Lost_My_Mind , 6 hours ago

I said since I got here that the actual sign up process IS the hardest part. For exactly the reasons you said.

Each instance has it’s own personality. As much as EVERY user here will hate to hear this, you need to centralize the decentralized. Have a single point of entry. Signup at Lemmy.com

Now you’re [email protected]. and you’re told that you have 6 months to pick an instance. And here’s a guide to all known instances, with a wiki style explaination of what each instance’s personality is. With an expandable list of each federated and defederated instance.

Now once they switch to their new “home” all their comments stay in their comment history. Everything in their profile comes with them. EVERY instance in the fediverse needs to adhere to a set of protocols. So that when they move instances, the only thing that changes is if you look at a post they made last week, it no longer shows [email protected] it now shows [email protected]. and if in 2 years you move again now it says [email protected] even for posts you made 2 years prior. It always lists your current account. Even if you move to Mbin. Now it says [email protected]

It’s a learn, and grow as you go situation.

Oh, and if an instance ever shuts down, those profiles aren’t lost. They revert back to Lemmy.com, and the 6 month rule is back in effect.

But you have to anticipate the user. Not control the user. And right now the user understands centralized. So centralize the decentralized, and THEN teach them slowly how it works. I understand today leaps and bounds more than I did 4 months ago. I’m still not sure Lemmy.World is my final home. I’m trying out piefed. I’m probably going to try out Mbin. And I’m sure I’ll discover new things. But on day 1, I was like “…do what now? What’s an instance? What’s decentralized?”

And NOW I can see that the Nintendo account I follow on Mastodon for the past year isn’t really Nintendo. It’s [email protected] and EVERY post gets auto “boosted”. A year ago I thought that was literally Nintendo. I was surprised they were not only OBSESSIVELY active, but that they had a Mastodon account at all.

You gotta remember, this is how most people will walk into the fediverse on day 1. Not knowing how shit works, and if it doesn’t work for them, they’re out. You can teach them later. But also right now the fediverse as a whole is fragmented as shit. There’s decentralized, and then theres disjointed.

You’ll notice that I post regularly to THIS community. With constant questions. I’M taking the active approach to learning. The average user won’t know that they’re stupid. They’ll think the fediverse is stupid because it doesn’t work the way they’re used to. Most people don’t have the self reflection I have, nor the constant curiousity. If I don’t know a thing, it bothers me. If most people don’t know how a smoke alarm works, they fon’t give a shit. Whereas I watch a youtube video for almost an hour. Did you know there’s actually several different types of smoke detection? And that one type is very much more prone to false positives, and worse, lack of positive positives due to light? See, most people will find that boring, not give a shit, and move on. So YOU gotta teach them with annoying popups. “Hey, the fediverse is actually self hosted, and right now you’re on the instance of Lemmy.com! Whats that mean? Well…” blah blah blah, you guys already know this part, but that’s the message they should get on day 1. Teach them they need to understand what an instance is, and how to pick an instance that works for them. Then they can migrate there. If that instance is ever no longer good enough, they can migrate elsewhere. Even to Mbin, even to piefed, wherever! One account, all the fediverse.

And here’s the best part. They can go to fediverse.com and log in regardless of which instance they’re on. Just type user is [email protected] password is ********* and login.

And now all the decentralized is centralized. Without losing the benefits of being decentralized. Because it IS still decentralized. But most drivers aren’t mechanics. They use the service, but they don’t need to know the ins and outs. They just need to be able to use it, without it being confusing for THEM.

The hardest thing I’ve noticed is that linux user types don’t grasp is that just because THEY understand something as easy, doesn’t mean EVERYONE finds it easy. And there are a LOT of linux mindset people here. You may “get it”, but that doesn’t make it naturally intuitive. The fediverse is confusing as shit. Each part works differently. Has a different layout. Has a different interface. Operates differently. Which is a stark contrast to facebook users who just say “DO THE THING!” and suddenly 70 boomers are giving them thumbs up and emojis for a quilt they sewed and sharing the patchwork on.

Everyone here is saying to defederate from Threads, because it’s facebook, and I get why. But are you seriously going to cut off the biggest by far userbase to federate with you, simply because you don’t want corporate integration? Facebook still wouldn’t own the fediverse, but now something like 80 million users will start asking questions about the fediverse. Yes, it’s all old people, and people we would rather not interact with, but guess what. They don’t want to interact with you in [email protected] either. They don’t want to be in [email protected] either. They’re going to create their own communities, which have no interest to you, but boost the fediverse’s numbers. By the millions. And now maybe facebook as a whole integrates. Maybe reddit sees the momentum and they integrate. Maybe hoogle sees the momentum.

And pretty soon the fediverse becomes the default layout of how the internet works. And the decentralized nature means that no corporate entity CAN own it. They can put ads on individual instances that they own…but they can’t control all the instances. And people who don’t care about those ads will stay there. People who don’t will go to other duplicate instances.

But to defederate from threads before ANY of this takes place is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, while daily seeing those same people ask “How do we grow the fediverse?”

THATS HOW!!! Ok, I’ve ranted enough…