Over the past 24 hrs while Mastodon was discoursing about whether or not starter packs are OK, and if slow progress is more due to lack of funding or different priorities, and if people that choose other social networks are just evil, lazy, shiftless p...

alexadeswift

@mekkaokereke @mav because you keep saying how great BS is and bad mouthing one corner of the Fediverse, for seemingly not doing what you want. Insofar as welcome packs, how could the single person, who has a day job, yet who runs the instance that I am on, give new signers a full welcome pack etc?

And given that each instance could be on a different version of the Masto software stack, sitting on a different OS, with unique sets of plugins and other setups, how could just Mastodon ALONE provide a generic welcome pack to all instance admins, to say nothing of all the other platforms across the Fediverse, such as Friendi.ca, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Diaspora etc?

As I have mentioned before, the Fediverse is not homogeneous or centralised or even a service in the same way that corporate social media is. And what many see as impediments here others see as the unique features that we want, and which explicitly brought us to the Fediverse.

And ultimately, and yes this does happen, if there is a feature anyone would like in Masto which no instance is providing, anyone can simply fork Mastodon and create exactly what they want. That specifically IS the value of FOSS. Unfortunately I suspect many will bemoan what I have just said, and I understand why they will do so, but unfortunately that is exactly why and how the Fediverse was created. The value is in finding a corner of it that fits your individual requirements, and if not, going elsewhere.

Laurens Hof

@mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl

Agreed with everything Mekka!

As a sidenote: we did actually have some pretty good follow-finding tools in Spring 2023. Some with pretty good UX, most notable https://verifiedjournalist.org/
They never really got any real traction though

Jürgen Hubert

@mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl

While #Mastodon is the giant of the #Fediverse , I am curious if any of the other projects have made better strides with onboarding, moderation, UX and so forth.

How is #Friendica on these issues? Or #Misskey ? Ideally we should have a number of _different_ #ActivityPub -based systems which all compete to make their user experiences better. I mean, isn't tying ourselves too closely to any single platform how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place?

Isaac Ji Kuo

@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl Unfortunately Friendica and SocialHome and Hubzilla and others inevitably suffer from friction between how they work and how Mastodon works. In particular, they present content using the post+comments paradigm, but Mastodon uses posts and replies paradigm.

This means that they misleadingly present content in a way that looks like the poster "owns" the comment thread, but they can't moderate it because of how Mastodon works.

1/2

Emelia 👸🏻

@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl

In theory, yes. But each project has its own issues and priorities, e.g., GoToSocial has some interesting safety features, but iirc the moderation UI left something to be desired & didn't ship with a webapp. Misskey's been dealing with spam attacks, and the response to people who've reached out has been mixed at best. Not sure about Friendica. There's also LetterBook under development which might be interesting.

Emelia 👸🏻

@isaackuo @juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl iirc, that replies issue is being worked on, I know @jonny has a PR open for it.

Emelia 👸🏻

@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl one thing I've often noticed about moderation and trust, safety & security tools is that they're often underloved and most of the time that's due to them not being glamorous to work on, because most people won't ever see them

mekka okereke :verified:

@alexadeswift @mav

"because you keep saying how great BS is and bad mouthing one corner of the Fediverse, for seemingly not doing what you want."

You wrote a lot of words, but I knew they wouldn't be useful after this start.‍️

"Why are you criticizing the Dems! Don't criticize Democrats!"

"Why are you criticizing Mastodon? Don't say anything about it can be improved!"

Same energy.

Listen. If me criticizing things gets your fragility feathers all ruffled, go ahead and unfollow now.

mekka okereke :verified:

@alexadeswift @mav

I'm not sure who the Black folk are that listen to white people that say, "Don't criticize this space that isn't good for Black people!" but I'm not one of them.

How do you think that would work? You say that, and the Black person just says, "You're right! My bad! I shall cease and desist my criticism!" and then it just... goes quiet again?

