Absolutely no surprise there. When you keep the barrier to entry low and throw in an algorithm to increase “engagement” via outrage, the soup turns to poison quickly.
This is why every time someone says the Fediverse is “too confusing,” I just smile and nod. That attitude of petulant, lazy, self-imposed gatekeeping is what’s keeping the Fediverse a much nicer place to be.
The default “Local/Active” sort algo needs to be tweaked. It makes it look like there are no new posts for days. If you use All with Top Day, Hot or New there’s way more going on.
I don't really think it's fair to pretend that, before two weeks ago, anyone under god had any idea what an instance was unless they were already heavily tech-oriented.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand what the hell I was looking at and what kind of consequences that unexplained choice would have, and it really seems like a good number of users that initially struggled forget the learning curve extremely quickly the moment they're over it.
It took me hours of trying to read through not-my-kind-of-jargon to understand
I started off going down that road of trying to understand it, but my laziness and impatience got in the way and said "just start using it and you'll work it out." And that's exactly what happened for me. In a way, the explanations made it all sound much more confusing than it really is. Sometimes you just gotta take a deep breath and dive in.
Honestly, you're right, and I think the analysis paralysis that the fediverse immediately presents isn't really helped by the fact I'm just generally a neurotic person. Wanting/NEEDING to understand how every aspect of something works and why lends itself really well to things like linguistics and biology, but I feel bothered when I skip the tutorial in a game I already know. What if I missed something and I'll never be able to figure out how buttons work.
Don't worry, I hear ya! I'm currently 4.9 hours in on my first run of the story game, Detroit. People in the reviews say it is a short game and they have less than 3 hours playtime ... but I don't wanna miss any narrative or clues! haha!
I joined Mastadon in December and that's when I first tried to understand it all. I researched a server to join and it was right confusing ... what if I picked the wrong one? Then I pretty much abandoned the account because I didn't understand how to stay on my own server while browsing around (also didn't help that I'd never used Twitter either, so I didn't actually know what I sposed to be doing lol).
Then the whole reddit debacle happened and I signed up for a Lemmy & Kbin. And there was all the jargon again. But I think because I was actually jumping ship from reddit, this time I wanted my move to have staying power. So it was unusual for me to "skip the tutorial" but I was getting so frustrated with the jargon, while I could see others were already having conversations. And it was through the participation that the jargon finally defined itself. I even use my mastodon now, as well!
Oh, I never realized the storylines in Detroit were that short. I'm exactly like you, and I've also found that the more games I play at once, the less I enjoy any of them. So my hands are a bit tied in terms of backlog and that one's been on the backburner for...years, now that I think of it. But That bumps it up my list considerably if I can 100% it in like 3 days.
I was very close to giving the fuck up initially, though. You know what the biggest encouragement was when I was signing up? When I was looking through the comments on kbin, someone said all the hoops would keep the idiots out, and I will put in a _lot _ more energy if it means both showing off and being where the idiots aren't. I'd say having a barrier there really has done some good for the overall quality (for now), but the people claiming it's good to make sign-ups as hard as possible are sometimes the same people claiming there isn't a barrier at all, and it comes off as very strange elitism.
Reading the explanations and advice people were giving to each other made a whole lot more sense than anything the internet was handing me, but even some of that could be head-scratching, and hands-on is probably the best way to go. Not without its dangers. I still think I got incredibly lucky to end up on an instance I like this much. Imagine having admiration for the dev for once.
I never realized the storylines in Detroit were that short.
quick Google search tells me average play-thru time is 12hrs and completionist is 32hrs, so I dunno what I was looking at. I'm 5hours in, so it remains to be seen whether it's gonna take me 32hours or 64hours minimum. 🤣 You'll have to forgive me, it's the steam sale so I've been looking at lots of games. Not that I need any more because I've probably only ever touched a quarter of my library, if that!
someone said all the hoops would keep the idiots out,
Yeah I liked that take as well. That layer of jargon really is a fantastic filter.
