Hey… that just gave me a small idea… what if we made a “flock” or “herd” of Mastodon servers? The group of servers would all federate with each other, have the same block and allow lists, moderation policy and teams spread throughout them.
When you make an account you can be assigned a random instance name within the flock. If your instance goes down you could still possibly log in using other servers? Main benefit would be spreading server costs and maintenance effort and de-centralized operating, but still keep a centralized feel to it?
Honestly that’s probably the best sort of solution. A group that has some minimum standards of moderation and maintenance/upgrade management plan and just evenly distribute the load as people arrive.
Then as a second phase make it easy to transfer, that way at the point the user gets comfortable they can easily swap to a better* “home” for those that care, for those that don’t, make the server choice be virtually invisible.
If they have the same people running all of them, how is that different from running a single mastodon server in kubernetes, so that it doesn’t get overloaded?
You’d have different domain names to get people used to the concept. John Doe would sign up, and become john.doe@apple.server.hostname, Jane Doe would sign up and become jane.doe@banana.server.hostname
That is what we have now, but clearly people are averse to making a choice that they are not technically inclined to know how big or small the consequences of that are. My solution is a spitball one with obvious flaws, but essentially it is that the instance is picked randomly out of a group of very closely, if not identically aligned servers.
But hardly anyone in the Fediverse, next to no-one on Mastodon and literally no-one outside the Fediverse knows that Misskey exists. Not outside of Japan anyway. Or any of the Forkeys, for that matter (if you’re a Westerner and neither an otaku nor a weeb, Iceshrimp or Sharkey may suit you better).
For more Mastodon users than not, the Fediverse = Mastodon. And outside the Fediverse, hardly anyone has even heard of the Fediverse.
In what regards what normies would use of the featureset, they are identical tho - pretty much everything is identical these days. Log in, go to your timeline / flood / jeep / whatever, click “post new”, copy-paste a meme, hit toot / blarg / weep / whatever. There. Done.
99% of people use the exact same 1% of the features of a service.
joinmastodon.org (the ‘official’ way to get join mastodon), has a default server for its join button. To me this looks very similar to the default server that appears when you try to create a bluesky account. So… I guess that’s not a barrier after all.
It was revolutionary, the utter example of a “killer app” that had people and businesses running out to buy computers just to replace paper memos. You setup your mail server to hook into that brand new, stunning ecosystem of near instant communication from across the world.
Now there are 6,000,000,000 “killer” apps you can install in seconds from your pocket computer. I can hit “install” and be talking face to face with a stranger in Singapore in 30 seconds, all from easy, low effort walled gardens.
Federation was and is a reasonable way to host things, but comparing current systems to email is a misnomer. People dealt with federation because they had to. If gmail has existed in 1983, no one would have had their own federated email servers. Hell, AOL tried to choke the internet itself to death and almost succeeded in the early 90s because it was an “all in one” solution. They had aol only webpages and everything, including email. Its a twist of fate that they failed, mainly due to the onset of always on broadband, not because people didn’t want things easy.
Make things easy, people will use it. They will only do hard if they have to.
I mean, it’s a network of indeoendent websites. I’m not sure what kind of solution to this people want.
People seem to be able to choose which wrbsite they’re signing up for when looking at Twitter, BlueSky, and Threads. It’s not like it’t that weird of an idea.
They even grok the idea that different Wordpress-based websites are different from each other!
Maybe if we stopped treating “Mastodon” as a space, and talked about it like the webhost software it is, people would understand.
Install the official Mastodon app on your phone, launch it, scroll past the instance selection box that railroads you to mastodon.social anyway, and it’s no more complicated than Twitter. It’s just that nobody knows that.
Fun fact: The official Bluesky app has a selection box for a PDS, too. It’s no more and no less complicated than the official Mastodon app. Nobody knows that either.
Granted, of course, if you let yourself be railroaded, the place where you land in the Fediverse won’t be the bee’s knees, and you won’t know that there are not only better Mastodon instances (or more Mastodon instances in the first place), but also better server applications than Mastodon (or anything else than Mastodon in the Fediverse in the first place). But hey, it’s easy-peasy.
As long as the fediverse has a barrier to entry for most people of mandating choosing a server first, it will never become the mainstream choice.
Hey… that just gave me a small idea… what if we made a “flock” or “herd” of Mastodon servers? The group of servers would all federate with each other, have the same block and allow lists, moderation policy and teams spread throughout them.
When you make an account you can be assigned a random instance name within the flock. If your instance goes down you could still possibly log in using other servers? Main benefit would be spreading server costs and maintenance effort and de-centralized operating, but still keep a centralized feel to it?
Honestly that’s probably the best sort of solution. A group that has some minimum standards of moderation and maintenance/upgrade management plan and just evenly distribute the load as people arrive.
