This is a follow-up from my previous thread.
The thread discussed the question of why people tend to choose proprietary microblogging platfroms (i.e. Bluesky or Threads) over the free and open source microblogging platform, Mastodon.
The reasons, summarised by @noodlejetski@lemm.ee are:
- marketing
- not having to pick the instance when registering
- people who have experienced Mastodon’s hermetic culture discouraging others from joining
- algorithms helping discover people and content to follow
- marketing
and I’m saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.
Now that we know why people move to proprietary microblogging platforms, we can also produce methods to counter this.
How do we get “normies” to adopt the Fediverse?
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We don’t. Normies made Reddit suck and they’ll make Lemmy suck too. Always have at least a small barrier to tech entry. When anyone can use it then everyone will use it. So do you want Facebook? Because that’s how you end up with fucking Facebook.
Porn?
Is it an option to not? Cuz if so that’s what I’d choose.
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I’m part of the admin team for a group on Facebook dedicated to a niche wargame. Anyone can apply to join but there is an entry question. The question itself tells the user where to find the answer (it’s both on Wikipedia and in the rules of the group!). We still get people that either don’t answer or put something like “I can’t be bothered looking it up”.
Those people do not get to join.
I’m firmly of the belief that if people are working to maintain a space for you then it’s on you to put a bare minimum of effort in to be allowed to use that space. We curate the group to keep content on topic and try to keep it a nice place to be.
The nuance is of course in what level of gatekeeping is healthy.
Create a nice atmosphere.
Make it simple and remove and technical barriers. They should be able to google “Fediverse” click on the first link. Choose a username and be on their way. Find the app with the same name and install it in 2 minutes.
The network effect is a thing. They need to already find lots of their friends, interesting people and their favorite stars there.
And it has to be easy to discover them, if we don’t have an “algorithm” that suggests content.
I guess this ties into marketing, but I think rebranding the “fediverse” as the “social web” would be a good start. It has a broad neutral tone that I think is easier for regular people to latch on to.
Stop addressing them as “normies” would be a great start.
Can’t speak for rest of the Fediverse as I’m not super active on microblogging anymore, but at least here on Lemmy, there is such a strong “in” culture and quirky skewed perception of the world, and often times come off as actively hostile against those that do not share the same quirky skewed world view. The anti-AI, anti-corporate, would rather shoot myself in the foot if it’s not FOSS, etc kind of views, with their own strong vocal proponents, comes off as unwelcoming. People are addicted to socials because of the positivity they can get, not the negative sentiments that’s often echo’ed.
Amongst those that doesn’t share the kind of view, you’d already be looking at an extreme small minority that might be willing to give the platform a try, but as long as the skewed perception of the world dominates the discussions, you can expect them to go back to main stream centralized platforms where they can get more main stream view points based discussions.
Thats the neat part, you don’t. Social medias value isn’t determined by it’s tech. Its value is determined by who and what you can interact with. For example, people wont leave Facebook because everyone they know is on facebook because people won’t leave Facebook. Twitter is literally run by a nazi at this point and still it’s the same story where Mastodon and Bluesky aren’t even close. Same thing for reddit and lemmy. Lemmy simply doesn’t have the content reddit does, look no further than sports subreddits where any given game has a live game thread with a hundred or more unique commentors.
If you want mode people to come here you’re going to need to do two things. One you need to post content people want to see, and two you need to get very very lucky because as it stands if you don’t care enough about decentralization to lose out of a lot of content, theres literally no reason to be here. Its a long slow road and you’re still going to need reddit to do something stupid before we see another growth spike.
if you don’t care enough about decentralization to lose out of a lot of content, theres literally no reason to be here.
Officially supported clients which are not the Reddit app
This was one of the reasons I left, and I assumed most disliked the official app, but weren’t willing to part with the content.
Now, I think I was too close minded. Stuck in my bubble. If it’s not in a discussion about reddit sucking, chances are people don’t care that much.
App sucks? Didn’t think about that, it’s just an app. App really sucks? Whatever, they already use 5 other apps that are worse.
The medium shapes the experience, but isn’t an experience unto itself. Not that important to the average person.
Ahh good call, I hated their official app.
Lots of content here feels like someone beta testing their manifesto the FBI will find
@dch82 first, “normies” have to not get harassed when they come here.
Unfortunately the biggest Fedi software refuses to add automated reporting of offensive posts so if it’s not reported, the admins won’t even see it.
People coming from corporate social media are used to ignoring the report button because in their experience, it either doesn’t work, or gets ignored by admins anyway.
We need automated reporting.
We have instancewide admin blocks, so the accounts that would be automatically reported can be blocked preemptively, no report needed. That can be both good and bad… but pick a sheltered instance and you shouldn’t get harassed. How would automatic reporting even work? I don’t recall, but doesn’t the admin interface let you specify keywords that alert the admins in a post? Is that what you mean?
