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I got into Twitter six months ago for work and it took me a lot of time and patience and looking around to grok. You tried Mastodon for one day. I don't know what to tell you other than I am deeply saddened your comment is the current top. It reads as the dismissal of someone who doesn't like new things and just wished it was like their old thing. You will never satisfy people like this.

> I got into Twitter six months ago for work and it took me a lot of time and patience and looking around to grok.

As I already said, the problem isn't that I don't "grok" Mastodon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33429036

It didn't take me that long to grok Twitter.

> It reads as the dismissal of someone who doesn't like new things and just wished it was like their old thing.

I've used many different social networks over the years: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, IRC, App Dot Net (I paid for ADN!), Micro.blog, now Mastodon, and others I can't remember the names of anymore. I even used dial-up BBSes back in the day! I think I'm reasonably experienced and can make an educated evaluation of a new one.

I also tried it and yet I cannot follow the criticism of the UI. The one thing that is bad about mastodon is that it goes like: "cool, you wanna join? Here is a hundred choiced where to join and you better make the right one."

The interface is something I actually like better than the twitter one. I can actually see content from people I follow instead of weird "engaging" content. The website definitly is more usable than e.g. Instagram, which belongs to a multinational megacorp.

There is many clients but none of them seemed nightmarishly bad. The things the clients I tried offer work and are self explainatory.

The thing is: I tried mastodon years ago for a day and did also not grok it, but this had nothing to do with the UI, and everything with the people I followed and the instance I have been on. Then it is pretty much like twitter with multiple federates servers.

'I can actually see content from people I follow'?

On your home page, click on the star icon in the upper right corner and choose 'See latest Tweets instead'.

You can't be serious? If you can't grok it in 5-10 minutes then normal people, i.e. the vast majority of people using Twitter, are never going to use it. It doesn't take extensive analysis to realize Mastodon is a hot mess as an alternative to Twitter - and that's okay. Mastodon was never intended to be an alternative to Twitter. That also means don't expect the masses to adopt Mastodon.

I see the masses moving to Reddit. It'll be interesting to see their new registrations over the next couple of months.

I’m trying it now.

I have ALWAYS used Twitter through the 3rd party TweetBot app. That basically is Twitter for me. Unless someone sends me a link to a tweet, I don’t use the web.

The Mastodon app is no comparison. It has hitches while scrolling my (tiny) timeline. I can’t figure out some of the buttons or why they’re highlighted. There are no gestures at all that I’ve found. I don’t expect the level of one of the best Twitter apps of all time, but it feels more like what a web developer would think an app is.

Also, I did join Mastodon.social. And it’s currently dead from load (I assume). So my experience is going great.

Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them.

The only federated thing most people will ever use is email, and that’s a relic from the 1980s. And centralizing on gmail/outlook/a few others.

I can’t think of a single thing normal people use.

Most people don’t make their own site anymore, and so many that do are really just on one of the big hosts. They view content from web sites, but that seems different somehow.

I just have a hard time seeing Mastodon succeed. Between federation (yes, I know the benefits), resource issues, and simple UX issues I can’t imagine it taking off.

The UX and apps can be fixed, but by then its one chance may have passed and it may be too late.

> I just have a hard time seeing Mastodon succeed.

Very different numbers and contexts, but nobody could also predict Libera.chat would completely take over Freenode. All it needs is pissing off users, and it seems Twitter could be on the right track to do that, at least for a generous part of them.

People being annoyed enough to leave twitter is not synonymous with them also joining Mastodon.

Right. Also Freenode and Libra.chat are 1:1 equivalents. They’re both IRC right? Same features, same clients, same experience.

That’s not the case with Twitter and Mastodon.

> I can’t think of a single thing normal people use.

The Internet is federated. You can become the customer of any number of ISPs, and each can take you to any website with an IP address, in a distributed fashion, by just asking routers along the way.

ISPs all over the world are collaborating for a global network of networks.

There are many different Fediverse apps you can try; you don't have to stick with the official Mastodon one.

But I personally just use the web interface of my instance myself, the rare times I view it on mobile.

