Fedibridge
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A community to organize and discuss the growth of the fediverse as a whole
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founded 1 month ago
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I have a draft designed for all types of fediverse software, but i narrowed it down to just threadiverse stuff
This is a guide meant to be linked for beginners, to explain the fediverse in as short time as possible.
Concepts
What's "federation"?
In easy terms; it's a concept where instances seamlessly integrate with each other. Users can talk to each other and participate in their communities. For example, my account is on lemm.ee and the community i am posting to is on slrpnk.net, yet i feel no friction.
What's an instance?
An instance is a server running software, with users, and communities, etc. (Each of these is like a mini-reddit/twitter/etc!) The software part is important, since instances can either be forums, microblogs, video-sharing sites, etc etc. And they can all interact with each other!
What's the "fediverse"?
The fediverse (federation + universe) is a coalition of federated instances running all types of different software, so a user from a forum instance (lemmy) can interact with a user from a microblog instance (mastodon)
Another example is bluesky, but that uses a different protocol, and is much less effective than ActivityPub.
Why should i use the fediverse over normal social media?
Many reasons. A few:
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it can never truly die - People can always create software and run instances, and if one goes down, the others will still be up.
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No one person controls the fediverse. We are all on equal grounds.
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Unlike corporations who back social media platforms, fedi is 100% ran by normal people. You can talk to developers, instance hosters, the mods, all as normal people, and they (unless you use their server) have no control over you.
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There is no need to appeal to advertisers
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Freedom of choice. Disagree with an instance's values, or a developer's? Easy, defederate or just don't use their software. You will still have the fediverse as a whole accessible to you, without the parts you do not like.
I'm convinced! How do i begin?
Excellent!
First you must choose what software you want your instance of choosing to run:
- Lemmy if you care about apps
- Piefed if you care about features/fast development, or a lightweight instance
- Mbin if you want both your blog and forum account in the same place
Instances
Lemmy
- lemm.ee, discuss.online, sopuli.xyz for general instances
- jlai.lu for french
- feddit.cl for chile
- lemmy.ca for canada
- feddit.org for german speakers
- programming.dev for a programming instance
- slrpnk.net/lemmy.dbzer0.com for leftist/anarchist instances
Piefed
- piefed.social for the flagship instance
- feddit.online for an NA instance
Mbin
- kbin.earth, fedia.io, kbin.melroy.org, thebrainbin.org, moist.catsweat.com for general instances
- rimworld.gallery for rimworld content
- cesto.garden for a leftist [italian] instance
- m.a9press.com for a korean instance
Apps/clients [everything after this point is optional]
some people may not like the default frontends or want to access their instance through mobile, here is a curated list:
Lemmy
- Photon [PC]
- Alexandrite [PC]
- Tesseract [PC]
- Voyager [MOBILE]
- Mlem [IOS]
- Arctic [IOS]
- Raccoon [ANDROID]
- Jerboa [ANDROID]
- Connect [ANDROID, NOT FOSS]
- Thunder [MOBILE]
- Interstellar [ANDROID]
Mbin
- Interstellar [ANDROID]
Communities
Here are some good community recommendations, based on topics:
Memes
- !funny@sh.itjust.works
- !programmer_humor@programming.dev
- !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !historymemes@lemmy.world
- !youcantparktheremate@feddit.uk
Software
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !selfhosted@lemmy.world / !selfhosting@slrpnk.net
Politics
- !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com / !anarchism@slrpnk.net
- !world@lemmy.world / !world@quokk.au / !globalnews@lemmy.zip
Casual
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
- !asklemmy@lemmy.world
- !casualconversation@lemm.ee
- !askUSA@discuss.online
- !casualuk@feddit.uk
- !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world
Knowledge
- !dataisbeautiful@lemmy.ml
- !documentaries@lemmy.cafe
- !math@lemmy.world
- !til@lemmy.world
- !vexillology@lemmy.world
- !wikipedia@lemmy.world
History
- !ancientcoins@lemmy.world
- !ancienthistory@slrpnk.net
- !askhistorians@lemmy.world
- !historyartifacts@lemmy.world
- !historicalpropaganda@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !history@lemmy.world
- !historyporn@lemmy.world
- !historyruins@lemmy.world
- !historyillustrations@lemmy.world
Animals
- !superbowl@lemmy.world
- !bats@lemmy.world
- !catposting@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !cat@lemmy.world -
- !catsstandingup@lemmy.world
- !opossums@lemmy.world
- !scrungycats@lemmy.world
Art
- !artporn@lemm.ee
- !astrophotography@lemmy.world
- !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works
- !fakehistoryporn@lemmy.world
- !imaginary@reddthat.com
- !imadethis@lemm.ee
- !inhabitedbeauty@lemmy.world
- !nocontextpics@lemmy.world
- !gameart@sopuli.xyz
- !wallpapers@lemmy.ca
Postface
That's about all there's left for you; have fun!
Finally... im done writing this...