Has that ever worked for you? Or is this the first time you're trying it? Am I the first?

mekka okereke :verified:

@alexadeswift @mav

"The OP shouldn't do [X]! The OP should do [my bad idea] instead!"

I don't take advice from people that have never pioneered and made a space that wasn't welcoming for Black people into one that is.

In conclusion, I'm going to post what I want about the reasons this place is unwelcoming for Black folk. I'm going to keep saying how things could move faster:
* Funding of safety and UX projects
* Prioritization

I'm going to keep ignoring fragile people's demands.

Jason Punyon

@thisismissem @juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke @stooovie @Remittancegirl Exactly my experience for the back half of my tenure at Stack Overflow. Product managers couldn’t make a name for themselves on that work, so the work never got scheduled.

Peter Nelson

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Funding could help. Who is expected to fund it though, VC or individuals?

Where do I (on a single-user non-Mastodon instance) help with funding?

Katja ｢Amethyst｣

@stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke

I find this whole attitude repulsive, frankly. There is no excuse for bad user experiences. Period.

If we want people to use our tools, we need to make those tools simple, easy to use, and welcoming. Failing to do so means they will find tools that are simpler, easier, and more welcoming—and they won't be the ones we'd like them to use. Deriding people who expect those affordances is just asinine.

Moreover, this attitude that better things aren't possible because XYZ is self-defeating and surrendering the initiative to the very same oligarchs and techno-feudalists you cite.

db0

@VulpineAmethyst @stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke I think the point being made here is not that we don't want the sleeker experience, but we just do not have the funds to deliver that experience. #Bluesky has gotten millions from crypto-bro VCs to make that sleek experience, while Mastodon can barely support 3 developers at the minimum wage for their country (and #lemmy devs are below that even)

Katja ｢Amethyst｣

@db0 @stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke

Is funding the actual issue, or is it being waved around in order to avoid expressing an objection that nobody is going to like?

Mastodon already has support for lists. That support can be extended to create a shared list, which is what BlueSky's 'starter packs' actually are.

It's not an issue of cost, it's an issue of someone wants to kill it without explaining their real objections.

db0

@VulpineAmethyst @stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke I think you're being way too dismissive. We're not talking about this one particular feature. It's absurd to think that just this one thing missing would make mastodon popular, when it's not even the thing most people complain about. To make a service as sleek as bluesky can become in a couple of year absolutely requires appropriate funding or sufficient volunteer work.

Katja ｢Amethyst｣

@db0

If I'm being dismissive, it's because I'm already aware of a fair amount of work that has been done in forks of Mastodon over the past several years that hasn't made it upstream, for one reason or another.

It's not a funding problem, it's a "having one person in charge making all decisions is bad, actually" problem.

@stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke

db0

@VulpineAmethyst @stooovie @Remittancegirl @mekkaokereke Work being been done and explicitly being rejected from mastodon maintainers due to their own ideological hold-backs is certainly a problem and I agree that the lead devs have held the project back with their stubborness and privilege-blindness on these issues. I just don't believe it's the only problem in onboarding, and the sleeker experience and lack of progress on big features is also due to lack of funding.

Julian Fietkau

@petererer I'll try the second question:

You can help support @thisismissem, who works on T&S standards/guidance & related parts of Mastodon. Sustained support for her could enable positive movement on several axes.

GoToSocial has established a pattern of taking ideas for safety features that were stuck in committees & forums and unilaterally making them real, regardless of what others think. If this approach resonates, you can donate: https://opencollective.com/gotosocial

@mav @mekkaokereke @alexadeswift

Julian Fietkau

@petererer

You could donate to spaces run by and for marginalized people to lighten the load on those who currently put in the work. E.g. https://blackqueer.life and https://diaspora.im accept donations.

There is a convincing (to me, you might also like to listen to people who disagree) case that contributing to Mastodon through Patreon will, medium & long term, lead to better UX and safety for all Mastodon users, improving the fediverse as a whole.

@mav @mekkaokereke @alexadeswift