this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Yeah, if you don't like it just create and account on a generic big one that let's you access most content and just go with it. Act as if centralized. People like to create problems for no reason. If other people care about choice and the tech behind it and the new possibilities allowed, let them be happy for it.
It's literally like email. Most people just have a gmail one and that's most common. Others care about specific services, prices, choice, privacy features, etc, and the trch allows people to make that choice without compromising the primary purpose which is connecting people.
Everyone should have a federated account just like everyone has a email account for most things that require it. More and more places are starting to have proper integration for example commenting on blogs instead of the other stupid common alternative (discourse or wtv is the name I don't remember).
From an average outsider perspective is hard to know what is "the big one" in a federated system. And i think links online are what break federated systems. If you get linked to some content from another instance than your own. Then you've got do deal with the url bar yourself in a specific way that is never well documented (only passed around via word of mouth) so you can log in and interact with said content. A baked in "instance switch" at the top of such services that would redirect you to the same content on another instance would be the best solution but I've not seen anything like that yet.
There are browser extensions that make sure any link opens in the user home instance. And I think there were recent improvements recently to improve the UX in those cases.
There's always the true known universal way which is get the url and past it in the search box of the home instance. If installing a browser extension is too much for most users.
It's obvious we are not at peak perfect UX, and work needs to be done and will be done eventually, but it's not having to learn 2 or 3 new things that should be seen as a blocker to using it. Facebook and twitter were very intuitive at some point when nobody knew how things worked. It's all about learning how to work with it.