No, it’s mastodon but centralized. It takes all the difficulty out of signing up for the fediverse, like finding a server. I said it from day 1 on mastodon. We will never see mass adoption until there’s a simple sign up process. People like centralized because it’s easier.
Hmm actually yeah this is a good idea, but the problem is that there’s so many servers that I feel that after choosing criteria there’d still be a bunch of servers in the list and the problem remains, right? Just bouncing ideas. I quite like this idea though.
Mm this could be a problem because server load is too unpredictable. I would actually say just randomize the list, so that it kinda does its own “load balancing” by incentivizing to pick whatever random top one it selected?
Finding a server could not be any easier: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
If they can’t manage that then maybe they should not be on the internet. If my 60yo dad can do it then so can they. Learned helplessness in anything involving IT is my pet peeve.
It dumps you in front of a wall of 22 pages of servers on my laptop (equivalent to 4.35 meters).
Most of which have completely nonsensical descriptions.
If I look at e.g. the first page (top 6 servers) I get these:
mastodon.social: The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
mstdn.jp: Mastodon日本鯖です． よろしくお願いいたします。 (Maintained by Sujitech, LLC)
mstdn.social: A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.
mastodon.world: Generic Mastodon server for anyone to use.
mas.to: Hello! mas.to is a fast, up-to-date and fun Mastodon server.
mastodon.online: A newer server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
Ok, so of these I can only rule out mstdn.jp, because I don’t speak Japanese.
mastodon.social and mastodon.official are, I guess, the “official” instances, with one of them being newer, for some reason. What does that mean? No idea. Is mastodon.social running out dated software? If not, why fork the instances at all?
mstdn.social and mastodon.world mention that they are general purpose. Without (and even with) Fediverse experience, I would expect any social media platform to be general purpose unless otherwise stated. So they basically have no description.
mas.to mentions only that it’s “fast, up-to-date and fun”. That basically has no meaning, except all other instances are slow, outdated and boring. So now I am worried.
mstdn.social says it has a 500 character limit. Without googleing a new user would have no idea what the regular character limits are. And I have no idea whether that will cause issues when interacting with other instances.
This page is like getting to a used car dealership without a clue about cars and you ask the car dealer to help you choose a car, and the dealer is like “Yeah, so I’m gonna help you. The right car for you is any car on the property of the dealership.”
No, it’s mastodon but centralized. It takes all the difficulty out of signing up for the fediverse, like finding a server. I said it from day 1 on mastodon. We will never see mass adoption until there’s a simple sign up process. People like centralized because it’s easier.
I’ve been trying to hammer this point home.
I wish devs would wake up and create a default easy mode sign-up for the fediverse with an option to click “advanced sign-up” if you choose to do so.
The easy mode would just automatically assign an instance based upon some algorithm.
How?
Well, like asking users what their preferences are and select the servers based on the criteria users have chosen?
Hmm actually yeah this is a good idea, but the problem is that there’s so many servers that I feel that after choosing criteria there’d still be a bunch of servers in the list and the problem remains, right? Just bouncing ideas. I quite like this idea though.
Then the algo recommends the one with the lowest load and hides the others behind a … icon or something.
Mm this could be a problem because server load is too unpredictable. I would actually say just randomize the list, so that it kinda does its own “load balancing” by incentivizing to pick whatever random top one it selected?
Yeah, whatever metric. Could also use a mix of number of users, some form of reputation measurement, uptime, etc.
I mostly meant that the system should pick a “best server” and recommend that. Smarter people than me can come up with the best metric.
But swamping the user with >100 servers to pick from is counterproductive.
Finding a server could not be any easier: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
If they can’t manage that then maybe they should not be on the internet. If my 60yo dad can do it then so can they. Learned helplessness in anything involving IT is my pet peeve.
Tbh, this is not a good solution.
It dumps you in front of a wall of 22 pages of servers on my laptop (equivalent to 4.35 meters).
Most of which have completely nonsensical descriptions.
If I look at e.g. the first page (top 6 servers) I get these:
Ok, so of these I can only rule out mstdn.jp, because I don’t speak Japanese.
mastodon.social and mastodon.official are, I guess, the “official” instances, with one of them being newer, for some reason. What does that mean? No idea. Is mastodon.social running out dated software? If not, why fork the instances at all?
mstdn.social and mastodon.world mention that they are general purpose. Without (and even with) Fediverse experience, I would expect any social media platform to be general purpose unless otherwise stated. So they basically have no description.
mas.to mentions only that it’s “fast, up-to-date and fun”. That basically has no meaning, except all other instances are slow, outdated and boring. So now I am worried.
mstdn.social says it has a 500 character limit. Without googleing a new user would have no idea what the regular character limits are. And I have no idea whether that will cause issues when interacting with other instances.
This page is like getting to a used car dealership without a clue about cars and you ask the car dealer to help you choose a car, and the dealer is like “Yeah, so I’m gonna help you. The right car for you is any car on the property of the dealership.”
Huh? The default Mastodon app signs you up on mastodon.social by default. Nothing complicated about that:
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/
And the devs faced major opposition for that, because plenty of people accused them of wanting to centralize the decentralized network with that move.