The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter
The common forum that Elon Musk destroyed will never be replaced—and that’s okay.
What a world.
https://archive.is/LQsdz Non-paywalled link.
A handful of disgruntled tweeters tried Post and Mastodon, but the first is a graveyard, and the second is an obstacle course for non-techie users.
What's post?
I don’t even understand what’s difficult about mastodon or lemmy. Just pick a server forget about it and enjoy the better communities
I think it’s an “analysis paralysis” problem. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what instance to join while worrying about what was “right” (of course an incorrect question), what “fit” my inclinations/preferences, will it be around in X time, who are the mods, don’t want to centralize on just one instance, until I just bit the bullet.
I’m reminded of how Job’s late-90’s mass simplification of the Apple product line made it easier for consumers to just pick something. (general or pro user? laptop or desktop? boom, done.)
Indeed. Sometimes these objections of "it's too hard!" Make sense and are worth investigating improvements to the user experience, but in this case many of the complaints really seem more like excuses or a fundamental disagreement over the whole point of all this.
What's difficult?
So I'm on both and I work in tech. I'm technically capable, e.g. I verified my Mastodon account with my website. Neither Mastodon not Lemmy is anywhere near ready for non technical users.
Hell of a job picking an instance. Confusing to log in because I have to remember the instance not the service. Instance is all local stuff, global stuff is by default garbage.
I signed up to Mastodon a few months back. Most of the people I followed on Twitter didn't. Not surprising really given how confusing and complicated it is. I chose a server because someone I followed recommended it. I found most people posting less and less frequently, apart from the instance admin, they seemed to post books worth every singled day and I had to mute them. Then it got really quiet and I saw something about the server admin stepping down. At which point I learned that due to some ridiculous drama involving something the admin of my mastodon instance apparently said that some other instance admin didn't like, the whole instance/domain was 'silenced'. In other words 'the hell with you' to me because of something I wasn't even aware of, let alone involved with. Absolutely childish that something like that can even happen, and even better, it seems people often can't figure out how to make it 'un-happen'.
None of this covers mobile app issues
At this point mastodon has failed as an alternative to Twitter for me. There's about 3 non-twitter-repost-bot posters left in my feed, all either second rate or also posting the same on twitter.
A bit better than Mastodon but comparable issues with picking an instance. Dscoverability is slightly better because I can search for topics. I've had to create a login on a second instance because my first pick, and then my second pick, both:
So now I'm on my 3rd Lemmy login and I spent half an hour yesterday using someone's python script to back up my subs and resubscribe with my next account...
None of this covers mobile app issues
It's close, really close, and it could work but it's tough on Lemmy and missing on Mastodon
In the early nineties the term "droolproof" was, well, if not popular then at least existant. "Droolproof" instructions would be something like "do not expose your laser printer to open fire or flame".
Mastodon needs droolproof instructions. A private company like Twitter creates a series of gates for users to jump through and rigs things on the back end to make it so that people are unable to screw up too much. It's like a Fisher-Price chainsaw versus the actual chainsaw of Mastodon.
It's easy to forget how many people are active on social media who have never read a manual or a FAQ or who even know how to google very well, or at all. It's a huge proportion. Twitter serves them all by being, well, what it is. People give up their privacy and data patterns in exchange for a corporation making the experience droolproof.
There needs to be a youtube of some photogenic person happily showing how to use it. Srs. If we want to kill Elmos Fascist Tea Party we need that.
I agree, but it took a bit to understand active vs anything else and subscribed vs. all, etc. I think if there were explainers about switching your viewing and a list of instances' websites so you could check out the one you want to join by seeing their hot first page, that would be helpful. Also, a list of open source apps. Maybe there should be a welcoming community for people to lemmy? A place where everyone checking it out could go to ask questions and tutorials and stuff. Right now, you kind of have to know lemmy to ask lemmy.
Mostly "Mastodon is too hard" is an excuse people make because they just don't like it and/or dislike the Fediverse in general and don't want people to move there.
I 'interrogated' a bunch of people complaining about Mastodon and it was pretty obvious that a lot of them either didn't like the idea of Twitter replacements and/or were Elon Musk fanboys.
Post.news is where all the twitter journalists went. The folks who are really into journalism seem to love it. Also at first there was plan for micro-transactions because this was going to be the social media that saved newspapers or something. I don't know if that got implemented fully or not.
You have to sign up to see it, that kind of defeats the purpose.
That was the idea. Now it's pretty much a ghost town, though. It never had a real breakthrough
The site has always been much smaller than Facebook, and it only mattered because politicians, journalists, and those who currently pass for public intellectuals were using it. Whether you read The New York Times or watched Fox News, you would encounter content that began its life on Twitter.
This article is a big long hot take. Which is fine, it's kind of entertaining. But yeah if you care what the NYT and Fox News are printing on a daily basis you might feel a little untethered at the moment. Understanding that the two are linked is so close to understanding . . . something.
Still, lots of people care about the NYT and Fox News. And I mean LOTS of them
I hope this keeps up. Nothing would be better than corpo-owned social media dying out.
Very bad for some people like artists in the short term, specially if they haven't made an account somewhere else yet, but a centralized platform's eventual decline and death is inevitable to begin with, really. Twitter's is just happening much faster than expected.
Mastodon really needs to step up its ease-of-use though. For one, the apps should auto-assign users to instances based on their selected interests (letting them change it of course). It also has lots of minor inconveniences like the reply and like counts only showing interactions from your own instance, unlike Lemmy. Both Lemmy and Mastodon also have major discoverability issues right now.
Firefish looks great though, and I hope Bluesky's protocol makes itself compatible with ActivityPub, even if with a bridge between the two.
It's a bad time for social media right now
I'd argue the opposite. People have been fed up with the mainstream platforms for a long time now. Now that we know how social media grew grassroots terrorism and that the platforms allowed it for ad clicks, I'd say it's a good time to pivot away from the traditional models of the last 15-20 years, move away from the Facebooks and Twitters, and try something new.
Professionally, I lead a team of digital artists and oversee digital marketing efforts for a government client. The chaos and burning out of Twitter and Reddit has been a great time for my team as we've finally been given the latitude to do new work and build new strategies instead of just doing the same bullshit over and over. I've started enjoying work again and my team has been energized because everyday there's something new to overcome. And because the social media ecosystem is so turbulent, it's actually removing the pressure from us because our client understands that we are operating in new territory. Essentially, we are being allowed to fail in the pursuit of innovation.
I'm pumped to be a part of this evolving shift. There's so much potential. Also, I'm selfishly enjoying watching these fucking assholes like Musk flail and burn through billions of dollars as a result of their hubris.
And I've never felt better.
Twitter is dead much before elon turd bought it.
Yet Trump wouldn't have been as destructive without it. Covid wouldn't have been as destructive without it. It was dead to anyone who knew what it was yet here we are, hoping the millions stuck in Apartheid Clyde's Magic Funhouse can escape.
Got paywalled on this article.
Try https://12ft.io/ It removes paywalls for free and haven't failed me so far!
It'd be better if everyone posted non-paywalled links. Just sayin'. 12ft.io or archive is great.
Nice thanks!