I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to BlueSky for text-centric social media.
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For people using Mastodon, what is the status of the discoverability issue? I remember it being worked on, but not sure what the status it now.
Thankfully on the Threadiverse we have https://lemmy-federate.com/ and Piefed community discovery: https://piefed.social/post/531611, so the issue is mostly solved nowadays, but it’s easier to discover communities compare to each single poster
https://piefed.social/post/531611 is a 404 for me and https://lemmy-federate.com/ can’t find the community I posted in, but even ignoring that, two external services don’t solve the problem. A user shouldn’t have to start a new acct, flail around trying to find others, make a post complaining about it, and then be told about these other services they’re supposed to use.
I rarely use mastodon anymore but I haven’t heard of any new features that improve discoverability. Discovery across the entire fediverse is still awful and it seems like fediverse developers are still content to ignore it and let external developers try to handle it.
404
Strange, does this one work? https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39736574
A user shouldn’t have to start a new acct, flail around trying to find others, make a post complaining about it, and then be told about these other services they’re supposed to use.
A user doesn’t have to, instances nowadays automatically add new communities to lemmy-federate: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39298307
fediverse developers are still content to ignore
The Piefed post is literally the Piefed devs addressing that issue.
A user doesn’t have to, instances nowadays automatically add new communities to lemmy-federate
But that doesn’t matter to a new user who doesn’t know about lemmy-federate. They probably won’t be able to immediately find users/posts/communities they want to see and will have to go through that process
The Piefed post is literally the Piefed devs addressing that issue.
Which, as I noted, I couldn’t reach (yay fediverse). I can access the second link and that’s cool, but it’s relying on a separate service and only works for PieFed. This doesn’t solve the problem.
All of these “solutions” are band-aids that fix small parts of the problem for particular services/instances and rely on a centralized external service.
But that doesn’t matter to a new user who doesn’t know about lemmy-federate. They probably won’t be able to immediately find users/posts/communities they want to see and will have to go through that process
That’s not how it works, lemmy-federate is something an instance admin enrolls in and it preemptively connects to new communities on other instances. The individual user doesn’t have to do anything, provided their instance is signed up for lemmy-federate.
There are still plenty of other discoverability issues though, and it could absolutely be said that this type of functionality should maybe not be delegated to third-party software.
That’s not how it works, lemmy-federate is something an instance admin enrolls in and it preemptively connects to new communities on other instances. The individual user doesn’t have to do anything, provided their instance is signed up for lemmy-federate.
The admin signs up for lemmy-federate and lemmy-federate then pulls in all communities from that instance into lemmy-federate, right?
Is the admin’s instance subscribed to lemmy-federate and pulling in all the communities lemmy-federate knows about?The site says it uses bots to follow the communities. That seems to imply the admin has to host the bot on their own instance in order to get the communities to federate over to their instance.and it could absolutely be said that this type of functionality should maybe not be delegated to third-party software
I don’t even think its necessarily an issue that its third-party software (though building it into the actual instances would be better). The main issue is it’s a one-off, centralized service. If lemmy-federate goes down, we’re back to square one. If we want to avoid that, we have to have other relays; but now to avoid duplicating work these relays have to implement lemmy-federate’s API so fedivese software doesn’t have to deal with multiple relay APIs. We could have been using ActivityPub for relays from the beginning, but they’re always an afterthought and nobody is interested in standardizing them. The fediverse was using relays before ActivityPub, then mastodon made new relays for ActivityPub once they realized the discoverability problem (it seems like they were never advertised/used widely because discovery is still a problem on microblogging platforms), and now the threadiverse is making its own relays instead of extending the existing ones, and none of the relays work across the microblogging/forum boundary
If lemmy-federate goes down, we’re back to square one.
No, because Lemmy-federate is only supposed to be used as a “first subscriber” for a community.
Once there are other subscribers to that community from the remote instance, then the lemmy-federate could go down, the federation would still be in place.
Example
- !funny@sh.itjust.works is first federated thanks to lemmy-federate to my instance (dbzer0)
- I see that community and subscribe
- Lemmy-federate goes down
- As I am still subscribed to that community, dbzer0 still federates that community
No, because Lemmy-federate is only supposed to be used as a “first subscriber” for a community.
Yes, I know but any communities/instances created after that are still in the undiscoverable situation
But that doesn’t matter to a new user who doesn’t know about lemmy-federate. They probably won’t be able to immediately find users/posts/communities they want to see and will have to go through that process
No, Lemmy-federate is targeted for community mods, not regular users looking for content. Regular users can just use the search bar or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca to find communities.
but it’s relying on a separate service and only works for PieFed. This doesn’t solve the problem.
It only works for Piefed because for Lemmy the problem is solved by Lemmy-federate.
It only works for Piefed because for Lemmy the problem is solved by Lemmy-federate.
This is part of my complaint! Every service has to have its own solution. And each of these solutions is a centralized dependency for that service.
No, Lemmy-federate is targeted for community mods, not regular users looking for content. Regular users can just use the search bar or !communitypromo@lemmy.ca to find communities.
As a user, I still routinely can not find communities I’m looking for. I’m still not understanding how lemmy-federate “solves” the problem of community discovery, but it’s clear that it doesn’t do it reliably.
This is part of my complaint! Every service has to have its own solution. And each of these solutions is a centralized dependency for that service.
The code for Lemmyverse.net is here: https://github.com/tgxn/lemmy-explorer
Should it go down, someone else would set another version up.
As a user, I still routinely can not find communities I’m looking for.
Do you have an example? You are using Piefed, so indeed lemmy-federate is not the solution for you
This is some of the best criticism I’ve read about Mastodon. Comprehensive, cogent, fair, accurate.
Public microblogging is a weird thing to start with but that’s just an opinion. Mastodon is not perfect but fine as a microblogging instance. It seems to me clear, reading this line that the fediverse need as new type of fediware: one to send asynchronous ephemeral notifications to user how choose to register.
I think Mastodon is a bit rougher than Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin just because it’s centered around users instead of groups
Nice interview, thank :)
