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Let's compare on-boarding processes for Mastodon and BlueSky
How to join Mastodon:
User: What is «instance»?
User: Ok... but what instance should I use?
User: picks random instance.
Now one of these things happen
Every thing goes well
They pick a small instance with almost nobody in it, complain that there is no-one there and leave or the instance gets shut down.
They pick an instance centered around something they are not interested because they had no info on what each instance is like other than a small description that doesn't give you a good idea of what the average post is like.
No matter which one happens, if they stick around, things like this will pop up:
Someone will send them a link to a Mastodon post. They click it, but the link they were send was on another instance as such they are logged out. Thing is, they don't know what federation is and most instances have nearly indistinguishably UI, as thus the user doesn't notice they are on a completely different site. "Strange", they think, "I could have sworn I was logged in". Then they try to log in on the other instance... can't and get confused and maybe even panic. "Did I just lose my account?".
Now, with that being said, Email is still an example of a federated platform with mass adoption, and we should use it as an example when explaining the fediverse. But I would like to stress the following point: most instances have nearly indistinguishably UI, as thus the user doesn't notice they are on a completely different site. Go different Email instances and they look distinct. Go to gmail.com and outlook.com and they look distinct enough so that people can intuitively understand that, although they are both email services, their Gmail account is not going to let them log into Outlook.
Mastodon instances on the other hand? They just brand themselves as "Mastodon" and that's about it. They look identical! Just LOOK:
No wonder people get confused. The big instances NEED to look distinct for this to work. Otherwise, the federation thing will be confusing.
I made a post on asklemmy asking why people were choosing BlueSky over Mastodon and not understanding federation was one of the major pain points.
I like your thoughts about having them look different from each other in someway to make them distinguishable. I think that might be a smart thing to do if you’re an instance owner.
I also think that we’re not really that far apart in what we’re both saying. When I read your example of the on boarding process for some people, it just reinforces what I said in my original reply, which was “ It's been my experience that people who couldn't figure out how to join Mastodon are the same people that get so used to doing things one way, that when you introduce a different way, they fall apart.” it’s not that ideas like “instances“ are difficult subjects to grasp, it’s that the person who is joining is expecting a different experience. Which I think causes part of their brain to kind of shut down a little. So things start to become confusing. I think this becomes obvious when you talk to people who had no issues joining. What they usually say is something along the lines of “I read it and caught on pretty quick.“ Which was my experience as well. Sure, once I got in it took me a few moments to realize what was what and get a grasp on @names but it was never something that made me say “this is too confusing“. It was just new. And I treated it like that.
Which makes me think that the people who say they don’t understand things like “Federation“ never really tried to understand them to begin with. As you noted, email is a handy comparison to use. When I’ve explained it to them like that, most people kind of smack their head and “get it” pretty quickly after that.
I’ve thought for a long time the first thing that someone should read when they try to join Mastodon is “This isn’t like any social media you’ve ever joined. We do things different, and if you read along, you’ll understand why.” Or something similar to get the person who is joining out of that frame of mind where they think they’re joining something that they’ve done before. I think that would put people in the right frame of mind right away.
But I’ve been known to be wrong before.
I agree. Usually we present Mastodon and other federated platforms as alternatives to other centralized ones and that makes them expect the exact same experience, since, after all, we told them it was just like the other one.
We need to set the expectation that these federated platforms work in a different manner and as such you need to learn a few things before using it.