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It’s interesting that the biggest communication challenge facing Mastodon communities is explaining that it’s basically a protocol and a network of independent, interconnected servers, which is what the Web, e-mail, even DNS and most of the fundamental services we use on the internet are, and always were.
It just illustrates just how much ‘Big Tech’ proprietary social media platforms swallowed up and walled off, if it’s now difficult to explain what the internet actually is!
@dkellyj To truly be an alternative public square, it needs to mimic some aspects of corporate bird app. Looks nice, easy to use, etc. Remove refernence to protocols. Explain in plain English at level of basic human values rhe difference. I'm thinking Mick Lynch who could translate railway strike into easily understandable terms
@FiachraByrne @dkellyj the issue is that we're 30yrs in to the web, 50yrs of internet and 10yrs of internet in your pocket. These concepts should be second nature to a good chunk of the population by now. But we've had Big Tech pushing the walled garden product concept for a good chunk of that time.
Avoiding mentioning the nature of the fediverse is going to lead to a bunch of problems. If people think of all Mastodon servers as a single thing then they'll trust all servers the same which will make phishing attacks trivial.
@FiachraByrne @dkellyj I think of it as being roughly analogous to the US. You have the United States (Mastodon), and the individual states (servers). They all form the whole, but have their own differences in rules and 'culture' .
@FiachraByrne @dkellyj I've been trying to explain it to people by comparing it to email. You can sign up for Gmail but you can still email Yahoo.
Picking the server during the sign up process appears to be a sticky spot for a lot of people. I struggled with it a little initially but hopefully the influx of users can make the learning curve worthwhile.
@connelhooley @FiachraByrne @dkellyj this is an excellent analogy, unfortunately it's getting ruined by the managers of a big Mastodon server here in Italy, who pretend to be hosting the "official" Mastodon Italy. 
Users in my country will surely get confused. 
@lazza wait, what?
@FiachraByrne @dkellyj
Presumably "alternative" to a physical public square and not some privately owned, ad fed, Twitter.
Many, if not all, twitter refugees have come here in search of a place/technology that offers more freedom of speech and freedom from algorithms, which are political rights, especially in the EU. Democracy is a political technology too. Would you also suggest that, to make it attractive, a democracy should not be talking about its basic protocols, eg. rights & voting?
twitter was a "public square" and nothing I have heard of that place made me want to go there.
@dhfir@expired.mentality.rip @FiachraByrne@eupolicy.social @dkellyj@mastodon.ie twitter is like a big, internationally known public square in a city: several hectares of paved ground, bordered by large shops and hotels and fast food chains and at least one major road. there are billboards and surveillance cameras everywhere, also a large cop presence. what it's lacking are basic amenities like benches or drinking fountains, they were removed a couple years ago because they “promote loitering” or “attract the homeless”. busking is either prohibited or heavily regulated
fedi is like a smaller public square, bordered by ordinary apartment blocks and small businesses. it doesn't look particularly remarkable on the map; maybe someone will tell you to meet them there, or maybe you'll stumble upon it as you explore the city, but you wouldn't actively decide to head there on your own if you didn't know about it. there's a weekly market every wednesday and a flea market on the last saturday of the month. there's a nice fountain in the middle with a little wall around it that one can sit on. there are benches and trees and drinking fountains that invite you to stay for a bit and read a book, look at the fountain, listen to the buskers; or you could go sit in one of the small cafés around the place. it's somewhat obscure but those who know it vastly prefer it over the soulless stone desert
@FiachraByrne @dkellyj While simplicity is fine for the introduction, I think talking about protocols is very important user-education because the "law of lemons" applies to social technologies.
If someone believes Mastodon is one entity (like Facebook or Twitter,) all federated communities are tainted by association with defederated ones. It follows that only corporate walled gardens can be responsible/safe.
@dkellyj@mastodon.ie Perfectly said. Thank you.
Or perhaps a star trek analogy
Fediverse = United Federation of Planets
Fb, Twitter etc = Borg
@dkellyj Or it was always difficult to explain what the internet actually is and mass usage, when “everyone” got online, was only when these exhaustingly (even to a lifelong nerd like myself) bafflingly complicated things were masked by the convenience “big tech” created.
That’s why it got big.
People just want to connect, talk, share, enjoy, affirm. They don’t want to know or care about any of the tech that makes it possible. And they shouldn’t need to (though they might have to).
@NateBarham @dkellyj this! I totally agree.
@NateBarham @dkellyj Good point. But I don't think grasping the basic concepts is too much to ask -- people do that just fine in other contexts. When you get a phone, you're subscribed to a particular network provider, but you can call people on other networks. Mastodon servers are like phone providers.
@iain_bancarz @dkellyj Of course! And I think some people will, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that most wont. Mastodon servers aren't like phone providers because they aren't as necessary. You must have a provider, so you deal with their nonsense. You don't have to have Mastodon. You can just use another free social network. Phone providers have a cost element and a coverage/area element that I'd say overpowers all of that in addition to the rel requirement to have a working phone.
@dkellyj a series of tubes right?
@josephby runs entirely on compressed air. It’s quite an achievement.
This is definitely the challenge - explaining what the internet was (still is in parts) before the corporate takeover of people's time and attention.
It's a fantastic thing that this exact conversation is happening everywhere right now - I mean, it's on the BBC News homepage!
More people being shown it doesn't have to be one way. All because of one man wasting his money destroying something he spent it all on.
@dkellyj it's also very daunting for many people who agreed used to the big tech way of doing everything in one place. Imagine everyone having to use a clutched gearbox in their car. Some still do, some remember, and some have never used a third pedal.