It was a case of: Lemmy.ml isn’t accepting new users atm BeeHaw requires me to tell them why I’m a good user So does this other instance… Why do I have to justify myself!? Hey, Lemmy.world let’s me just sign up! Perfect!
And that was how I chose an instance. Thank you for joining story got with Valek
Decision paralysis is real even for stupid things. Like, “what are the implications if I pick the wrong instance?” Was something that made me put off finishing signing up for mastodon and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Acting like it’s trivial isn’t helpful to anyone even if it was trivial or you
Yeah decision paralysis definitely delayed my joining any ActivityPub based sites, but really most of what it affects is stuff that wont matter until you’ve spent enough time on the platform to understand the difference to begin with
I know I’m an old school techie, but was there really a high entry bar for lemmy compared to say twitter or Instagram? I honestly don’t know, other than r3dd!t the last social media I signed up for was what? Facebook well over a decade ago?
If the few steps it took to make a user name, pick an instance, and then get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to, is enough to keep the unwashed internet masses out, well, they are just even dumber than I already thought.
Many people genuinely give up at the “pick an instance” stage.
Part of it is a slight failing for not blasting “if you join any of these instances you can respond to posts on any of these imstances’ communities” but also the level of tech literacy has fallen off of a cliff post-smartphone world.
Bolstering technology literacy (I’m talking simple things like: what is a file browser, where do things you download go by default, what are some common file types for music/videos/applications) need to be added to public education because there’s clearly a decline happening here that will have downstream ramifications.
I’d say it’s less so a decline and moreso a lack of literacy to begin with. The number of relatives I have that are fucking stupid with the internet is insane. And surprise the kids are just as stupid with tech, since the parents are dumb and companies made tools for them and the kids.
Yeah, I think the late 20th century and then some of the 00s were a sweet spot where there was finally cool stuff to do with tech, but you still needed to learn some skills to do them. Though even those skills were pretty basic.
I remember a kid in high school coming to me to see if I’d burn him a custom CD and he’d pay me and I was surprised because I thought it was all pretty basic shit that all it took was trying to figure it out. Though on the other hand, that was during the era where many discs were lost to buffer underflow and you had to be patient enough to not really use your computer for anything else while a CD was burning at like 2x speed (the hardware would go faster but then the underflow was more likely).
Though in hindsight, that might have just been my family’s shitty computer at the time. My dad was semi tech savvy but generally bought shitty computers, compaqs with Celeron CPUs and no graphics card. Though we did at least have a dedicated 56k line (which would only get speeds of like 48k, though later when the line was switched I do remember seeing the occasional 64k which confused me because I thought 56k was the fastest a connection could be).
I used to think the next generation was going to out code, design, and trouble shoot me in five years, and that the one after that would make me feel like a dinosaur in my 30s.
Now I’m almost 50, and the army of tech savvy teens coming for my job simple hasn’t materialized. With the ease of use of so many devices, a world where “plug and play” actually exists, the effort and skill requirement for most things has gone way down. On top of that, the battle for attention is so great that there is always something easier to go play with, and if it requires a bit of noodling to make it work, screw it.
For a bit I thought “Great, job security!”, but now I’m at the point where I need to think about finding interns and replacements, and unless they come from one of the historic tech pipelines like PC gaming or the makers community, not a lot of kids have that kind of background.
There are great programs now in the schools for making app, 3D printing, graphics, music, etc, that draw kids into technology. However, like everything else it’s all slick and user friendly. You don’t have to spend hour after hour figuring out how to make the thing work.
I watched my two year old nephew trying to swipe on the pictures in a magazine and was confused why they didn’t move. He was basically born with an ipad in his hands.
I agree completely that a basic computer class covering those things and more should be standard in schools. Now we have niche tech courses akin to the woodshop and autos class of my high school, but they are electives, and don’t cover the fundamentals.
