this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

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Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

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I don't like the clickbait title at all -- Mastodon's clearly going to survive, at least for the forseeable future, and it wouldn't surprise me if it outlives Xitter.

Still, Mastodon is struggling; most of the people who checkd it out in the November 2022 surge (or the smaller June 2023 surge) didn't stick around, and numbers have been steadily declining for the last year. The author makes some good points, and some of the comments are excellent.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 4 days ago (6 children)

It's not dead but it has one big and massive issue that prevents mass adoption - discovery. If I can't just write the name of my friends in search and find them no matter where they made their account - for an ordinary user, or one that comes from centralized services, this seems extremely alien and hostile.

And in the end, if you can't find your friends, you want to interact with, what is the point of using the service?

Luckily, Mastodon is working on a discorvery protocol that should offer a way to find people across the board, which will hopefully make the Fediverse "appear" centralized to the average Joe while maintaining all the benefits of decentralization to the advanced users.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

I guess it’s for people like me, who have no friends?

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

You can put in their handle, with the domain they've signed up with

If you're looking for more wider fuzzy search for that; mastodon 4.4 is gonna implement independent search services, meaning that search will be expanded beyond one server, and you can find new accounts on other servers just by keywords

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

I don't know or need to know the handle. I know my friends name and surname and that must be more than enough. Facebook doesn't need "@facebook" and twitter doesn't need "@twitter" to find people if they exist there. I know the feature is coming but it is the key to make it accessible to wide range of average Joes who don't want to, in their own vision, be rocket scientists to find people on the fediverse. It needs to be as simple as on facebook or other networks.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago

I know my friends name and surname and that must be more than enough.

I see. However; no.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

William Shatner couldn't find me on Mastodon

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Problem: even with discovery, if your friends are on Threads or X, you still won't find them on Mastodon. But its a step in the right direction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Unless you can follow specific people on blocked instances, this is a fail. If my friend is on another instance which is blocked from my instance... whats the point of the fediverse? Might aswell go back to Facebook or X/Twitter. They are shitty but at least I can see my friends.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

You would be able to find them if every instance didn’t decide to defederate with Threads.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

this right here

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago

I don't understand. Mastodon has implemented global search a while ago. If I type "Steve" in the search bar, I get Steves from all sorts of places, not only from my instance.

Or are you talking about some sort of "contacts scan" implementation?