Imho, i just tried to set up a mastodon account for somebody and noticed how almost all the "cool instances" are not open and you cant even register anymore, which means people easily default to "mastodon.social" making the fediverse more centralized.
I then found a few that allow you to register an account, but they review and 2 of them just dropped the request without explanation and 2 are still pending, but oh boy - what a bad experience and how hard it is.
Kinda grim for the future :/
@serapath Some servers went to approval or invite-only because of abuse and spam, not to make a "bad experience" for others. That said, your point about Mastodon [dot] social is valid, and the Fedi needs to do something to change it.
People are going to administrate however they see fit, no matter how frustrating or unfair we think it is. Don't take it personally.
I have an account on mas.to, and I'm happy to invite you, if you like.
yes. i understand and fully agree, but there are 2 perspectives to that as i tried to point out.
you describe one and its absolutely valid but there is a second equally valid perspective that is true at the same time and i think it is important to be aware of it even though it doesnt solve the problem, but it might help us explore how to solve it as seen from that second perspective, which is:
if we as a community dont fix it, it blocks new ppl from easily joining, which helps big tech
@serapath Okay. Good luck to you.
@j
i managed to setup @swap_and_play so i am fine now. ... and i'm otherwiss looking forward to more peer to peer based social networks
@serapath Ooh, nice to hear what this is like from the point of view of someone wanting an account. (You have perhaps heard some of the arguments - anti spam especially - for account approval).
sure did... just said this here
@serapath I suspect the answer is technological - automated approval for an account which is somehow limited (can't post, or can't post more than a certain amount, or whatever it would be) for some amount of time, or until it gets an approval, or whatever the rule would be. See for example https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/37878 but I'm sure there are other suggestions out there.
i think the answer must be social... but of course, tech to automate the annoying bits to make the social fast and easy and not tedious
@serapath Let's not get hung up on whether we call it "social" or "technological" but I think we are both talking about things like https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@serapath/116093134398411401 which are great ideas (or anything along these lines, really, that get us out of this lousy choice between "hard to sign up" and "full of spam and other annoyances")
@soaproot
i think the best we could do is to enable peer to peer compatability, so individuals can download an app and that is their personal instance and all their data is signed and any other person reading via self custodial p2p instance or through their custodial fediverse instance of choice and get the data and verify it came from the author because they signed it.
then offer a "group" feature, where decoupled from instance choice, ppl can join groups with other fedi users or peers
@soaproot
we need an off ramp from fediverse into self custodial p2p where ppl can backup and or replicate all their self signed data with others torrent style and join 1 or many groups independent from their "identity".
in fediverse identity is often coupled with one particular instance operator - which seems ridiculous 🤷♀️ ...it also causes all the moderation overhead which leads to instances not accepting signups
@serapath if you leabe registrations open the instance will fill with bots… Very sad…
@rony i know, but that just means the model is broken.
make system where folks can invite others.
make a system where people get a temporary account and members are notified to vet them.
make a system where ppl can help to vet ppl.
allow them to provide evidence of being humans.
...i mean - there are a million ways.
big tech wont stop, so if we want to bring them down we HAVE to solve these issues instead of retreating, because that will give a community time until big tech surrounds them
