Comment on Unified Fediverse App - a browser solution?
Auster@thebrainbin.org 3 weeks ago
Personally, I think it would only work out if the programmer tries to reconstruct posts from different formats in a format that works out for each. Otherwise it becomes what it already is, a glorified browser with multiple profiles enabled, and with over-preference for a type of engine.
My opinion is, take note of the major platforms for each engine and/or experience, and recommend them based on your friends' tastes.
The rest, centralization, would be replaced by what I call propagation (iirc people call it "to federated"?), which people directly and indirectly do, like boosting posts (Mbin / microblogging stuff) and commenting so people following the user see the original post too, following people and following Peertube channels on Peertube and the "threadiverse" so one's account is a bridge for propagation, up/downvoting, etc. And as this web of social medias grows, tendency is that it keeps growing exponentially until either it takes over like email, or stagnates.
This logic, I think, is similar to recommending Linux Mint or immutable distros to Linux novices, the "safe bet" for them before they get used to the technical side or while Linux wouldn't (past tense) become accessible.
Coopr8@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
I have two challenges to this take.
Firstly, the theory that cross-propagation of media will lead to growth across multiple platforms starting with one as the "mainline" to recommend to new entrants heavily relies on Superusers who not only use multiple platforms for content discovery, but also then take the additional step to cross-post that media from one silo into the other, for example posting a peertube link into a miroblog post. For most people they will instead interact with the content in each silo, commenting on or favoriting the peertube post within the peertube client and leaving it at that.
Secondly is the attention economy factor and platform inertia. Essentially social media platforms have successfully commodified/colonized a growing percentage of total attention hours for average users, and when interacting with content most users are passive consumers for a substantial percentage of the total content they are served. When entering a new platform, for it to serve as a viable alternative it must serve up an amount of content that allows them to both use the platform for an appreciable percentage of their total media consumption (otherwise the ratio of times checking the platform to reward for the check drops below acceptability) and provide them with a level of engagement that provides platform satisfaction, which typically starts close to where they were on average with the other platforms they use. Then you have this issue of content-fit which is a whole different issue to address, which we will leave aside for the most oart but it is worth pointing out majorly impacts the number of interactions a user puts in to the content as well as overall satisfaction.
Unifying the inbox reduces one of the barriers to wider adoption by improving the ratio of number of times the platform is checked to the amount of content available for interaction, thereby making the fediverse a more likely source of overall content to be maintained in the user's set if options. Each platform individually will struggle with this until adoption passes a certain threshold. Each one individually feels "empty" to users when compared to their usual, which is a turn off for both consumers and creators, while in aggregate the picture is much better.
Auster@thebrainbin.org 3 weeks ago
On the first point, propagation happens passively too. For example, if someone follows me on Mastodon, this reply will be pulled to his/her feed as a microblogging post, and will be discoverable on any feeds my account later appears. I remember also testing around between Lemmy and Mbin how liking/upvoting works, and doing that on Lemmy while the Mbin account followed it also showed posts previously not on my Mbin instance.
Similarly, Mbin (and dunno about Lemmy but I'd imagine it's the same) pulls Peertube channels as magazines/communities, and iirc Peertube channels can also be followed as users on microblogging platforms, and in both cases their video uploads automatically appear on the respective text feeds.
And about the second point, I agree, but that's also why I suggest recommending major platforms. For example, Lemmy.World and Mastodon.Social are likely to have far more publications being posted on or propagated to than Mbin or PieFed instances, since the former two are around for much longer, and not actively trying to be toxic (at least from what I can observe).
Coopr8@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
hmmmm interesting, a lot of this is news to me. I'll have to try and pull in some peertube accounts, I have never seen any posts showing them.
I also admit I dont follow that many individual accounts, but I don't follow some and I've never seen a comment come through as a notification. I'll try following you and see if that changes.