Non-techy guy here. I read an infograohic and made an account. 0 issues whatsoever. And the infographic was just to help me understand how it works. You don’t really need to understand lemmy to interact with it
Because stating a wrong fact is the fastest way to get the right answer?
So, if I have an account on one instance, and I want to login / reply to another, how do i do that. I’m using the liftoff app.
I take it I shouldn’t have more than one instance login? Don’t worry, at this point I’ve only got two, it really didn’t seem right when I was making the second one.
Yeah I dove into Lemmy and Mastadon with very little research and even Mastodon with its “pick an instance you like first” step was extremely easy. I ended up on smaller instances for both and honestly I like it. Best part is, if you feel some FOMO either make another account on another instance or in the case of Mastadon export your account and migrate it to the new instance
Man I’d love that. I feel like we will soon honestly. I just hope the lemmy/Kbin apps bring these other federated projects inside, so we can do it all on one app too.
The Matrix but they use the Matrix protocol on a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel talking about talking about The Matrix in the Matrix protocol in a The Matrix themed Matrix IRC channel (woops sorry that is the Matrix 2 I think my bad)
There’s also a way to add matrix usernames to Lemmy accounts, so it’s possible to make an app that ties the two together. Is that a feature people would care about?
My first instinct would be to say, "This is the 21st century, learn to use a damn computer already!" But then I think of the long term and WANT people to think it's too hard to join Mastodon or Kbin, just to keep the average IQ of these sites above room temperature.
IMO if technical difficulty is the filter, it would actually only select for people good at computers. There are otherwise dumb, shallow people who are good at tech.
(I’m not saying its difficult using lemmy, just replying to the idea in general)
This this this. The fediverse being “confusing” keeps the idiots, boomers, trolls, and overall horrible people away. Having to learn something new is too much for those people. Lemmy/Mastodon and so on are “nerd” platforms, and I really like it that way.
Easy on the boomer stuff. You just lumped “horrible people” into the same group as regular people that happen to have lived more years than you. If you are looking for a “nerd” platform, you’ll do well to remember that there are a ton of extremely nerdy boomers out there and you just helped turn the soup to poison for them
If threads scoops up all the people who turned twitter and reddit into celebrity gossip meme ghettos and keeps them in the shallow end of the pool then everybody wins
Maybe we’ll finally be cool enough to get banned - Klanned Karenhood
Oh, you could have been that cool already. Just do as Ijeoma Oluo did.
Provoke the racists. They will come flooding into your inbox with death threats.
Report the messages to Meta so they can say, “doesn’t violate our community standards.”
Screenshot the messages and Meta’s enabling response, and post them publicly on your Facebook page to show how seriously Meta takes right-wing death threats and hate speech.
Done. Banned “for posting hate speech.” You could have been cool all along, Klanned Karenhood. You just have to go after the right people.
Same on Twitter. Back pre-Elron I was suspended for the stupidest crap: I said I thought Trump would be too old to run for office next year, as he lived an unhealthy lifestyle. That was “wishing harm or violence”, like, what? I didn’t voice an opinion about whether I was all happy about that or something, just simply made that statement. Then someone was joking about the Will Smith thing and something about Kid Rock and I said Hillary Clinton should be the one to slap Kid Rock. That was also horribly violent of me. I appealed and they said NO, YOu are VERY BAD, SORRY. What a waste of time. It’s offensive, too. Meanwhile I’ve reported things like people saying vile racist insults and literally saying they want someone to die, and I get the reply that sorry, they reviewed it and the comment was fine. I’m sure the process is even worse now.
The thing is that liberals feel the need to obsess over “fairness.”
If you really ban hate speech from a place, then it will appear to mostly be inhabited by more left leaning people. The vast majority of hate speech comes from the right.
But at forms WANT those right WI gers to drive engagement, so they don’t enforce their TOS on open racism so long as it’s a conservative doing it. But if you’re on the left and repost it to criticize it you get dinged.