Then as a second phase make it easy to transfer, that way at the point the user gets comfortable they can easily swap to a better* “home” for those that care, for those that don’t, make the server choice be virtually invisible.
i like the idea of a server choice virtually invisible feature!
Let me see how you get instance admins to agree on what to defederate.
Maybe a vote of 75% minimum would be good?
If they have the same people running all of them, how is that different from running a single mastodon server in kubernetes, so that it doesn’t get overloaded?
You’d have different domain names to get people used to the concept. John Doe would sign up, and become john.doe@apple.server.hostname, Jane Doe would sign up and become jane.doe@banana.server.hostname
This is quite unnecessary, it would be simpler if we have a list of the long-running and most stable instances and have the users pick one.
That is what we have now, but clearly people are averse to making a choice that they are not technically inclined to know how big or small the consequences of that are. My solution is a spitball one with obvious flaws, but essentially it is that the instance is picked randomly out of a group of very closely, if not identically aligned servers.
Basically, a single instance
Where?
When you go to comment on a blog, where do you sign up?
Man, it feels like you guys haven’t spoken to a real human in decades…
Yeah, most people wants an easy migration. If the interface was nearly identical to Twitter, there’d be a flood.
Misskey has a more similar UI to Twitter, and it can’t even get noticed by fediverse users.
But hardly anyone in the Fediverse, next to no-one on Mastodon and literally no-one outside the Fediverse knows that Misskey exists. Not outside of Japan anyway. Or any of the Forkeys, for that matter (if you’re a Westerner and neither an otaku nor a weeb, Iceshrimp or Sharkey may suit you better).
For more Mastodon users than not, the Fediverse = Mastodon. And outside the Fediverse, hardly anyone has even heard of the Fediverse.
In what regards what normies would use of the featureset, they are identical tho - pretty much everything is identical these days. Log in, go to your timeline / flood / jeep / whatever, click “post new”, copy-paste a meme, hit toot / blarg / weep / whatever. There. Done.
99% of people use the exact same 1% of the features of a service.
joinmastodon.org (the ‘official’ way to get join mastodon), has a default server for its join button. To me this looks very similar to the default server that appears when you try to create a bluesky account. So… I guess that’s not a barrier after all.
Yeah, they’ve implemented this a while ago, this year IIRC. People are on old information bashing Mastodon.
This is the exact reason email never took off. /s
Email was invented in 1983.
It was revolutionary, the utter example of a “killer app” that had people and businesses running out to buy computers just to replace paper memos. You setup your mail server to hook into that brand new, stunning ecosystem of near instant communication from across the world.
Now there are 6,000,000,000 “killer” apps you can install in seconds from your pocket computer. I can hit “install” and be talking face to face with a stranger in Singapore in 30 seconds, all from easy, low effort walled gardens.
Federation was and is a reasonable way to host things, but comparing current systems to email is a misnomer. People dealt with federation because they had to. If gmail has existed in 1983, no one would have had their own federated email servers. Hell, AOL tried to choke the internet itself to death and almost succeeded in the early 90s because it was an “all in one” solution. They had aol only webpages and everything, including email. Its a twist of fate that they failed, mainly due to the onset of always on broadband, not because people didn’t want things easy.
Make things easy, people will use it. They will only do hard if they have to.
The best thing for on-boarding are topic-specific instances, it makes picking one much easier.
Why can’t mastodon influencers create content on how easy it is to pick a server.
Ah make it like a food hall and anthropo the servers as food.
You don’t have to choose. Joinmastodon.org chooses for you, and you can choose one yourself as well but only if you want to.
Somebody definitely needs to make a frontend that makes it smooth.
I mean, it’s a network of indeoendent websites. I’m not sure what kind of solution to this people want.
People seem to be able to choose which wrbsite they’re signing up for when looking at Twitter, BlueSky, and Threads. It’s not like it’t that weird of an idea.
They even grok the idea that different Wordpress-based websites are different from each other!
Maybe if we stopped treating “Mastodon” as a space, and talked about it like the webhost software it is, people would understand.
mastodon.social exists
It’s literally there to take the choice away from new users
It actually doesn’t.
Install the official Mastodon app on your phone, launch it, scroll past the instance selection box that railroads you to mastodon.social anyway, and it’s no more complicated than Twitter. It’s just that nobody knows that.
Fun fact: The official Bluesky app has a selection box for a PDS, too. It’s no more and no less complicated than the official Mastodon app. Nobody knows that either.
Granted, of course, if you let yourself be railroaded, the place where you land in the Fediverse won’t be the bee’s knees, and you won’t know that there are not only better Mastodon instances (or more Mastodon instances in the first place), but also better server applications than Mastodon (or anything else than Mastodon in the Fediverse in the first place). But hey, it’s easy-peasy.
As long as email has a barrier to entry for most people of mandating choosing a server first, it will never become the mainstream choice.