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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/8865786
Letzter Post: https://feddit.org/post/7741296
Rohdaten
User Datum 0 21.6.2024 35 22.6.2024 284 23.6.2024 543 26.6.2024 731 1.7.2024 766 2.7.2024 829 6.7.2024 940 14.7.2024 965 17.7.2024 981 21.7.2024 1090 23.7.2024 1120 24.7.2024 1190 28.7.2024 1330 7.8.2024 1390 9.8.2024 1410 12.8.2024 1430 15.8.2024 1490 25.8.2024 1520 1.9.2024 1550 7.9.2024 1560 9.9.2024 1570 12.9.2024 1590 16.9.2024 1590 17.9.2024 1610 20.9.2024 1610 21.9.2024 1630 24.9.2024 1640 26.9.2024 1650 28.9.2024 1650 29.9.2024 1660 1.10.2024 1690 6.10.2024 1820 11.11.2024 1840 16.11.2024 1860 20.11.2024 1880 27.11.2024 1910 11.12.2024 1920 13.12.2024 1940 16.12.2024 1940 17.12.2024 1950 19.12.2024 1950 20.12.2024 1960 26.12.2024 2060 19.1.2025 2110 26.1.2025 2110 27.1.2025 2110 28.1.2025 2240 6.2.2025 2350 18.2.2025 2590 1.3.2025 2690 3.3.2025 2780 5.3.2025 2950 7.3.2025
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I'd like to add to suggest a couple of things regarding Mastodon and user onboarding/retention.
The Server Selection Problem^TM^
The single biggest problem with Mastodon adoption is the fact people see talk about a server and give up. As such, servers need to be removed from the conversation and onboarding process. A server still needs to be selected for a new user, however, which raises the question: How should we select a server for a new user?
The obvious solution is to simply direct users to mastodon.social, which is actually what Mastodon already does to a certain extent. The issue with this is that the Fediverse is meant to be decentralized. As such, it's counterproductive to funnel people towards a single server. This causes maintenance bottlenecks and privacy/data-protection concerns.
As such, there needs to be some sort of method that ranks servers based on a few factors in order to select the optimal server for any given user, while keeping the decentralized nature of the Fediverse in mind.
Why any server?
First, it's important to answer the question of why would any given user pick any given server.
Generally speaking, the server isn't a big deal, as in, any server allows users to interact with the whole of the network in its full capacity.
All servers are Mastodon, after all.
However, there are differences. The most significant ones are, I'd say: location, uptime, and language.
A user benefits from being registered to a server that's geographically close to them, as that leads to a better connection. Additionally, servers with high uptime and stability are preferred, as users may have different times they use the server and nobody likes to try and access a server and see that it's down for any number of reasons. Finally, users need to be able to understand the language the server is in (obviously).
I believe these three factors should be at the forefront of the decision-making process for deciding what server to be suggested to any given user on sign-up.
Auto-selector
With that, comes the solution: a server auto-selector. A game I play, DCSS, actually does something similar for online play.
(I have my location turned off and there are very few servers, as you can see, so listing them is trivial.)
This isn't exactly a novel scientific breakthrough, but I think it's a significant notion for helping the onboarding process for new Mastodon users.
A server auto-selector should filter servers to suggest by following these steps:
- Detect the user's system language.
- Detect the user's location.
- Calculate the server's uptime score.
- Pseudo-rank user-count.
I believe the first two points are self-explanatory. Being that Mastodon (and the Fediverse, in general) stands firmly against data-harvesting, location data should probably not be mandatorily collected. It should be easy to either ask the user for some vague information or simply allow them to skip this step entirely, even if it might affect the user experience. Additionally, there's the issue that many servers don't make it known where they're hosted. Ideally, this could change to facilitate server selection for the users, but there's always the point that, if a server doesn't say where it's hosted, it gets pulled down by the algorithm, which in turn encourages divulging that kind of information; this might a problem solved by the solution, if you get my meaning.
What I mean by uptime score is simply an evaluation of the server's uptime history. For example, it's not good policy to direct users towards servers that are often unavailable, it might be disadvantageous to direct users to servers with too-frequent downtime for maintenance, and so on. As such, the server auto-selector should calculate a sort of "score" for any server that fits the first two points. I can't say how this should be calculated, exactly, but I'm sure some computer-knowers out there can come up with a less-than-terrible methodology for this.
The last point is something that I think should be taken into account as well, regarding the user-count of the servers. As I mentioned, we can't funnel users towards a single server, but another issue is that we should actually encourage user dispersion over many servers. The outlined method might already do this to a sufficient extent, but I suggest doing some sort of randomization of filtered servers based on user-count. I think it's wrong to simply plug a new user into the least-populated server around, but I do think that over-populated servers, in a relative sense, should be discouraged by the server-selector.
Worst case scenario, a random server that passes the uptime score point can be selected for any new user.
The onboarding experience
Basically, this should be as simple as possible. The more questions need to be answered, the worse.
I think a simple "Join Mastodon" button is the best. Just a big blue button in the middle of the homepage.
Server selection should start as soon as the new user accesses the joinmastodon website, and clicking the button simply redirects the user to the sign-up process for that server.
I believe this approach would increase adoption of Mastodon by streamlining the server selection process, as well as help the continuous decentralization of the Fediverse.
The Feed Problem
Another significant issue with Mastodon is the feed and community/discovery aspects.
Creating a new Mastodon account yields... Nothing. An empty feed!
This is absolutely terrible and ruins user retention. I've had several people tell me that this first-experience emptiness completely turned them off from Mastodon. It's not intuitive, and it needs to be corrected.
A simple solution
Mastodon does have feeds, but they're all tucked away in the Explore and Live Feeds tabs.
I think the single biggest change that Mastodon can make, as far as this goes, is to shift the Explore->Posts feed to the Home tab. Just do it like Twitter or Bluesky, make the discovery feed the first thing a new user encounters.
That, by itself, should make a difference in terms of user retention.
Maybe I'm delusional and severely underestimating how doable this is, but I really believe Mastodon needs to change the way it deals with new users if we want it to actually grow into a strong social media, keyword social (it needs people).
Thoughts?
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