It’s bullshit that shows how many companies are run by fascists who don’t bother hiding it anymore. But the liberals eat it up because it wouldn’t be “fair” to ban conservatives “for their conservative views.”
They also have no interest in removing spam and scams. Every time I log in to check in on family that doesn’t believe any form of contact exists outside of Facebook, I end up reporting at least 3 posts in the five minute period that I’m there for being spam/scam posts in groups
I suspect they had to jump on it when Elon shat the bed over the weekend. Suckerberg probably saw that disasterpiece and was like “quick, spit-shine the dev build and go live!”
As the internet becomes more available, mass adoption leads to communities that are very unbalanced. And, more often than not, leaning towards personas we tend to avoid in real life. Reason being, the barrier to entry is not as high. Curiosity is a byproduct of education/environment and lead people to apply resourcefulness to uncover sites/forums/messageboards with like minded people. Yes, echochambers in a way, but these echo chambers were not driven by political beliefs, but rather simple mannerisms and etiquette. Toxicity on sites like Youtube, Reddit, Threads, Twitter, have increased, because Curiosity didn’t drive discovery/account creation, ads or fomo did instead. Mastodon/Lemmy (Fediverse) communities, in my opinion, are still driven by curiosity. For how long, is the question I’d like to impose.
They are basically corporate accounts that are payed to be bigots online. You are looking at literal astroturf and asking why it doesn’t feel like grass.
Mainstream parties, which are pretty much ideology-free (or as their top people often call it: “pragmatic”) also relly heavilly on clubism, so I think cultivating fans not partners it’s a much more widespread strategy than merely only for the “standardized political slogan packs” which are ideologies (failed or otherwise).
After over 3 decades of voting, across 3 countries, even having held beliefs all the way from what I though was “communism” (when I was little more than a kid) through neoliberalism and finally settling down to a sort of social democracy (shaped by and subservient to my principles) and having even been involved in a supposedly thinking leftwing party around here I would stay that mindless tribalism is exactly what almost the entirety of politics is nowadays.
The whole “building your on political beliefs starting from your core principles upwards, and always keeping them in mind” thing is very unusually: normally (even in that supposedly “thinking” people party) it’s all about choosing sides, growing an emotional bond with your side and then just blindly waving the team’s flag and unskeptically take in and parrot whatever your side’s celebrities says as if they’re unchallangeable truths delivered down all the way from the gods.
In fact I’m pretty pissed from discovering that most people in even that party of supposedly thinking people are little more than clubist political parrots. It does however explain why so many measures people parrot as the right thing to do are actually one-sided and in practice not anchored in the principles we’re told they’re suppose to promote, sometime even de facto going against them: when people are unskeptical unthinking fans of the team, they’re really easy to lead by the nose by womever captures the leadership positions on that team, an sometimes said leaders aren’t even purposefully manipulative, they’re just nowere as bright as their small-pond celebrity status makes them think and generally have ridiculously narrow life experience and hence don’t really know much about how the World works outside their tiny tiny bubble.
Time and time again, it has been proven that “absolute free speech” online just attracts the absolute worst kind of people.
I did expected them to fail immediately, but this is way funnier than I expected. They either need to start banning immediately and start throwing money at celebs to use Threads, otherwise no one mainstream will ever advertise there.
There’s a zero percent chance I’m going to install and use Threads, but from screenshots, it looks like Twitter with Instagram’s design language, which is an unimaginably vile combination.
They’re already on the fediverse. Tens of thousands of people on thousands of servers saying things that make libsoftiktok and gaysagainstgrooming look like woke hippies.
The thing is, unlike big tech which wants you to see things that piss you off because it drives engagement and will actively put you in that situation, for the most part people tend to stick together in groups. You’ll get the odd troll looking for a thrill, but overall there isn’t an algorithm doing the Jerry Springer thing so other than a cheap thrill there’s no point to it.
Algorithms end up being really sneaky in that regard.
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