This is the thing.
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@evan So technically, there is a question mark in your reply but given that the rest is declarative, it’s not my sense that you’re actually asking for my assessment of your specific communication choices.
Do let me know if I’m wrong, but I’m not going to offer that kind of advice without an invitation—to you or to anyone else. (I can’t prevent anyone from reading general statements as being about them as individuals, but that’s not what I’m doing.)
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Erin Kissanereplied to Dubi is here :Dambo8: last edited by [email protected]
@Dubikan I don't see a contradiction, but maybe I'm not being clear enough. The fediverse's architectural benefits alone are never going to be enough to get most people to switch to it. Most non-tech people are never going to care!
So fedi either builds itself to be easier and more pleasant to use to make itself more attractive to those people, or it loses most of them to easier and more pleasant networks. Which means fewer sociable people will find their friends here, which is a bad cycle.
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@evan So let's be real: When someone says "everyone," they mean "my friends and names I know in my communities." That's happened with *my* friends and the names I know in my science and literature communities—some are here, most are now on Bluesky. (Many left Twitter, tried Mastodon, found it deeply unpleasant, and moved to Bluesky.)
There are obviously multiple forces in play, but I think people do know where their friends are.
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@BashStKid Universities are a very logical choice but the reality of universities rn is very antithetical to this kind of service thinking, at least in the US.
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@chefraven @kissane @evan https://infosec.exchange/@jerry/112887084476486558
This happened to a few folks I know
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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.)
