Bluesky has raised a $15m series A

Arvind Venkataramani

@tintvrtkovic @danilo money isn’t preventing Mastodon from being user-centred.

Ego, arrogance, and attachment to a vision that doesn’t match the needs of most people is.

I’m willing to bet they’ve never done a single usability test, and definitely have not tested core lifecycle journeys.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
Oh. I just saw a person complaining about Gargron recreating her pull request instead of accepting hers yesterday. It's ridiculous. (Mastodon team is, I mean)

https://hachyderm.io/@thisismissem/113465993207356999

Arvind Venkataramani

@Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem

Yeah, just because something is open source doesn’t mean it has values and practices that serve the people it claims to serve.

Arvind Venkataramani

@Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem

Also, real talk:
If the mastodon team is serious about making it easy to adopt, I will assemble a team of user researchers to donate their time.

Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)

@Orca @arvindv @tintvrtkovic @danilo @thisismissem I haven’t purchased any stupid landfill-bound #Mastodon merch, but I *am* personally funding @thisismissem because she is the *only* #Fedi developer I have encountered who actually cares about building good software that works for real people. What little I have heard from this Gargron character hasn’t been very good. He doesn’t seem to be much concerned with anything that actually matters to the folks trying to build community here.

Emelia 👸🏻

@arvindv @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo I've already been trying to get more UX folks involved in the project, especially on the moderation & admin tools, though other areas do also need love too — the difficulty is generally not getting paid for open source work is the norm

Emelia 👸🏻

@suzannealdrich @Orca @arvindv @tintvrtkovic @danilo

He does care a great deal about Mastodon, but I think the years of leading it have taken a toll on him. It's incredibly hard to lead a large open source project with millions of users, a small team and not enough funding.

That said, he is also known for ignoring issues and poorly communicating things to others, these are areas I wish he'd do some self-improvement on to grow as a leader.

Arvind Venkataramani

@thisismissem @suzannealdrich @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo

Also: do you all have a usability testing program? Do you want help developing one? (It’s not as challenging as it might appear!)

Arvind Venkataramani

@thisismissem @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo

There are so many UX folk who are out of work and burned out right now that I think many would like to do something meaningful with their time.

(To be clear: not getting paid is a problem.)

Emelia 👸🏻

@arvindv I thibk that's likely a wonderful idea if such is possible in an open-source context? Maybe a question for @renchap

Emelia 👸🏻

@arvindv @Orca @tintvrtkovic @danilo

At the moment the only way to get paid is Grants or drumming up enough supporters to make your work somewhat sustainable.

I currently have 54 supporters of my work, and I'm thankful to each and every one, but it's been hard growing that number.

I still rely on grants, paid advisory work and freelance work to survive. I think my supporters bring in about €1500 a month.