Having spent a lot of time on Mastodonā¦ There are tons of people there talking about federated and self-hosted services, software freedom, censorship, encryption, tech regulationā¦ A very narrow range of topics directly surrounding the fediverse get a lot of attention.
But nobody talks about anything else. Nobody goes to Instagram to talk about Instagram, nobody goes to Tiktok to talk about Tiktok, nobody goes to Facebook (at all). People use social media to either talk to their friends or talk about their hobbies and interests.
And if your hobby is tech, thatās fine, enjoy. I like tech too. But please, if you have anything else to say, say it. The fediverse will never appeal to the masses if we donāt embrace a wide variety of hobbies and interests.
We need people here talking about cooking. We need people here talking about fashion. We need people here talking about immigration policy. We need people here talking about everything people enjoy!
Yes, if you go to /m/fashion right now, itāsā¦ barely there. Youāre not going to get a ton of conversation when you post there. But thatās not the point. The point is to build out the community, so that, a year from now, as more and more people attempt to post and engage, there is a conversation. Thereās a reason to be on the fediverse besides the meta circlejerk over how great the fediverse could be in theory.
This is the ācontentā people are craving. Find or start a magazine for your city, or your town, or your country. Write a post. Share posts from your favorite blogs. Comment on something, if you have anything to say at all. Share a youtube videoāyes, a youtube video, I know, youtube sucks, but at least it gives us a path to a community here.
Really? Then please come over here and try to explain the same to my mom. Cuz Iāve tried it a million times, she doesnāt understand the concept and she doesnāt like to understand at this point, all she knows is, it works, like a phone number, it just works. She doesnāt understand why calling her brother abroad without the countryās calling code doesnāt work, I had to type the number in her phone with the countryās code because she didnāt think that was important and just left the code outā¦ cell operators were also a PITA to explain to her, and I donāt think she got that either, cuz she still asks me what the first 3 numbers in front of the cell are and sometimes I give her bogus codes just to see if sheāll go ādonāt screw with meā, but she writes them down and never asks me why is this code different from all of the rest that are in use hereā¦ not ever.
So please, donāt tell me everyone understands email, cuz they donāt. Iāll bet you whatever you want that, if you do a street questionare and ask people to explain the concept of email as plainly as possible, over 70% with either get it completely wrong or just shrug and tell they have no idea how it works.
Yeah, Tor, sorry. Had a nick on a game, Thorazine, everyone called me Thor there, so now it just slips sometimes.
You donāt need to understand any of that, apparently you have a logic streak in you since you have degree in computer science. One, not everyone has that gift, two, even if they did, they might not have developed it, and three, you went to uni. Please tell me the world statistic (percentage) of people that actually went and graduated. I havenāt seen the statistic either, but I bet itās no more than 15% on a global scale, which about sums my estimate of over 80% of the population not being able to understand simple things (yes, they are simple IMO) like email or federation. Itās not that itās complicated, itās the attention span problem. Uni teaches to have long studying session, weeks, months at a time. People that never did that, they just canāt force their brain to concentrate on one single thing for more than 5 minutes at a time, especially not if theyāre not getting paid for it and none of their friends use that thing that youāre trying to explain. The very concept of freedom and having the choice to do things your way or how youād like to be run, escapes them. They just donāt care. They use whatever their friends, coworkers, family use. Why? Cuz why not. Everyone else uses it, itās simple, you just type in your phone, reset you password (cuz none of them actually remember it, theyāre not used to remembering stuff) and off you go to using that app on your new device.
You proved my point with the last sentence in brackets. People usually donāt care about techie stuff. Techies do, they love it, but regular peopleā¦ no. Why would I bother explaining something like the fediverse or email to anyone that doesnāt even wanna hear about that. Has anyone ever asked you (out of the blue) āhey man, you know how that mastodon thing works?ā. Noā¦ and no one ever willā¦ not unless you start explaining first. No one cares dude, because theyāre perfectly OK not knowing about that and just living their lives with coproeate social media. Itās a means to and end for them, they donāt actually care about freedom, they donāt even understand why this is free and the other one isnāt, lol š, theyāre both free to them, except this one is a hell of a lot more complicated for signing up. āNow I gotta chech my email for a confirmation link, great šā¦ shit, canāt remember my password š¤¦ā¦ aaah, fuck this shit.ā See how easy it is for normies to give up. Make the sign up process with a phone number and sign ups will skyrocket, I guarantee you that. Butā¦ wait, thatās info that I would rather not share with a social network. Yes, for people like you and me, yes, for normies, itās just easier š¤·.
Iām just realā¦ at least thatās how I see myself.
