Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users. Mastodon seems to be a great case of Open Source and decentralized being so fervently followed that people ignore the absolute real problems with it thus ensuring it will never become any type of mainstream.
Actually trying to find interesting content on Mastodon is fuckin awful, bluesky learned what i liked and hands me new awesome artists pretty much daily. Combine that with the whole having to select an instance and remember how to use it and cross instance posting and blah blah blah and your average person is not even going to look at Mastodon
And most people prefer content algorithms. Or maybe a better way of phrasing it would be they’re used to and expect content algorithms. Having to actively search for and follow topics is not only yet another hoop users have to jump through (good UX has as few steps as possible to get you where you want, a good chunk of users jumps ship at every step) it also requires that they know which hashtags are being used for the content they want to see beforehand, which might be difficult for you if you relied on content algorithms before.
Not only that have you seen user-generated content? There is absolutely no consistent tagging whatsoever. That is like the worst way to find things because everyone will tag things differently assuming they even tag it at all
This is how society has always been I will continue to be. That is why your self-custody bitcoin wallet will never replace debit card and your non nerdy friends will never use Linux. The barrier of entry is the difference between mainstream and fringe.
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users.
This narrative is tired, particularly with Mastodon.
All open source projects that aren’t violently ruthless about pursuing profits are going to lag behind tech companies approaching social media from the perspective of a cigarette company that also is selling the capacity to rich interests to distort, artificially elevate or silence perspectives.
Should we all push for a more accessible fediverse? Of course, but what is your perspective bringing to the table that does anything other than restate the incredible material inequality in resources between the two things you are comparing?
On the contrary I think the UX of mastodon is impressively boring and functional compared to the ever enshittifying slop and paper thin future promises served up by multimillion and multibillion dollar social media companies.
And that is fine if you feel that way, but it’s not going to match the majority of people and it’s going to prevent the platform from ever achieving any type of mainstream status.
I personally do not agree with you, I find the ux to actually hinder usability. I do use Mastodon, because otherwise forming an opinion on it would be stupid. I regularly still struggle to find content I’m interested in on Mastodon, searching all the different instances is a pain. Hashtags are not adequate most content is never even tagged, even the stuff that is tagged might not be tagged in a way I expect because everybody tags things differently. This makes searching for Content I’m interested in very difficult.
I have to actually invest a pretty sizable amount of my time on Mastodon just trying to find something on Mastodon I want to interact with. Compare that with something like blue sky I open the app and the algorithm has already figured out what I like just from me liking stuff as it appears that I’m pretty much instantly greeted with a wall of nothing but stuff that I’m interested in in some capacity.
It’s coming from a corporation that just wants to make money but the end result is that they gave me something that I was actually interested in immediately without me having to jump through a bunch of Hoops and that’s just objectively a better user experience
I agree that the UI is largely functional first (with no bugs since I started using it, which is hella cool), but it’s a bit unfriendly to new users. For example, it breaks from convention when replying to a comment, and the themes need a better separation between posts, and it needs to expand on existing features. All it needs is a little TLC, but it’s been almost the same for over a year. I’ve only noticed subtle changes on Lemmy UI and none on Mastodon that have any impact.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to overly defend the Mastodon project in particular, I use Mastodon, I have for years but yeah there are lots of issues with it.
…but the difference between Bluesky and the Fediverse is that RIGHT NOW, ALREADY you can use a different microblogging software written and maintained by different people with different ideologies and different objectives that will still interact and interconnect with Mastodon pretty well most of the time. Not only that, but Mastodon (and I assume other microblogging fediverse softwares) already have multiple different themes and the customization options are simply up to how many people are willing to get their hands dirty… and the sense of customization isn’t a marketing bullet point it is a deeply held ideology that is expressed in the very architecture of the fediverse, Bluesky on the other hand can only gesture in the vague direction of these things without rocking the boat of venture capital investors too hard. They have not still as far as I am aware ruled out using ads, according to the CEO of Bluesky (which Mastodon doesn’t have a CEO notably).
Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don’t blame them or users. Mastodon seems to be a great case of Open Source and decentralized being so fervently followed that people ignore the absolute real problems with it thus ensuring it will never become any type of mainstream.
