An EXTREMELY Simple Guide to Mastodon (for when someone says it's too complicated to catch on) : fediverse

[-] fubarx@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The problem a lot of people have with it is in Steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: download an app. There are so many now, it's hard to tell them apart and decide which one is better or worse. The official mobile one is OK for most, but there are half a dozen others and no easy way to pick one over the other.

Step 2: Create an account. Turns out that decision is where people get stuck the most. Which server should they choose? One based on their interests, their location, where other exiles from their previous social network went, or go for a big one like mastodon.social? And since you can create more than one on a different server, should you create more than one before you get going? So many decisions.

Finally, let's say you've gone through both steps and are finally on. How do you get followers, or decide who to follow?

Itt's all good once you've jumped in, gone through a week of confusion, missed all the people you used to follow because they're too scared to leave and FOMO. Then you realize following a hashtag is a good thing, but it brings in a lot of people spamming it (try following #press to get news) so now you have to start muting accounts.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an old auntie fed up with the crap on other sites and how they can navigate all this.

Until the onboarding experience -- from zero to where you're enjoying the experience and not feeling like every step is a potential cowpie -- is streamlined, people will keep saying it's hard.

I'm a big fan, btw, and have pretty much cut out all other social networks, but I don't think my auntie would enjoy it quite as much.

[-] Comment105@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's the thing

Every new user should by default download the official Mastodon app and make a mastodon.social account.

Any other choice should be under an expandable Advanced or Custom Account Creation.

Techies claiming to have to idea what the problem is are really revealing a serious lack of intelligence.

People are primates. Chimps with language.

You've seen the video of the chimp browsing Instagram. That's what the user is like. That's how easy you need to make the UX.

Largely, they're clueless with simple motivations. They don't care about helping the fediverse be a viable and growing competitor to corporate social media. They don't share your goal, they don't care, they won't suffer through even the slightest inconvenience for this.

So make the decision for them. Don't present them with the list of choices unless they specifically ask for it.

Put horse blinders on them.

They need it.

[-] russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net 7 points 1 year ago

I could've sworn Mastodon's official app signs you up to m.s as the default instance now? I remember there being a massive roar on their GitHub when they started pushing the change.

Did it get rolled back?

[-] JustinHanagan@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, it does. Sign up is extremely straightforward now. All things involving federation are essentially optional on the official app.

[-] JustinHanagan@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Yes my thoughts exactly. When email was too confusing ISPs included it pre-configured as a perk initially and Gmail came later.

My feelings in regards to social media are stop the bleeding first, remove society's dependence on X, Meta, and other for-profit platforms. Then we can worry about educating "normal" people on Federation, ActivityPub, etc.

[-] spauldo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

ISPs included email because almost everyone was a modem user (and hence only connected sporadically) and email servers need constant uptime or they lose messages.

They also ran news servers and hosted user web pages for basically the same reason.

Only freaks and weirdos (like me) ran servers from home.

[-] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

If you need a guide, it's too complicated for most

[-] JustinHanagan@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

You didn't read it did you😉

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Nobody is going to read it. That's the point.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

most people probably just watch some YouTube videos if they want an introduction to mastodon 😀

[-] Solarius 3 points 1 year ago

it doesn't matter if they read it or not. the average non-techy person is turned off if a site/app doesn't let them log in with one of their existing accounts (Google Facebook etc). Having them read a guide to understand isn't beyond most people but most definitely do not have the attention span.

[-] yip-bonk@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

This is getting posted a lot which is too bad because it’s worse than useless.

Do people not understand how technically useless 80% of users are? They CAN NOT REMEMBER THEIR PASSWORDS. (No, they didn’t write them down. Password management software? lol.)

I’m saying the height of their technical ability is to remember their password. And we want them to switch platforms, away from a fascist right-wing brainwashing troll factory to- what is it called again?

Yeah. It needs a guide with this title, but actually useful. Well-written, with the context that people reading it are already well above and beyond in making an effort.

Why are so many people still on Xitter? I have a fucking idea.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago

The question is .. do we care about THAT 80 % of the people. I would be more then happy if we can have that 20 % of more technical-oriented audience :-)

[-] matt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, because I want my friends (who aren't tech orientated) and interest groups (which aren't tech orientated) to be on the Fediverse.

