Pixelfed is bringing hundreds of thousands of users to the fediverse who don't know about federation.
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Pixelfed is bringing hundreds of thousands of users to the fediverse who don't know about federation.
I'm now overhauling our onboarding in the app so new users can login and join without the complexity of federation.
Edit:
I changed my mind, and added a simple dropdown to login or sign up! -
M [email protected] shared this topic
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@dansup Yeah, I think I agree here (that is, if I understand your point).
The ideal situation would be that "switching instances" was easy enough to not even bother with the whole "how to choose an instance" part up front -- later, you can learn about it and decide where to land, because switching is easy enough to just do it.
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Lawrence Pritchard Waterhousereplied to Daniel Supernault last edited by
@dansup Frankly, I think you should go in the opposite direction. Pixelfed is already making the process of discovering federation and, say following a Mastodon account, or vice-versa, pretty hard. It always feels like an island to me, not part of the wider fediverse. You should lean into *that*, it's what makes the Fediverse *resilient* instead of being yet another clone of a proprietary service...
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@dansup no problem with that. Imho, whoever provides a useful app should "have dibs" on offering their instance as a default.
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@dansup so you are basically following Gargron with his simple onboarding idea that resulted in mastodon.social growing even bigger.
On the one hand you are asking for support with your immensely huge hosting costs, on the other hand you are driving this even more by drawing more and more users to your own servers instead of distributing them.
When I have planned to support you with your costs 5 minutes ago, I think I won‘t anymore because I think that this is the wrong decision. Additionally still no valid LDAP support after years and still no fix for the stuck account problem (resending confirmation mails).
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Sexybiggetje🐖replied to Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse last edited by
@lpwaterhouse I completely agree. If you don't educate the user, it will never change and you're actually hurting decentralisation by proxy @dansup
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{Insert Pasta Pun}replied to Daniel Supernault last edited by
@dansup this seems bad
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T [email protected] shared this topic
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@dansup I know there's probably many who will disagree but I also think this is the right call.
Unlike Mastodon, which I feel left it way too late to move this way and now has the perception of complexity; I hope this leads to wider adoption of Pixelfed.
https://andrewmelder.com/2025/01/16/how-the-pick-your-server.html
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D [email protected] shared this topic
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@dansup - I have zero problem with this and think onboarding needs to be as easy here as it is on centralized platforms.
For the future: you might consider still only showing users ONE server to join, but in then randomly rotate in which one it shows -- from a pool of say 4 or 5 servers you do deals with & know are well run, scalable & solid social homes. That way you get the best of both worlds --> a seemless onboarding, PLUS a spreading out of users across multiple servers.
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I've wondered if we could solve both complexity and centralization by having local but otherwise identical servers that a picker defaulted users to.
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@tchambers @dansup One issue with that approach is sooner or later (when they want to log in on another device, when they get a new phone, etc.) people will need to know what server they're on. Flagship instances circumvent this by saying "if you don't know, you're almost certainly on this one." It can't be randomly assigned and then never brought up again. If people get assigned to random servers, we need to find reliable ways to make them feel connected to their server and remember it later.
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@tchambers @dansup Yeah, but I'm thinking only in the signup process might not be enough. How about any number of these:
- A little animation when you open the app "Welcome back on pixelfed.example"
- Visually emphasizing the server in your logged-in user handle (somehow)
- Prominently showing server-specific discovery mechanisms (local feed?)
- Default-following an account that regularly posts about the server and its cultureFrom the top of my head. Point is, you'd probably need *something*.
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Antoinereplied to Tim Chambers last edited by [email protected]
> "servers you do deals with"
"deals', really ? Isn't it against all federation principles ?> "know are well run, scalable & solid"
According to who ? An external trust authority ? or pixelfed app principal's dev ?> "spreading out of users across multiple servers"
If load-balancing is the issue then don't bother showing that as an option to the user. Just server-side balance users as needed, and never reveal them on which instance they are
1/4
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@villapirorum @dansup @julian You wouldn't want to incude servers without their approval, right?
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Sure
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@dansup I think a better solution could be making a list of servers which have approximately same rules and choose random one of them and do load balancing.
Ofcourse you would need to consult with the server admins if they are willing to do it.. -
@dansup this is not the way sir
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Superego needs to humble itself.
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Sascha Foerster :bonndigital:replied to ij last edited by
@ij @dansup I understand your position well. There is a lot to criticise in Pixelfed and the decisions of Daniel. On the other hand, it feels for me, we don’t have many chances left. I prefer to support the suboptimal but open approach close to values of the Fediverse instead of letting this chance pass by and have democracy in fire in the next decade. I never understand how everyone can be so demanding to someone who gave so much in advance, be it imperfect or problematic. It’s still a big gift
