I’d think the science community would be smart enough to understand Mastadon, and that the science journals and universities would be running their own instances.
People are still thinking of it as a platform they need to sign up on.
Its much more a network of independent platforms and the initial friction is that independent institutions should run their own instance (most already have their own website, its not much different)
From that point the user does have an easy signup. The server is the institution they are part off and it wont disappear unless they themselves pull the plug.
If everyone is just going to join a few popular stable instances we centralize back into the current internet where a few players dominate digital space and everyone including government has to rely on those entities.
I think you nailed it. Communicating this concept is the biggest friction point. Barring edge cases, if someone tells you they’re on Bluesky you know exactly where to find them.
We understand the perhaps inevitable downside to that but most people don’t have the time or will to think of it.
The people we’re discussing wouldn’t even know to think to check for those things in the first place, would they?
Does the average person know to be suspicious of nazis in an online community? Or read the rules? I think if they know enough to check the blocklist they will either be into it and want to investigate or be turned off entirely.
It might honestly boil down to the average person not wanting to read something.
Scientists read things all the time, but have better uses for their energies than researching social media platforms (like curing cancer or whatnot).
Plus even once you join an instance, finding content across instances is another hurdle, and continues to be thus basically forever. And then someone else can at any point steal your name on some other instance and pretend to be you. There are a number of issues that Bluesky purports to solve that Mastodon refuses to.
Mastodon can say “I am such a nice man, why will nobody use me?” all it wants, but at the end of the day people go with what works for them. If it tried being responsive to user feedback it could have been different… and the same goes for Lemmy too (we treat centrists and especially conservatives horribly here, and I don’t even want to begin to describe how we treat Windows users, then collectively wonder why people don’t want to leave Reddit and come here). If we want a different outcome, we might want to try a different set of actions to achieve it.
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I’d think the science community would be smart enough to understand Mastadon, and that the science journals and universities would be running their own instances.
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I believe the issue is purely perspective.
People are still thinking of it as a platform they need to sign up on.
Its much more a network of independent platforms and the initial friction is that independent institutions should run their own instance (most already have their own website, its not much different)
From that point the user does have an easy signup. The server is the institution they are part off and it wont disappear unless they themselves pull the plug.
If everyone is just going to join a few popular stable instances we centralize back into the current internet where a few players dominate digital space and everyone including government has to rely on those entities.
I think you nailed it. Communicating this concept is the biggest friction point. Barring edge cases, if someone tells you they’re on Bluesky you know exactly where to find them.
We understand the perhaps inevitable downside to that but most people don’t have the time or will to think of it.
The people we’re discussing wouldn’t even know to think to check for those things in the first place, would they?
Does the average person know to be suspicious of nazis in an online community? Or read the rules? I think if they know enough to check the blocklist they will either be into it and want to investigate or be turned off entirely.
It might honestly boil down to the average person not wanting to read something.
Scientists read things all the time, but have better uses for their energies than researching social media platforms (like curing cancer or whatnot).
Plus even once you join an instance, finding content across instances is another hurdle, and continues to be thus basically forever. And then someone else can at any point steal your name on some other instance and pretend to be you. There are a number of issues that Bluesky purports to solve that Mastodon refuses to.
Mastodon can say “I am such a nice man, why will nobody use me?” all it wants, but at the end of the day people go with what works for them. If it tried being responsive to user feedback it could have been different… and the same goes for Lemmy too (we treat centrists and especially conservatives horribly here, and I don’t even want to begin to describe how we treat Windows users, then collectively wonder why people don’t want to leave Reddit and come here). If we want a different outcome, we might want to try a different set of actions to achieve it.