Discoverability is a huge barrier to entry in the Fediverse, and they’re not helping.

It’s hard for me to judge them too harshly, though. Fediverse devs do things I disagree with all the time, and users too. Maybe, in a different world, something else could’ve taken Mastodon’s place… but its forks stick close, Pleroma has the charm of a brick, Misskey is too 日本, and Misskey forks got Messy, and—

…Oh. That’s it, isn’t it? Mastodon is the best that ActivityPub has to offer most microblogging fans.

The subtle ways having a toxic community affects unconscious design decisions. It’s a message.

…joking, to be clear. Could be a raindrop.

I believe that’s incorrect. The reporter who started this rumor either misunderstood the meaning of the chart or was lying through his teeth. I’ll find the original source and share it here later.

Linux Foundation Report.

This is the actual source. If you simply scroll through it, you’ll see they’re investing in many things that move the Linux ecosystem forward. Open standards, open hardware, security in the software stack, providing for latest market needs, keeping an eye on legislation that could affect Linux, staying in touch with important entities in the industry, and so on.

Scroll down near the bottom and you’ll find where the reporter got their information from. It’s an expenditure chart and, sure enough, it says “Linux Kernel Support 2%” Note, however, that it also says:

• Community Tooling 5%
• Training and Certifications 7%
• Project Infrastructure 9%
• Project Support 64% (!)

Note that it doesn’t say how any of them is further divided. Remember all the things I mentioned earlier? All of that is value for Linux as a whole.

Software projects aren’t just about development. Working on a large project will show you this. Could the foundation spend more on Linux? Maybe. But saying they only spend 2% on it is disingenuous.

The reporter doesn’t mention this in his clickbait piece, either because he doesn’t get it in the first place, or more likely because he just wants to push his views.

Yes, people chase content, which means chasing where many people are, but why did Bluesky become a mainstream alternative and Mastodon didn’t?

I’m saying marketing doesn’t cut it, and it’s not just about where most users are either, otherwise everyone but Threads would be irrelevant.

People bounce off both Threads and Mastodon, and there are platform-related reasons for that.

That may be true for some people, but isn’t a valid generalization. See the Brazil blocking Twitter situation.

Millions decided to give Bluesky a chance and a graph showed daily user activity quadrupling. Now, a not-insignificant portion are saying they refuse to return to Twitter because:

• It feels less toxic and healthier
• They have more control over their experience
• They’re finally having fun with social media again

Sound familiar?

And I’m pretty sure Misskey has more features. Hell, Mastodon as well probably. Bluesky doesn’t even support video yet.

The first sin of the Fediverse isn’t being small, that’s the second. First is being a pain in the ass.

This was one of the reasons I left, and I assumed most disliked the official app, but weren’t willing to part with the content.

Now, I think I was too close minded. Stuck in my bubble. If it’s not in a discussion about reddit sucking, chances are people don’t care that much.

App sucks? Didn’t think about that, it’s just an app. App really sucks? Whatever, they already use 5 other apps that are worse.

The medium shapes the experience, but isn’t an experience unto itself. Not that important to the average person.

Hey, I got curious and decided to take a look at how things are going.

Currently, there’s a big meta issue on Bugzilla (1907090) with dozens of sub-issues tracking development of tab grouping on desktop, and they’re actively being worked on right now. Seems like there’s simply a lot of work to be done, especially of the invisible sort, before we get the feature proper. But things are progressing nonetheless!

So I’d say there’s no need to join the crowd asking that on every other announcement… but that’s just what I think. Hopefully this was helpful :^)

if its truly end to end encrypted

Telegram chats aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default, and group messages cannot be encrypted. Just saying.

However, its design is a little too complex to be used at small sizes, as you would in text or in a button.

What are the criteria? Because ⁂ just looks like three blurry dots to me. It’s not making things worse, but it’s not exactly making them better either.

I think I agree with the major point of the article, that many gaming journalists… don’t do a great job. At all. Many seem to outright hate the communities they serve, which can’t be healthy for either side.