>Normal people just don’t care about federation. They seem to actively dislike it, and I don’t blame them.

Normal people don't like any kind of freedom of choice really: they want everyone to own the exact same iPhone they have, they actively discourage everyone they know from getting anything other than an iPhone (even going so far as to refuse to communicate with them because their messages show up with a different-color dot), and then they have the audacity to whine and complain when Apple exercises its monopoly power and makes iPhones absurdly expensive and forces software updates on them which make their older iPhones slower. But they absolutely refuse to even consider trying anything besides an iPhone, no matter how much they feel screwed over by Apple.

It's not just Apple and iPhones; I see this mentality all the time with many other things.

We'll probably see the same thing with Twitter. Many people will whine and complain about the price increases, about Musk's new rules or who or what he allows on the platform, etc., but a large group of them will simply never leave Twitter no matter what, unless it finally goes the way of MySpace.

>Between federation (yes, I know the benefits), resource issues, and simple UX issues I can’t imagine it taking off. >The UX and apps can be fixed, but by then its one chance may have passed and it may be too late.

I haven't looked at Mastodon so I'm just taking your word for it, but federation would only be useful if it were mostly transparent and not a hassle as others have described here, and the other issues will probably prevent anyone from switching, just like desktop Linux basically missed its chances to get really big over the years because of too many small issues that drove people back to Windows/Mac. First-mover advantage is a huge thing and it's really hard to unseat an incumbent.

Thank you for explaining that you only used it for one day to add context. It is a different experience that takes a little time to understand. I do not remember how long it took me to get familiar with Twitter as it was long ago, but I am sure it wasn't quick. Mastodon is developed mostly by volunteers rather than a team of well paid UX specialists focused on increasing engagement.

> It is a different experience that takes a little time to understand.

I understand it fine. I just don't like it.

Obviously, different Mastodon instances don't have shared credentials. Which means that whenever you visit a different instance in a web browser, it doesn't know you, and thus you can't just follow someone, or have your preferences apply to the page, etc. It's unlikely that this problem will ever be solved, given the nature of the protocol, and given that it hasn't been solved yet.

I'm not ideologically attached to federation. All I wanted was an alternative to Twitter. I found that attempting to migrate from Twitter to Mastodon was unpleasant. I expect that other people — not everyone, but many — will feel the same way, which limits Mastodon's adoption.

> Mastodon is developed mostly by volunteers rather than a team of well paid UX specialists

I can sympathize with their lack of resources while still not wanting to use Mastodon myself.

I know it is not super easy to find and follow and your feedback is good. Another way of following someone who is not appearing in one of your timelines is to copy their ID into your Mastodon search bar and then click the follow icon that appears next to it.

Are we not on "Hacker News"? Someone could make a simple browser extension that auths with your home instance and gives buttons to follow people on other instances.

Couldn't the browser remember your home instance as an autocomplete "url" value[0]?

So you would click the "Add this person as a friend on my home instance" button on the third party page, and it would bring up a little text box which you could fill and submit with a couple of clicks, then it would redirect you to your instance with an agreed URL parameter, so that your instance would ask whether you really wanted to add them.

Assuming your instance remembers who you are with a cookie (and the third party instance can remember your home instance too), the process could be minimally onerous.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes...

There's an add-on that opens a pop-up of your instace, so you can easily remote-follow someone on a different server.

Agreed though that the UX must improve.

Edit: here it is: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mastodon-simp...

It is technically impossible to be browsing user profiles on another server and then follow people with one click for this reason: People have multiple accounts. This is a feature to compartmentalize identities on the internet. You might have one account under your real name for people to find you, and you might have a different anonymous account for publicly posting political views that you don't want your fascist government or boss to associate to you.

Yeah, in that case, I think the status quo "works as designed". But I guess you could have the button trigger a drop down to select which account they want to follow from.

The core issue is that you are trying to do Twitter on non-Twitter. You are at fault, and it is expected that it didn't work for you. The tool is different, the ecosystem is different, the environment is different, the contracts are different. That's like complaining you can't do Twitter from inside Gmail.