Actually trying to find interesting content on Mastodon is fuckin awful, bluesky learned what i liked and hands me new awesome artists pretty much daily. Combine that with the whole having to select an instance and remember how to use it and cross instance posting and blah blah blah and your average person is not even going to look at Mastodon
I have no issues finding content on mastodon, just search and follow hashtags.
And most people prefer content algorithms. Or maybe a better way of phrasing it would be they’re used to and expect content algorithms. Having to actively search for and follow topics is not only yet another hoop users have to jump through (good UX has as few steps as possible to get you where you want, a good chunk of users jumps ship at every step) it also requires that they know which hashtags are being used for the content they want to see beforehand, which might be difficult for you if you relied on content algorithms before.
Not only that have you seen user-generated content? There is absolutely no consistent tagging whatsoever. That is like the worst way to find things because everyone will tag things differently assuming they even tag it at all
Mastodon’s stance on the matter has been strongly opposed to algorithmic feeds
But thanks to ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon and Lemmy) there’s also Minds (warning contains cryptocurrencies) https://help.minds.com/hc/minds/articles/1694176102-feeds
Weird how a marginal effort immediately puts people off.
WALL-E and Idiocracy vibes…
This is how society has always been I will continue to be. That is why your self-custody bitcoin wallet will never replace debit card and your non nerdy friends will never use Linux. The barrier of entry is the difference between mainstream and fringe.
The point being idiocracy is increasing with each generation.
This narrative is tired, particularly with Mastodon.
All open source projects that aren’t violently ruthless about pursuing profits are going to lag behind tech companies approaching social media from the perspective of a cigarette company that also is selling the capacity to rich interests to distort, artificially elevate or silence perspectives.
Should we all push for a more accessible fediverse? Of course, but what is your perspective bringing to the table that does anything other than restate the incredible material inequality in resources between the two things you are comparing?
On the contrary I think the UX of mastodon is impressively boring and functional compared to the ever enshittifying slop and paper thin future promises served up by multimillion and multibillion dollar social media companies.
And that is fine if you feel that way, but it’s not going to match the majority of people and it’s going to prevent the platform from ever achieving any type of mainstream status.
I personally do not agree with you, I find the ux to actually hinder usability. I do use Mastodon, because otherwise forming an opinion on it would be stupid. I regularly still struggle to find content I’m interested in on Mastodon, searching all the different instances is a pain. Hashtags are not adequate most content is never even tagged, even the stuff that is tagged might not be tagged in a way I expect because everybody tags things differently. This makes searching for Content I’m interested in very difficult.
I have to actually invest a pretty sizable amount of my time on Mastodon just trying to find something on Mastodon I want to interact with. Compare that with something like blue sky I open the app and the algorithm has already figured out what I like just from me liking stuff as it appears that I’m pretty much instantly greeted with a wall of nothing but stuff that I’m interested in in some capacity.
It’s coming from a corporation that just wants to make money but the end result is that they gave me something that I was actually interested in immediately without me having to jump through a bunch of Hoops and that’s just objectively a better user experience
I agree that the UI is largely functional first (with no bugs since I started using it, which is hella cool), but it’s a bit unfriendly to new users. For example, it breaks from convention when replying to a comment, and the themes need a better separation between posts, and it needs to expand on existing features. All it needs is a little TLC, but it’s been almost the same for over a year. I’ve only noticed subtle changes on Lemmy UI and none on Mastodon that have any impact.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to overly defend the Mastodon project in particular, I use Mastodon, I have for years but yeah there are lots of issues with it.
…but the difference between Bluesky and the Fediverse is that RIGHT NOW, ALREADY you can use a different microblogging software written and maintained by different people with different ideologies and different objectives that will still interact and interconnect with Mastodon pretty well most of the time. Not only that, but Mastodon (and I assume other microblogging fediverse softwares) already have multiple different themes and the customization options are simply up to how many people are willing to get their hands dirty… and the sense of customization isn’t a marketing bullet point it is a deeply held ideology that is expressed in the very architecture of the fediverse, Bluesky on the other hand can only gesture in the vague direction of these things without rocking the boat of venture capital investors too hard. They have not still as far as I am aware ruled out using ads, according to the CEO of Bluesky (which Mastodon doesn’t have a CEO notably).