But it certainly wasn’t this article that convinced me. It’s needlessly hostile, contains personal attacks and petty insults, and despite its many claims and assumptions about Deadlock, gaming companies, journalists and gamers, it has only 4 outgoing links—one of them, bizarrely, simply to x.com—and nothing else. Screenshots? More supporting evidence? Have a useless picture of Valve’s office, I guess.

One of the linked resources is a tweet:

bye Twitter Quoted tweet: “Where to find Verge staff on Mastodon https://theverge.com/23519135/mastodon…”

Why does the author think this is relevant?

Their Twitter account links to a Mastodon address, a throwback to when Elon Musk bought the website and the journos had a hissy fit because they could no longer backchannel to have accounts banned for telling them to “learn to code.”

Wow, that’s why you think people were complaining? Nothing else, no other possible undesirable consequence arising from Musk’s takeover of Twitter? Not even his influence in levels and management of hate speech and misinformation in the platform?

Indeed, the majority of his last month’s output on Twitter – now X.com – is whining about Musk and bizarrely saying “bye Twitter” despite The Verge still being very much active on the site. It’s all so tiresomely typical.

It’s actually quite common for organizations that give mastodon a chance to keep their Twitter account as well. It’s the sad reality that most people (many of their following) will stay on Twitter. See Mozilla for another example, they host their own instance, even, but that sadly doesn’t mean they can throw away Twitter.

So the journalist in question shows support for mastodon, both by mentioning their account and bringing attention to the fact that The Verge is also joining, and this is your reaction? If you know why this happens, it’s misleading, and if you don’t, then it’s a failure in reporting. Both are bad and make me hesitant to believe anything else you say.

By the way, I’m curious about your choice of platform. I wonder what factors led to you picking nazi central as your center of operations. I’m not claiming you’re a Nazi, it’s just… you’re sitting at the table with them, you know?

The answer is games journalism, maybe journalism in general, has become a largely self-serving practice where nothing matters except appearing smarter than the audience you’re supposed to serve.

Well said, Richard. Definitely got that feeling just now.

And to people thinking The Verge sucks completely: don’t generalize publishers like this, please! You should be critical, aware of their leanings and biases, but remember that they’re still an organization hosting multiple writers with different skills too. The Verge has some solid reporting, like when they showed how SEO ruined the web. They also have some utterly shameful moments—let us never forget The Verge PC—just like most other media.

Wasn’t there a privacy scandal involving them a while back?

Yeah, I think it’s just funny comparing it with the usual situation in Linux, where there’s even less restrictions. I believe you can actually put a newline in a file name, for example, though I’ll need to check and come back later.

I’d need to rename a massive amount of files if I ever wanted to go back to Windows.

I’ve seen this, and what bothers me most is when you get that nasty feeling they’re not looking for a therapist, but validation. Yeah, your ex-wife sucked, man. She was totally in the wrong about everything always, sorry you had to deal with her for so long. I’m sure you’re in the clear and there’s nothing you could be blamed for, it’s easy to tell from this one-sided retelling of your personal conflicts.

When anyone’s first topic of choice for casual conversation is how much their last partner was in the wrong, it’s… difficult not to be dubious.

I think that’s because your instance hasn’t updated to Lemmy versions that add this yet.

It helps people and discourse, so it’s appreciated. Stalking and tagging downvoters is probably going too far, though.

Wow, did I misread that badly. Thank you for explaining.

I wonder if they’re aware, actually. From the linked issue:

Also noteworthy is that reddit and lemmy are unique in keeping vote privacy: mastodon, twitter, and most other platforms expose them.

What voting system on Twitter is he talking about?

I fear this, too, but I’m not sure what that’d look like. Would people tag someone who downvoted them and act like they’re entitled to an explanation? That would probably(?) earn a block from me.

Maybe. There are likely both mbin users who agree and disagree. Even if they all agreed and removed it, though, there isn’t much stopping others from running older versions, patching it back in, or even starting entirely new software that does the same. The fundamental issue, the false privacy of the voting system, remains.

The bar is not nearly so high, it simply takes opening the post in the right kbin/mbin instance. That requires neither technical skill nor admin privileges.