Definitely. Back when I used FB and Twitter I learned that reporting is entirely useless. You just end up with some automated message about how they reviewed it and it “didn’t violate their community standards” with some lame verbiage like “we realize this isn’t the outcome you were looking for”, regardless of how ridiculously blatant whatever you reported was. On the flip side, I was banned for clearly misinterpreted or brigaded comments, and then an appeal just gives you the inverse where they reviewed it and whatever you posted was definitely terrible and they “realize this isn’t the outcome you were looking for”.
I unironically think it would be easier to train users that the report button works now than it would to get automated reporting that was worth a damn implemented.
By automated reporting do you mean something like filters on the backend to flag offensive posts per some custom settings?
Federated reporting would help too
We need automated reporting.
I’m fine with auto REPORTING, but the actual moderation needs to be a human. Auto moderation is bad. It gets things wrong. It’s how I got banned from both twitter (calm down, this was back in 2018 before it was an elon owned nazi cesspool), and reddit.
On twitter I saw a funny video that was posted, and I replied “Aw man, that killed me”.
I was banned for “inciting death threats”
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That’s the thing about automation and training models.
First, they implement some sort of auto-reporting bot that requires a human to review them. In the beginning, it only about 50% accurate, but as they give it more and more examples of good and bad results through the human reviews, it moves to 80%, then 90%, then 99%, then 99.99% accuracy.
After a while, the humans on the other end are so numb to the 9999 entries they have to mark as approved that they can barely tell what’s a rejection themselves, and the moderation team is asking itself just what this human review is actually doing. If it’s 99.99% accurate, why not let the bot decide?
Then, the model moves on from auto-reporting to auto-moderation.
@BeAware@social.beaware.live @dch82@lemmy.zip Maybe im a little lost. Isn’t there a block and report button on Mastodon? I’m using Misskey and both buttons seem to work. I mean im reporting to myself, but the button seems to work. What kind of automated blocking are you trying to do here?
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@BeAware@social.beaware.live @dch82@lemmy.zip So Mastodon not have a wordlist you can populate that “removes” posts with the keywords you provide? It took me a while to find it in Misskey, works like a charm,
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I’m confused, do you mean like automated enforcement rules/algorithms like big SM has? I.e. if user gets reported for breaking Y rule X amount of times ban user for Z amount of time and forward to admin for further action?
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Ah, makes sense now, that is dumb. I can totally see why they would have issues with automated enforcement, but what you described I don’t see why anyone would be against it lol
Don’t.
I like what this is, I don’t want it to become everything for everyone
Agreed. Look what Reddit turned into. Better to have fewer but higher quality comments than a sea of the same tired jokes and ancedotes over an over again.
I don’t like that there’s so few people questioning the core concept of “one platform for everyone”.
Why does it have to appeal to everyone? Why can’t its audience be a subset of humanity who like nerdy shit? It’s what I liked about Reddit in the early years - it wasn’t completely inaccessible but it was niche enough that there was a bit of a filter, allowing me to find content and people that appealed to me.
Aiming for lowest common denominator doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
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I’m guessing a lot of comments will be of the “why do we want to?” variety.
Quite. Go to the big services that know how to moderate and maintain (and importantly pay for) a public square. But also encourage the interesting ones enable federation for wider coverage.
I’m a developer, and it was a pain picking an instance. You start reading about them, and it turns out one’s censored, the other one’s communist, third one doesn’t cooperate with the other ones so you can’t see anything…
As long as it is like this, I don’t believe mass adoption is feasible. I would’ve given up because it takes a lot of time compared to just registering and off you go, but I was interested to see what’s all the ruckus after reddit started with censorship. Maybe interesting to mention that I was never an active reddit member (not one post there).
Indeed, nowadays I just send people to Lemm.ee
- neutral name (sorry SJW)
- second biggest instance
- almost no defederation
- no topic or country specific (I mean, technically Estonia, but everything happens in English, compared to feddit.org for instance)
-Neutral name (sorry SJW)
Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)
almost no defederation
I don’t think this is really a good thing. Most people don’t want to bother curating their feed and if they get lots of bad stuff from instances that ought to be defederated, then they will leave.
Just send them to Lemmy world… Edge and shit lords will get banned and figure how this bitch works lol
Normies being on Lemmy world is better than. Reddit in my book
Just send them to Lemmy world
I agree that having a “default instance” would greatly help with onboarding new users, but as many others have said before, centralizing on the largest instance is not a good idea.
There are several other “general purpose” Lemmy instances. Why not send everyone to lemm.ee, until its size is close to lemmy world? At that point, start sending everyone to lemmy.sdf.org or lemmy.zip.
Great point!
I don’t know what other instances are viable bit we should have a place to get current preferred.
I just tell my peeps Lemmy.world it is like reddit with out going into details about fediverse since they ignore me once I start talking “federation”
The problem with this approach is that your peeps won’t see any reason to go there if it’s the same as the R-site only exponentially less popular.
There needs to be an understandable USP.
Perhaps: “But without ads. Ever. Anywhere.” Works for me and I know what an ad-blocker is, unlike a ton of normies.
Sincere question: what does “normie” exactly mean in the context of Lemmy? Is it a person that couldn’t get past setting up Lemmy account?
