this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Technology

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mastodon has a long way to go in the onboarding experience. Most non-technical Twitter users simply will not engage with Mastodon in its current form.

Mastodon right now reminds me of email before web-based services. It's not friendly enough to pull in the "normies". It needs a Gmail.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pick an instance and sign up. I don't understand this take. Its literally the same as email and we all managed to figure that out when we were 9-11 years old.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Tell me you've never worked in tech support without telling me you've never worked in tech support.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

@legion @TendieMaster69 Are you onboarding using the browser or using the official #Mastodon app? Onboarding online is a lot more understandable than onboarding in the app IIRC

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In the browser. It's not confusing to me, but I'm a software developer. Millions of Twitter users aren't going to make it past the server selection step. And many that do are going to be confused when they click to Follow someone and get a weird popup (because that someone is on a different Mastodon instance) instead of instantly following the person.

It's nowhere close to a smooth enough experience for the lion's share of Twitter users to transition over. I think people that are used to even slightly technical things vastly overestimate what the average end user is capable of handling. These are the people that ask for help to plug in an HDMI cable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I feel like the hurdles are kind of features. If your elderly parents can't figure out then they can't well flood it with trash. Reddit was the same way at first, oh so long ago. People weren't used to the format and users without any tech savvy were dissuaded from entry. That turned into a libertarian foundation. This time around the generations that are tech savvy aren't libertarians, they're progressives. So we're seeing a progressive foundation in the federation become established, and that's going to narrate the future culture here, just like libertarians narrated the culture of reddit for so long.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@legion Hmm. I would challenge anyone to go to mstdn.social for example and show me the onboarding friction.

Signing up for an account on a #Mastodon instance is quite easy, if you're doing so through the browser and go directly to the instance you want to join

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

When people say getting onto mastodon is hard I assume they must mean setting up an instance because even if soapbox and rebased are easier to use, it's still just signing up for a website.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The onboarding for Masterson is the best of all the fediverse sites but I still think the average internet user would get confused.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@renlok What's the onboarding like for #Soapbox? It's been awhile since I've tried it.