@dkellyj Eh. I've gotta admit the rules for what you can see on Mastodon are a little arcane. It reminds me of pre-internet e-mail addresses, where you had to add!every!address!format!in!order to get mail delivered via multiple networks. The fact that I, the user, has to care which server someone is on is a classic leaky abstraction. There's no virtue in servers being exposed in the protocol this way, and old-style internet services didn't do this. "Server" is just not an interesting abstraction
@tjradcliffe @dkellyj still trying the get the hang of this, but I think there is a value to some servers for some people. The same as the various general slack channels we in a 5k employee company. Most people might care about their explicit network, others might be more interested in a topic focused feed. Our small office sites have one (active) general channel, but the big sites have catering, for sale, etc and a much more selective general channel. Hard to understand before using.
@tjradcliffe @dkellyj It's impossible to do federation without namespaces, though. I wouldn't consider it a leaky abstraction—it's just inherent to the design of a federated system. There is no single global email namespace either.
@simongray @dkellyj Namespaces are fine. It's the tying of namespaces to the hardware I'm questioning. "Channel" is a useful abstraction. Channel is defined by topic or purpose. Server or Instance is defined by the hardware admin's whims, physical location, whatever. And it creates a dependency on a single individual/server. Some kind of virtual instance, abstracted from the hardware, would be nice. Maybe! These are newbie thoughts, very subject to change.
@tjradcliffe @simongray @dkellyj Something that's overlooked/under-emphasized is that each server does have a local timeline. So they are in fact a namespace defined by a topic or purpose.
Just that for most, the purpose is "get onto the Mastodon federation".
@dkellyj It is closer to Discord than Twitter, IMO. Having said that, when my eldest found out that I was on Discord his reaction was "What?! but you're OLD! Old people are on Facebook, not Discord!" Understanding Mastodon may be a generation issue too, I suspect the younger folks will find it easier.
For those who are interested, my eldest and I are now friends on Discord and he accepts that his parents generation may occasionally do things that he does not expect.
@dkellyj i'm also reminded of the time i explained to a friend that radio doesn't _require_ fixed infrastructure or a paid-up subscription - they were surprised that it's possible to talk directly through the air, handset-to-handset.
@meena @astrid @dkellyj you'd be amazed at how many people don't understand that GPS on their phone works just fine on airplane mode
(yeah modern phones synthesize phone tower signals along with GPS for location but loads of people either never knew or forgot that GPS works just fine without a cell connection or any transmission from your end at all)
@dkellyj I think most people by now also have no idea what a 28.8k modem was, and how images appeared line by line in your browser.
@dkellyj I think that’s where some good PR needs to come into it. Someone else here mentioned that “Instances” needs to become “Communities” — lifting it out of nerd speak and into more common language. A lot of small steps like that will greatly reduce the friction of switching over.
@dkellyj FWIW, I had a hard time explaining to people what the internet actually was in 2000-2010 before everything became a walled garden. I don't think folks are really given great tools to understand this tech via any avenue either, which seems like a problem nobody is lining up to do anything about.
@dkellyj "We" fought for free software for decades (and IMHO more than less) succeeded and than the awful "apps" and "software as a service" reintroduced proprietary software as it's worst ...
@dkellyj mastadon is in a weird spot, because it is both deeply deeply deeply web/http based, but it also lies/obfuscates/dissembles about what really is.
you are @dkellyj to me here. but if i click your name, i go to https://mastodon.ie/@dkellyj . there's a lot of people who just-do-not-fucking-get the web right now, but there's a more sizable force who do have some idea what a url is and how sites/hosts work, what that means.
mastadon is vaguely uncomfortably both it's own thing & just simple dumb web sites working together. i can't help but think it's a losing situation to not just embrace a more genuine wider-spread truth better. but i get that that would be weird, from an authoring-posts standpoint.
the apparent connection to email-addresses is like, just not quite enough. the use case is just a little too different for it to just work, help people slot together their mental models.
@dkellyj i also think there's a lot of hella loser foot-dragging little whiny babies moaning, and that the anti-crowd is ever more popular than they deserve, self-amplifies their griping loudly.
@dkellyj Even more: there is absolutely no reason why Google or Microsoft or Amazon or Yahoo couldn't implement this protocol tomorrow. Any of them would instantly own the space by user count, and would probably continue to dominate the space like they do with email. They could deliver all the ads they want to their users, implementing content filters like they do on email, and everyone would still have a choice of provider and still be able to communicate. Would that be good or bad?
@richard_merren @dkellyj funnily enough google did a lot of groundwork for federated social with stuff that came out of Wave
@dkellyj I think the decentralized nature of it is what's so appealing to me!
@dkellyj I wonder if ActivityPub/Mastodon can be decoupled from Big Web so that it leverages more of existing internet protocols and standard OS tools instead of reinventing them.
internet != the web
@dkellyj Irish Times "journalism" totally misrepresenting Mastodon should be along shortly.
@dkellyj couldn’t agree more
@dkellyj GREAT POINT!!
@dkellyj People usually want Apple products, with pretty icons and all the decisions made for them.
@dkellyj Agreed. It’s not just “big tech social media platforms”. For e-Mail my “technical support” people direct me to Outlook Express. Argh. I say “SMTP” and they look blank. Same for the WWW. Try “HTTP” or “HTTPS”…. and they quickly change the subject. Even the telephone now requires MS Teams. You’ll soon have to have a username and password to speak with someone face-to-face.
@dkellyj worth a follow. Fab explanation
@dkellyj I always compare things like Mastodon and Matrix to e-mail when I tell people about it. It's an analogy basically everybody understands both when it comes to explaining "federated" and the fact that you have to choose a client vs there being just one.
Indeed big tech has made people forget how things work but luckily e-mail is still a thing (although GMail and Outlook are sadly both dominating there)