The term sounds like it has kinda elitist connotations. I mean I’ve set up Lemmy, but I don’t feel like I’m god given - maybe I should. 😆 (kidding, of course)
Yea, instead of a default instance, I think there should be a default system that assigns you to one of a set of participating “general” instances without you having to decide or think about it.
Doesn’t https://join-lemmy.org/ do that?
AFAICT, it helps you pick an instance based on your interests, which only barely helps with the problem. If you’re new to the ecosystem, you typically just want to join in and see what’s going on before making any decisions. And you probably don’t want to bother with selecting criteria for a selection guide at all.
What I’m suggesting is clicking a button “Sign Up”, enter credentials, verify and done. Then allow the whole finding an instance process pan out naturally.
Part of the issue IMO is that how an instance advertises itself isn’t necessarily how it will be seen by someone … they need to see it for themselves.
Part of the issue IMO is that how an instance advertises itself isn’t necessarily how it will be seen by someone … they need to see it for themselves.
Indeed
And then we will get more communities being created on Lemmy world, and then the whole Fediverse depends on one single instance. This seems like a good idea at first, but won’t stand the test of time.
I am trying to convince more instance admins to install Fediverser on their servers, so that we can have a way to point people to one site that can distribute the users and help with onboarding and discovery. But so far none of the admins really seem to be interested in the having to deal with the potential influx of users from Reddit.
I am trying to convince more instance admins to install Fediverser on their servers, so that we can have a way to point people to one site that can distribute the users and help with onboarding and discovery
What does Fediverser from an admin standpoint? Does it just enable a “Login with Reddit” option for onboarding new users?
That is the main thing, yes, but it would also allow for better coordination among the instances for migration efforts. “Fediversed” Instances can keep of redditors that migrated, can have more attributes to display for people when selecting a instance, can accept or reject a Redditor based on certain criteria (e.g, account is too new, or was flagged as a spammer, or is posting a language different from the main language in the server, etc)
Bluesky is FOSS tho…
what are you talking about? bluesky isn’t open source, the protocol is, and it reeks of embrace, extend, extinguish by branding itself as an open network
How can it be EEE if it’s their own protocol?
Also there is much more open source from Bluesky: https://github.com/bluesky-social
I don’t actually mean it’s EEE but that whatever they are doing feels similar; besides, with one big server controlled by a corporation in the centre of their ecosystem, they could “defederate” any rising AT-compatible competitor servers out of existence.
They might not now, but don’t ever trust a company to not do this.
What would be the point of putting in the effort to make Bluesky or other ATProtocol apps selfhostable if they didn’t want people to do that? Doesn’t make any sense
The danger (as they can see) are not selfhosters, but larger competitive instances. They don’t allow AT servers of over 10 users and 1500 events a hour. This is clearly targeted to prevent large-scale instances (fediverse style) from being created.
How many bluesky users actually selfhost?
With all due respect, fuck the normies. The fediverse is better off without them.
Maybe I don’t want the “normies” around, whoever they are, but personally I would like to see a lot more people joining in such as Go players, Skyrim modders, situationists, auto mechanics, British panel show enthusiasts, death metal guitarists, discordians, card sharks, magicians, acid heads, skydivers, xylophonists, and amateur zookeepers. This part of fedi has more than enough politics and computers and too little everything else.
Feel free to have a look at !newcommunities@lemmy.world for active niche communities
Just be patient.
We all love bashing out less techie friends but dunking on them is counter productive!
Like it or not they make the main/lame stream. We need fedi to go mainstream to deny corpo trash profits.
Like it or not, normies must be onboarded!
but once there is a big pond with a lot of fish, there will be sharks.
We need fedi to go mainstream to deny corpo trash profits.
Why? Who cares if we don’t have to interact with them? Becoming mainstream was the downfall of Reddit.
If you don’t forge your own destiny, then somebody will do it for you aka reddit.
Reddit failed due to governance and centralization issue. Not BC it was mainstream IMHO
You don’t think the massive amount of repetitive jokes and reposts and overall shitty attention whoring content was a problem on Reddit?
I would posit that the main/lame stream is not the actor doing that shit but rather that their presence attracts bad faith actors.
So we’re still better off without them.
I think I’d be considered a “normie” maybe. I’m not super tech savvy (maybe a bit more than the average person though as I’m a bit of a photoshop wizard and am interested in tech subjects).
What brought me to lemmy was my moral compass. I’ve used reddit since the late 00’s so it was hard to let go but reddit just isn’t what it used to be. I could no longer use Joey, my reddit app of choice so I abandoned it because what they did to Joey and other apps was bullshit.
I still find myself on reddit every now and then when I need information on something specific though. I haven’t found communities on the fediverse that I connect with that are super active (things like houseplants, knitting, chronic pain, my specific city I live in, etc).
I use lemmy now for mindlessly scrolling before bed and news as I only use Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for work so it’s not leisurely for me to get on normie social media. I do find some interesting articles and funny memes and that’s enough for now.
So maybe the key to get a more robust community is through pulling heart strings? Idk my husband still used reddit daily and I guess doesn’t give a shit about the lax morals of the company 🤷🏼♀️