They're always complaining about this, that, and the other about the big platforms but they have so many hang ups regarding Fedi software, so they don't use them.

A lot of it is perception, but you have to try and make it so people don't have those perceptions or break them.

[-] pizza_is_yum@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

That 80% is important. We need non-techies, because they remind us that there's more to life than just computers.

[-] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Why do journalists say it’s too confusing to catch on? I have no fucking idea.

It seems like it would be pertinent to make an attempt to understand the problem before trying to solve it...

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Why do people say it’s too confusing to catch on?

I have no fucking idea.

This just seems to highlight a problem. People are saying they're confused by it. But if you're either unaware why or acting like you're unaware why, that's a problem. Even if there are ways to approach using Mastodon that makes it easy, there's clearly something making many users pause.

[-] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I really must go back to Mastadon. I joined a while back, but it was just so goddam quiet that I stopped checking my feed.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago

Subscribe to hashtags that interest you, them based on the posts that come up through that follow users that seem to have related interests.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

hi,

The problem with hash tag-following is that it some on the messages that enter the instance in some way (either local or from the federation). This works great on big Instances and on specialised instances. However, on smaller less-special instances (like personal instances or -say-an instance for a mid-sized city with 50 members) ... it works much less.

But that is then where grup.pe and following public instances of remote instances comes in.

Kr.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 year ago

Smaller instances can subscribe to federation relays to ingest more messages. Works quite well, but does come at a higher server resource use.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

Hi, Correct. For you info. I co-manage a activity-pub relay for fediverse instances oriented towards hamradio. If you are interested in peering, feel free to send me a ping)

[-] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hello!

Hard to make sense of what you're saying here, but hashtags definitely work across instances.

Sincerely,

HughJanus

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hi Hugh,

To be clear. This is not about the tags itself. It's about the system of tag-following and how it is implemented on the fediverse. It is due to how the fediverse (acitivtypub) works and how (or why) messages are routed from one instance to another.

There is a major different on how following (people) and how tag-following work. (perhaps the simularity in name is not such a good choice)

The basic idea of following (people) is this: Consider that you are me are on a different instances and I want to follow you; so I hit the "follow" buttom.

What actually happens is this:

My instance sents an activitypub message to your instance. That message contains the information about me and you .. and that way, your instance is aware that I (on my instance) want to follow you (on your instance)
when you then write / boost / ... a post, your instance will then forward that post to my instance (based on the information received in step 1), which will then put it in my personal inbox stream.

So far, so good. I am happy to read your (very interesting) posts, and you are happy as your messages gets forwarded to a lot of people who think you are an awsome guy!

Tag-following however is based on a very different system.

you do a tag-follow request. What this does is that this tells your local instance that you are interested in all messages that contain the tag (say) "#caterday"
What this will do is this: If (in any way) a message enters your instance and that message contains the tag "caterday", your instance will drop a copy of that message in your inbox steam, .. which results in another post with a nice cat-image in your personal stream. Yeah!
What this does NOT do: Unlike the "following-people" system, tag-following is purely local thing. ("local" means "on your own instance"). So, what does NOT happen is that that your instance has started sending messages to all instances out there on the fedivere saying "hey .. here is somebody who is interested in cats .. please send me all these posts".

The main point here is that tag-following is only local between you and your own instance. Not more than then.

In essence, .. the important thing here is the first part of my message above: "If (in any way) a message enters your instance, and that message containts the tag ..."

So, then the question is: "what are the mechanisms so that a post enters an instance? (and -hence- be subject to tag-following)" This could happen in two ways:

because somebody local on the instance writes a post.
because somebody on a remote instance writes a post AND somebody on the local instances follows that person. As explained above, that message will get forwared by the remote host to your local instance.

So, to put things together, Consider we are on different instances, I write a post with the #caterday tag, .. but neither you or anybody else on your instance follows me, .. the video of my cat attacking a ball of cotton will NOT reach you. (bad luck for you ... you should have followed me :-p )

Does this mean that tag-following is useless? No, not at all.

When does tag-following work very well? To give a practicle example. I have an account on mastodon.radio (an specialised instance for amateur-radio) and overthere I do tag-following of #electronics.

