You know how to get people to leave platforms run by evil people?

And this is working, but it's slow progress.

Mastodon in particular has UX problems that will be very hard to overcome that prevent mass adoption, foremost is that actual conversations (aka replies) are unreliable and slow due to the way posts are distributed. Quote post support was a huge first step to remedy this. I hope we'll see more updates on it.

Bluesky got a big chunk of former Twitter users, especially in some niches like for scientists and activists; they have great performance, reliable threading and replies and really amazing featuers like fully custom feeds—but suffer from intransparent moderation and frankly insufferable leadership (still leagues better than Twitter or Facebook though).

(There's more than these, but these are what I use.)

@thomasfuchs Bluesky despite 300 char limit and no edit, does have a few good features such as custom feeds and starter packs.

Mastodon, seen through https://elk.zone/home works well.

And this is working, but it's slow progress.

Mastodon in particular has UX problems that will be very hard to overcome that prevent mass adoption, foremost is that actual conversations (aka replies) are unreliable and slow due to the way posts are distributed. Quote post support was a huge first step to remedy this. I hope we'll see more updates on it.

Bluesky got a big chunk of former Twitter users, especially in some niches like for scientists and activists; they have great performance, reliable threading and replies and really amazing featuers like fully custom feeds—but suffer from intransparent moderation and frankly insufferable leadership (still leagues better than Twitter or Facebook though).

(There's more than these, but these are what I use.)

@thomasfuchs Wait, wasn’t post reply fetching addressed in one of the last Mastodon updates? I think it’s this: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615

@VojtechHorky It's getting better but it's still broken in other ways.

Really the most sensible solution would be intermediary aggregation so especially smaller servers can fetch replies more efficiently.

@randulo mastodon suffers from Linux syndrome, the first-run experience should be as nice as the elk client, yet instead the default web interface is slow (especially on first load) and very clunky especially for the most important feature, posting.

And this is working, but it's slow progress.

Mastodon in particular has UX problems that will be very hard to overcome that prevent mass adoption, foremost is that actual conversations (aka replies) are unreliable and slow due to the way posts are distributed. Quote post support was a huge first step to remedy this. I hope we'll see more updates on it.

Bluesky got a big chunk of former Twitter users, especially in some niches like for scientists and activists; they have great performance, reliable threading and replies and really amazing featuers like fully custom feeds—but suffer from intransparent moderation and frankly insufferable leadership (still leagues better than Twitter or Facebook though).

(There's more than these, but these are what I use.)

You know how to get people to leave platforms run by evil people?

Yes, that's right, by offering better alternatives and being super friendly and welcoming and actively working on recruiting people and evangelizing for the better platforms and most importantly by not being chastizing and gatekeeping misers.

@thomasfuchs Another small bit of the UX problems (and just something to deal with in general for most Open Source stuff) is the different-servers-at-different-builds-that-support-different-things problem.

Pretty much guaranteeing that my after-dark alt on a different server will be able to preview all the Cool New Ish WAY before my most used to seek out friends and cool not-smut server (which is real good at filtering out NSFW stuff and general ragebait-brainrot from the big big servers)

@thomasfuchs I remember seeing during the initial X-odus all sorts of "Ugh, Mastodon is likeliving in a huge interconnected omni-forum with fueding admins that constantly make it so you lose access to half your friends"

And now that I've been here a bit its like "Mastodon makes it REALLY EASY to move servers and even create your own. You don't actually lose you friends you just go 'I'm here now'. It also pushes you to get over this idea that Every Microblog is Sacred and Must Be Hoarded."

@VojtechHorky The real issue is unfortunately the underlying protocol, I'm unsure if this can be overcome without breaking backwards-compatibility.

Perhaps they could add a second, more efficient protocol and slowly migrate to it.