Ancestors

Written by Matt Baer on 2024-10-12 at 12:11

Reading (on Threads) about why people like #bluesky over #mastodon, and most seems to boil down to usability / wrestling with servers.

Have to agree. And it's why I still think we need a good #fediverse client as an entry point.

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Written by Matt Baer on 2024-10-12 at 12:18

Maybe it's devs implementing the C2S side of #ActivityPub, or a multi-protocol client, or built-in browser support for the #fediverse. Maybe we need a single entry point to the fediverse, with a smooth interface, easy setup, and a server behind the scenes.

Either way, making "decentralization" central to the user experience here is keeping a ton of people off the network.

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Written by Nelson on 2024-10-12 at 12:37

@matt A single point of entry sounds like a single point of failure to me. Mastodon tried this with the official client, giving up on encouraging multiple servers, instead simply dumping everyone on mastodon.social, with the result that the server is "too big to fail" and even when its moderation is unacceptably bad I can't block it because I'd lose too much of the network.

I agree with your other points, but if we don't encourage diversity we'll end up with a WordPress Matt or Google Chrome.

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Written by Matt Baer on 2024-10-12 at 13:08

@skyfaller I'm with you in theory, but from watching the last couple years, I personally don't think being so militant about our ideals helps the network today.

I think the fediverse is still small enough that we should focus on giving a good first impression (UX-wise) and getting people in the door. Then the rest (e.g. getting people onto smaller servers) can come later. But I also know that's an unpopular opinion 🙂

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Written by Nelson on 2024-10-12 at 13:13

@matt I think if a WordPress Matt gets installed it can be very difficult to dislodge them later.

I think rather than focusing on popularity we should focus on getting things right before scaling. If all we wanted was popularity, we could just go use Facebook, everything else is a rounding error in size. It's also dependent on Zuck not being malicious, which isn't a very good bet. How many times are we going to make this mistake?

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Written by Matt Baer on 2024-10-12 at 13:25

@skyfaller Fair enough. And I know that's the common concern, but I personally think it's a bit overblown right now.

The fediverse user experience hasn't improved much in the 7 years I've used it — which affects people today. I'd rather fix this concrete problem than run around worrying about a far-off day that may or may not happen. The fediverse is resilient, and we can handle threats as they arise.

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Written by Nelson on 2024-10-12 at 13:37

@matt I 100% agree about improving the user experience. You shouldn't have to do silly stuff like pasting URLs into the search bar.

But the easiest way to fix that is to put everyone on the same server and get rid of federation, and then you've thrown out the Fediverse.

The question is how do you fix the user experience without throwing out fedi, and you've mentioned multiple good approaches in your first post that wouldn't do that. Just please don't create a single point of failure.

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Written by Nelson on 2024-10-12 at 20:45

@matt I'm also a little irritated that you're calling this concern theoretical. WordPress is part of the Fediverse, and it's imploding right now because of a single point of failure. It's not a far off day, it's today. Just for a part of fedi, not the whole. Because the Fediverse as a whole doesn't have a single point of failure... yet.

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Toot

Written by Matt Baer on 2024-10-13 at 01:57

@skyfaller I'd say Mastodon is more a single point of failure for the fediverse, with how much revolves around it and their small team's decisions. WordPress isn't as central here. So yes we're already there today, but as you mention it's just in one corner.

It's much more nuanced. The concern is real, I just don't know see many solutions besides... excluding people until we're absolutely sure fedi is decentralized enough, can never get EEE'd, etc. which I don't see us achieving right now.

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