea of mastodon, but the platform still gotta grow somehow
Farshid Hakimy
•I understand that this makes it easier for people to join for people who don't know what the fediverse is and how it works, but come on. Why mastodon.social?
Why not show a random server that complies with some rules like the ones you have on joinmastodon.org?
Or why not make a contest, or a voting or something else?
mastodon.social already is big and this will just harm the fediverse in the long term
Harry
•Michael Fisher
•Rob Bos
•Dreamer
•Flock of Cats 🐈⬛ 🐈⬛ 🐈⬛
•“Pick another server” would be better
SippingInk
•Extinction (our fate)
•bigTanuki
•Perhaps they should offer a default @trail.mastodon.social that eventually you have to leave if you do not feel ready to choose a server yet…
Eric Gilmour
•Once people are used to the service they can move their accounts if they want.
𝓥𝓲𝓬𝓽🍓𝓻𝓲𝓪 :mastodon:
•Luna Lactea
•Alan :watchmen:
•I think there will be a lot of people using this as a jumping off point. If other 3rd party clients do this with their own servers, there will be more balance; not to mention the inevitability of rival activity pub based social networks.
OffWorldGirl
•I had an account I never used years ago on an instance that disappeared without notice. When I signed up for THIS account I purposely chose the Mastodon project's main server to hopefully avoid my instance disappearing on me again.
Some people are confused by having to choose a server and just give up.
🍂 Սնեպ դդումի համեմունքով 🍂
•Peter Van Tine
•Wuzzy
•I really hope this was a honest mistake (maybe some misunderstood usability concern?) and they will revert this change. mastodon.social is NOT the "default instance" and never was. While it's large, many Mastodon users live on a different instance (me included). That's a feature, not a bug.
Jürgen - يورجن (he,him) ⚣
•R. L. Dane
•Jay Stephens
•Russell Harrower :verified:
•Fripi
•Might be interesting read, I am absolutely sure there is no bad intentions and it also isn't set in stone. Compelling arguments will be heard, I would bet a lot on this 😀
https://zeitschlag.net/you-will-always-be-remembered/
You will always be remembered!
Nathan Mattes (Opinionated Notes)Tagaziel
•Nathaniel Harari
•JohnW
•Amadeus Maximilian
•I like the UX of giving the user an easy option. I've had friends not join Mastodon because the choice of server paralysed them. 😅
Andrea Grandi 🦕
•As a supporter of mastodon.social, I'm not happy with this change.
Edward Fattell
•HannaMarieMay
•FurbyOnSteroids
•Sean
•This could open a wizard with a few questions about the users interests, etc, and then end with a list of a few appropriate server options?
This could solve the overwhelming amount of choice, without directing new users to any one particular server
r3vilo
•Pick my own server
---- or ----
Join mastodon.social
Then it would be better. And "Pick my own server" should be highlighted by default. Otherwise, not that bad for a quick start, because you can change anytime later, but, to get the thing behind the #fediverse and first read about it, you are more concerned with the matter, when you have to choose a server from the start, without easy clicking.
Arnd Layer
•New users that do not know much about how the fedrigeres works, are discouraged from joining at the step of selecting their instance.
The recommendations / discovery of instances does not really help.
I’ve seen this myself.
Offering a default is a good approach - maybe switch the two buttons.
New users should not be driven away - neither because it is not clear ho to continue nor because a necessary focus on diversity.
𝖆𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖔𝖐 🇨🇿🇪🇺
•#Mastodon
Yusuf Toropov
•regnad_kcin
•Tom Walker
•It's just an "easy mode" for people to sign up without having to understand a bunch of stuff first. Good for people who have heard of Mastodon and gone to the app store and typed in "Mastodon" without doing all this homework people think they should be doing.
As they learn, they might make different decisions. Or not! (I've stuck around on .social)
Campaigning against this doesn't help new users.
lamp
•Hirad
•Have you met people?! People don't post their contents on a server, just so they leave it behind and go to another one.
Not to mention saying "pick my own server" make user think its for server admins/owners.
What if after a while the app become exclusively for mastodon.social? Is that ok too? what of mastodon.social become popular and then unfederated?
Lydia "Trivia"
•This makes joining easier. Moving should be easier too.
Paul Sutton
•Fred Ahrens
•Did anybody ever tap on the "Learn more" link while joining? 😀
Léo Haf
•Allen Versfeld
•What I'd suggested was rather just assigning a nearby instance, maybe based on geolocating IP address or something, and if that doesn't give a satisfactory result, then have them enter a few interests and use that as a keyword search on instance descriptions. The choice is a good thing, but it's also a huge mental block for new users. Migration is fine, and people should be actively encouraged to find the right instance, but not while they're still trying to figure out if they even want to be here.
Folker
•Zoe
•Erlend Sogge Heggen
•I support Mastodon’s move here. The risks you mention just aren’t the same with open source software.
If this change led to Mastodon having 100 million users this year, that’d still be a net positive for the fediverse and the open web, in spite of Mastodon’s non-ideal outsize influence.
At the slightest hint of bad practice on Mastodon’s end, we could switch clients, move, or fork.
vylion:latest
•abcxyz
•oversizedpanda :unverified:
•Dr Pieter Peach
•Making it easier for them to use mastodon.social might seem problematic, but it may be an acceptable UI tradeoff to bootstrap the network at first.
alapite
•Fabian 🏳️🌈 :blobcatlul:
•However, yes this creates another drawback as you told here. Hmm
Purple :verified:
•(Combined with the fact that joinmastodon.org hasn't been listing or even responding to new servers for months!)
Not great to actually see this happening
ren 🏳️🌈 (a they/them)
•Remember what Acton said and you very much know the power of defaults. Keep servers more equitable, more balanced.
IMO: The two options would be, "I have a server I'd like to join" and "Help me pick a server".
phryk 🏴
•// @feditips
newsorpigal
•I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand this goes against the principles of the fediverse. On the other hand, too many people have an irrational fear of the server selection process and maybe this helps with it.
The better thing would be to have a "give me a random server" button which selects a server based on your ip address.
Straadin :splatoon:
•What I'd like to see is a list of servers willing to be 'default' servers for lack of a better term, then the app picks one at random while preserving the option for 'other'
Mr. Bruno :verified:
•