I have no idea what youāre talking about. Why wouldnāt you just give her a number and tell her thatās the number? Fuck that, why donāt you just send her a contact and tell her āclick on Bob and itāll call bob! Or tell it to call Bob and itāll call Bob!ā Why the fuck would you ever bother to explain country codes to her? Nobody needs to know about country codes, youāre inventing this problem.
Iām getting the impression that when you say you donāt understand email, youāre talking about how people donāt know how email routing works, donāt understand pop vs imap, donāt understand why the sender field is sometimes not accurate. Thatās not what Iām talking about, because it doesnāt fucking matter. Everybody knows everything they actually have any reason to know about email. If I asked a hundred people on the street how to send an email, or check their email, one hundred of them would be able to describe the process successfully. Youāre just looking for excuses to call them stupid to make yourself feel smarter.
Well, obviously college isnāt the only sign of intelligence, obviously you donāt need a college degree to operate imgur, or upload a photo to kbin, obviously children donāt have college degrees, and obviously different nations and cultures have different systems and norms around education, but:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cac/intl-ed-attainment
So 40%, as of 2021, in OECD countries. Is that good enough for you, asshole?
Also, fun fact, 4.37 billion people use email: https://techjury.net/blog/how-many-email-accounts-are-there/. (yeah, that article is written weirdly).
How fucking stupid are you? Itās literally called social media. Youāre confused about why people would rather see what their nieces and nephews are up to than listen to some stranger rant about how stupid everybody, everywhere is?
you should not be remembering your passwords. You know youāre not supposed to remember your passwords, right? I have hundreds of unique, complex, randomized passwords, I donāt remember them. I know a lot of normies who are smart enough to not remember their passwords, Apple and Google are both making it easy. Why are you remembering your passwords? Are you part of that 80%?
They shouldnāt need to. Most people donāt know how IG works and enjoy it just fine. The reason people donāt enjoy the fediverse is not that itās too complicated, itās that itās not enjoyable enough. If people ask me what the deal is, I explain it, but if they ask me why they should join, I can only talk about theory and potential, because thereās nothing worth doing here, itās all potential. It needs to be an enjoyable place with people who donāt call them idiots and with people who are talking about things they want to talk about.
You donāt need to roll your own server on the fediverse. You donāt need to compile your own app from source. You donāt need to set up your own image server to share images from. You just need to come here and lurk, or vote, or comment, or post, or whatever, and have some fun.
I have no idea what youāre talking about. Plenty of services offer both options because they might as well. Yeah, SMS is less secure. Who cares? This is not a bank account, nobodyās account is gonna get hacked. And email really isnāt secure in the first place. But also, there are plenty of services that only offer email signup, and plenty of people use them, and Iāve never really heard of anybody having an issue signing up with email, my mom manages, my sisters manage, my technophobic cousins manage.
But they would never come to the fediverse in the first place, because the fediverse never really had a selling point that mattered to any of them. They want to see their friends, and their friends donāt use it, or see their hobbies, and nobody talks about their hobbies, or see anything that they could possibly care about, and thereās none of that here. If I paid people to check it out, they wouldnāt stay. I know plenty of people who signed up for accounts and never posted because thereās nothing to talk about, nobody to engage with.
The fediverse will never offer phone numbers as a regustartion option. Why? One, itās invasion of privacy (something the fediverse is strictly against), and two, itās a service that costs money, while email is free.
Nobody said it is, it can easily be spoofed. In fact, phone number registration/sign in is far more reliableā¦ but that is invasion of privacy.
Yes, if the services offer āsign in with Google/FB/Twitterā, yes, most people will use that. Ask them if they usually use the last āsign in with emailā option and you have your answerā¦ because the other methods I mentioned requires just one click/tap, but not the email option.
Itās best that they donāt in that case.
Great, itās not for them š¤·. Agree to disagree and move on š¤·.
I beg to differ. There are plenty of subjects that appeal to my interests. Itās just that there are non for most non-tech oriented people. And thatās fine, they have the rest of the social medias for that. Hey, I got a few subs on reddit that will never move here and all of them are tech related. And thatās fine as well, Iāll just visit them from time to time on reddit, donāt get what the big deal is š¤·.
Do you know what an option is? Are you confused about how options work? How is it an invasion of privacy to let me choose between the thing weāre already able to do and a new thing that some other people might choose if they want to?
No, Iām talking about services that only offer email signup. Actually, there is also eBay, which I guess offers a facebook sign in option, but my mom and sister both signed up by email, they found it easier, because they both occasionally use one of the same computers, and they didnāt want to log in and out of facebook to switch ebay accounts.
Itās best that you stop sucking your own dick about how fucking high your consciousness is and how much better you are than everybody else.
Okay, are you going to disagree with my point?
I still know plenty of people who signed up for accounts and never posted because thereās nothing to talk about, nobody to engage with.
You found people here talking about what you like talking about. Why shouldnāt anybody else have that?