The slow but steady growth of “fediverse” users, with a corresponding decrease in active users, tells me there’s a lot of curiosity and experimentation bringing people here, but not nearly enough benefits or satisfaction that keep them here. If we can ...
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The slow but steady growth of “fediverse” users, with a corresponding decrease in active users, tells me there’s a lot of curiosity and experimentation bringing people here, but not nearly enough benefits or satisfaction that keep them here. If we can change that, we can change everything.
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@shoq Mastodon needs an algorithm, desperately, but it'll never get one from the core team. Look at the angst around search and quote posts.
I personally have no problem staying interested in my timeline but I had to follow over 3 thousand people to get there. Most users come from social media where following someone is a closely guarded decision and that doesn't translate on Mastodon.
Mastodon has great content it's just not great at delivering it. -
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@PhoenixGee @[email protected] @shoq There is a huge amount of amazing content and people on the fediverse with more happening every day. It’s just super hard to discover and benefit from it all with today’s user experiences.
Discovery and ease of use for non-technical users is crucial to changing this. Fortunately many devs know this and some great innovation is on the way. Algos and search are important but I don’t think we will want to apply those the same way the walled gardens have. We need an entirely new design for social media.
I personally believe we are on the threshold of the fediverse looking and feeling fundamentally better for non-technical people this year. And I think this will happen by embracing the ideals of the fediverse in the design process to craft entirely new user experiences that go far beyond anything the existing walled gardens have ever done before.
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@[email protected] @PhoenixGee @[email protected]
agree. I don’t mean to be negative about the future, but only cognizant of mistakes made and lessons learned in the past. And I think “user experience” is probably somewhat less important than the user BENEFIT. If the latter is strong, it will only improve the former.
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@shanesemler @[email protected] @shoq that’s right. There will not be just one algorithm. This is a huge flaw in social media today. I think there will be many algos developed by many devs and users will be given the choice to use any or none as they wish. I also think it will be important for these algos to be transparent and fully controllable, unlike today’s walled garden approach.
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@[email protected] @shanesemler @[email protected] Mike, you say this with a welcome sureness. Are you in fact working on such a plug and play algo concept, in the vein of Bluesky feeds? I will understand if you choose not to answer definitively.