That works very well because

there are a lot of ham-radio people doing electronics
there are also lot of people on other instances who are into building electronics .. but there is a very big chance that they are followed by at least one person on mastodon.radio. So their posts get forwarded to mastodon,radio ... which will then also appear in my inbox due to tag-following. This really works very well, and provides me with a good stream of messages with a good signal-to-noise ratio.

When does tag-following not work well?

if you have a personal instance as I also do.
if you are on a smaller instance and you have a less common interest. So, if you happen to be the only metalhead on (say) a 50 member instance that serves your local city, there is a very little chance that a tag-follow for your favorite all-female Japanese metal band will produce much content.

What can you do if you are in the 2nd senario?

If there exists an instance dedicated to your interest (that still accepts people)

get an account on that instance and use a multi-account app like fedilab
use an app like fedilab to remote-read the public feed of that instance, find interesting people, follow them with your current fediverse account you already have, and build up your list of interesting people to follow that way.
switch to lemmy or kbin :-) (as lemmy and kbin are by nature more community-based)
follow the lemmy/kbin community from within your mastodon/fediverse account.

If you happen to be interested in something very specific and the other nerds are all spread out over a zillion different fediverse instances out there:

use gup.pe

A nice exercise to get a good feeling about this is to get both an account on a mid-side instance and set up your own personal instance. The different in how to approach the fediverse become apparent quite fast.

Hope this helps :-)

[-] JuvenoiaAgent@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Just follow these 2 accounts, they both boost/retweet tons of interesting posts, and then you can follow the original posters:

[-] sanguinepar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, nice, thanks!

[-] JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

We aren't able to sub to Mastodon accounts on Lemmy yet are we?

[-] Die4Ever@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

No

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3792

[-] whiskers@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

Everyone says subscribe to hashtags to get content. I have no idea how to do that on the official Mastodon Android app. If it's that obtuse, it's not going to catch on easily.

Microblogging was never my preference and as it wasn't easy enough to figure out in the app itself, being a casual user, I never looked it up in a guide/video.

[-] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

You can't. It's incredibly stupid.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

I use fedilabs. Works very well. Allows hashtag-following following the public feed of a remote instance multi-account with cross-account actions

[-] kux@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is a pretty good example tbh. consider:

make a twitter account, you can see what's popular and tweet insults at celebrities

vs

make a mastodon account, you can use fedilabs to allow hashtag-following following the public feed of a remote instance multi-account with cross-account actions

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

Hi Kux,

The problem I see here, is that you then also need to explain why following a remote instance might be interesting, . which means that you need to explain how the fediverse has led to the existance of specialised instances. (which means that you also need explain that the fediverse is more community driven).

"even though you can be on one instance (as you really like the community overthere, and it the posts have a good signal-over-noise ratio), the ability to follow remote instances does still allow you to follow other instances (read: other communities) .. after all .. most people do are interested in several things, no? "

[-] spauldo@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Sorry, but as soon as a website starts throwing pop-ups at me I close it. Why people tolerate that nonsense is beyond me.

[-] kristoff@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

interesting article.

I understand the fact that you do not want to make it to.complicated, but there qte soms other things you might try to squeze in:

other microblogging software besides mastodon (miskey, pleroma, gotosocial. ) who are also the fediverse I understand that you are mainly addressing people who come from twitter/X. A lot of people equate micro blogging with twitter .. and twitter with microblogging. It is interesting to note that micro blogging is just a service, and twitter and mastodon are just two examples (be it the biggest ones). But there is other microblogging software out there! And, due to the fediverse, you are free to use anyone you like.

You can mention that these othersoftwarei offer other perspectives to the same service. Eg. a service like hubzilla has a more privacy-oriented approach.

You mention mastodon pixelfed and Lemmy as the fediverse replacement for X, Instagram and reddit (services people know). You canalsoo mention services like friendica (which has a more FB like interface), or peertube, librecast, (videos and videostreaming) , funkwhale (audio),/ WordPress (for macroblogging) .. or less know services that do not have 'big name' tech behind it (eg bookwyrm for books, agenda-sharing services, .. or even activitypub based chess).

I understand that listing all of this would be to much. It is however interesting to make people understand that social media is a lot more then 'the big three names they know', both in the variety in the types of services social media offers and the choice of software inside each segment)

Kr.