Learn the rules of your new place, how it works, who people are. And most importantly that no one owes you anything. The fediverse community welcomes anyone with an open mind and a will to listen.

1. Please re-read and follow the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

2. You don't speak for Mastodon or the fediverse community, so you have no right to say "The fediverse community welcomes...", especially when your comment actually implies that the community is unwelcoming to non-ideologues.

3. Does Mastodon not want Twitter refugees to join?

4. I didn't say Mastodon owes me anything. I tried it, and I didn't like it, so I left. I don't owe Mastodon my usage, nor do I owe it a good review.

> 1. Please re-read and follow the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm sorry if my comment was unkind, but your dismissal of all the work done entirely by open-source volunteers after a single day of testing isn't exactly reflective of the platform, whatever the platform.

> 2. You don't speak for Mastodon or the fediverse community, so you have no right to say "The fediverse community welcomes...", especially when your comment actually implies that the community is unwelcoming to non-ideologues.

I speak for many accounts and many people having the same view: be open to something different, and your experience will be better. Be closed to newness and you will just not like it. It's not an ideology, it's valid for any situation where you will switch usages.

The toxicity of Twitter and its 1-liners that exacerbate misunderstanding and misinterpretation thanks to an algorithm that favors anything is not something that the fediverse community wants.

> 3. Does Mastodon not want Twitter refugees to join?

The fediverse (not Mastodon) wants many things, but the most important one is probably that communication be free. Maybe Mastodon, the microblogging is good. Maybe WriteFreely, or Plume, the blogging software, are good for people. Maybe people want federated image sharing, so they'll be more interested in PixelFed. It's not about having the biggest numbers, because there's no benefits; it's about the freedom of its users.

So, yes, if you want to keep on microblogging, please do come to the fediverse, but understand that the rules are different

> 4. I didn't say Mastodon owes me anything. I tried it, and I didn't like it, so I left. I don't owe Mastodon my usage, nor do I owe it a good review.

Good, because it sounded like you found your initial experience atrocious and assumed Mastodon needs changes to accomodate people migrating from Twitter.

> your dismissal of all the work done entirely by open-source volunteers

Here's the thing: I honestly don't care whether it's open source and run by volunteers. I was looking for an alternative to Twitter, period. Whether it's closed or open source, a business or a charity, that makes no difference to me. I just spent years on a closed-source for-profit platform.

> be open to something different, and your experience will be better. Be closed to newness and you will just not like it.

I object to this characterization. It's a straw man. I'm open to software that works well. I'm not open to software that doesn't work well. I didn't find this software to work very well for me. Maybe it doesn't align with my goals and priorities, and that's fine, but don't expect me to change my goals and priorities to accommodate Mastodon's.

> assumed Mastodon needs changes to accomodate people migrating from Twitter

Well, I do think that if Mastodon wants to attract and retain people migrating from Twitter, it does need to change. But I'm not personally demanding that it change. I've lost interest in it. On the other hand, if Mastodon doesn't want to attract and retain people migrating from Twitter, then don't change. :-)

If a service isn't compatible with my goals and priorities, then I leave. That's what I did with Twitter, and that's what I did with Mastodon, though for different reasons in each case.

I agree that cross-instance communication is very difficult. There should be a special URL scheme that points you to your instance which is installed as a handler.

Perhaps something like activitypub://another-instance.rocks/contenturl

Also, cross-instance search and discovery is difficult. There is no global index for topics which you can follow. Perhaps DHT or Gnutella can serve as inspiration.

> (I also couldn't disable "boosts" in my timeline, which is something I could do on Twitter.)

How hard did you look? Maybe there's different Mastadon host UIs? This took me seconds to find.

https://imgur.com/a/ZDfFyer

This was actually in the Mastodon client app that I was using.

> I made the mistake of joining the smaller mastodon.online rather than mastodon.social, which they claimed wouldn't make a difference, but it did.

This is a big reason why I never got into it. Different instances, different rules, etc.

The funny thing is there is totally a fix for this. Activitypub relays show content from other servers from the relay, and users will show up in search like twitter.

Its just that Gargon doesn't use them for some reason.