This is the thing.
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Culture clash (in the form of unusually high levels of tedious, humorless, explainery replies); heavy emphasis on enforcing local norms across the fediverse; bad and confusing UI; missing replies; exposure to full-on 8chan-level racism because of inadequate server governance and tooling; exposure to garden-variety (and again, tedious) racism from people; servers imploding or defederating; couldn't find their communities here (self-reinforcing); lack of discovery and search.
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Halfass and unscientific notes on what I heard from strangers here: https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt
My own notes about the affordance problems and why they have such huge culture-shaping effects: https://erinkissane.com/the-affordance-loop
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@chefraven @evan But I also came out of a gigantic fediverse governance research project feeling very sure that the fediverse has enormous and mostly untapped potential to be a lot better for a lot more people.
Fediverse Governance Drop - Erin Kissane's small internet website
After a few months of prepping and conducting interviews and then many more months of analyzing and writing up what we found, we’re
(erinkissane.com)
But there's a ton of work to do, which I have made into my problem, against my better judgment!
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Dubi is here :Dambo8:replied to Erin Kissane last edited by
@kissane ah, now I see what you mean. But will being more pleasant to use be enough for non-tech people to care if they still have the problem that their friends aren't here? Or, put otherwise, does the fediverse lose them to easier and more pleasant networks, or just to bigger networks, regardless of how pleasant they are?
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Erin Kissanereplied to Dubi is here :Dambo8: last edited by
@Dubikan Bluesky started from zero and is at 12M and counting, so they caught a ton of people out of Twitter migrations, almost entirely by word of mouth. (This was the original context of my posts, via the quoted post at the top.)
There are always people leaving the biggest platforms for non-technical reasons, and I would like fediverse services to be nice enough to be a good home for many more of them, you know?
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@Dubikan That said, I don't think fedi becomes a billion-user network unless governments break up the mega-platforms or Meta starts actually federating for real and doing it on their flagship platforms, in which case the fediverse becomes mostly just Meta—but with continued revision and improvement, I think fedi *could* become a sturdy, livable alternative for an order of magnitude more people than are here now.
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@kissane that's not the case for me. Most of the people I know have Instagram accounts and they're gradually onboarding to Threads.
Anyway, I'm glad your friends are finding a good place that works for them. Do you follow them through the Bluesky bridge or do you use a Bluesky account?
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jaz :twt: :wales_flag:replied to Erin Kissane last edited by
I'm bookmarking this post.
Also printing and sticking to wall near desk.
Also keeping handy for the next 200 "but can you explain to /me/ why some people find (mastodon|not-mastodon|fediverse|something something activitypub) not welcoming?"
Now considering a 12 foot banner to take to conferences...
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@kissane I'll make it declarative: it's not either-or. People can do both.
What did you think about Cory Doctorow's blog post this weekend?
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@evan Yeah, I think it's mostly communities that made homes on Twitter that went to Bluesky, at this point. (I met a lot of my friends on Twitter around 2007-2013.)
Bluesky is one of the networks I'm studying, so I opened an account there right away. (I don't bridge, because I write different things in culturally different places, but most people I know who use both Bluesky and a fedi service either bridge or cross-post. That's a small sample, though.)
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Erin Kissanereplied to jaz :twt: :wales_flag: last edited by
@jaz @chefraven @evan It's all anecdata right now, but a full-on qualitative user study is really high on my wishlist for 2025. Can't do better until we know for sure what "better" means—and for whom, since it's obviously very heterogeneous across communities.
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@evan I was offline all weekend, so I have no opinions at this time.
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@kissane
Say more, please, about the cultural differences between BlueSky, Threads, and Fedi that have you writing different things in the different places. An example perhaps? ( I’m only on Fedi. I’ve ‘lurked’ on Threads, and I’ve tried to on Bluesky but it seems harder to do there. I never was on Twitter.) -
@kissane fwiw I am not scolding or anything ( I also am on bsky) ... Just find it fascinating we will prioritize fitting in over, say, privacy/security. (Myself included!)
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@brianleroux Yeah I was more picking up Marco's points than assuming you were scolding! It's a very widely expressed set of feelings, I think.
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@EllenJS Bluesky is currently Twitter with a strong immune response against right-wing politics. People mostly get my dumb jokes without explaining them back to me. It's a place I can ask for advice on kids' books or, rarely, clothing, and get useful responses.
On Mastodon, I can talk about network stuff and get a ton of interesting, thoughtful, and generative responses, both agreeing and disagreeing (along with people letting me know I'm dumb and/or evil).
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Erin Kissanereplied to Erin Kissane last edited by [email protected]
@EllenJS On the whole, Mastodon is also much easier for me to use in ways that aren't connected to The US News and Culture Topic of the Day, which I treasure because I don't want to get my news from social media. I like the shape of the network, and I like the depth of many of the conversations.
But if I mention race or gender here I will have to spend days fielding replies from people who don't think they're a factor, or not a factor outside the US, like it was the internet circa 2003.
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@EllenJS (I don't have a Threads account and can't speak to that.)
