It’s Twitter 2.0. It’s what the average person wants. It’s popular because it has algorithms and all the other addictive things from corporate social media.
Mastodon and others don’t have these things and are harder to get started with. Picking a server is weird and scary. After that, getting your home feed started is difficult if you don’t know to just follow some hashtags.
As a scientist, I would be cautious of inferring the reason and beating ourselves up for it until we have crystal clear proof that that is the specific thing that’s turning people away.
It’s Twitter 2.0. It’s what the average person wants. It’s popular because it has algorithms and all the other addictive things from corporate social media.
Mastodon and others don’t have these things and are harder to get started with. Picking a server is weird and scary. After that, getting your home feed started is difficult if you don’t know to just follow some hashtags.
As a scientist, I would be cautious of inferring the reason and beating ourselves up for it until we have crystal clear proof that that is the specific thing that’s turning people away.
I don’t think we need a full-on study to show that an additional barrier to entry hurts adoption.
It’s no different than signing up for an email account
Email? Do you mean Gmail?
And you don’t see that as a problem for most users?
Not that one thing alone, obviously. But it’s a big part of it.
We can call it a hypothesis if that helps.
Its better than nothing though. The fediverse wasn’t catching on. We’re lucky a worse alternative didn’t gain traction instead.
Plus, you could pick a server that quashes free speech (looking at you .world)
(Yes. I know I’m guilty too)