I’m curious how you would explain Mastodon to a layman without mentioning Twitter.
Comment on A new Type of Mastodon Signup that gives people a sense of Agency
Nougat@kbin.social 6 months ago
Here’s another way: stop referring to everything “Twitter-like” as Mastodon. Stop referring to everything “Reddit-like” as Lemmy. Those are both client platforms through which one can access ActivityPub content.
Conflating the platform with the provider with the protocol with the content is what’s confusing people.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Nougat@kbin.social 6 months ago
... without mentioning Twitter.
That seems like a pretty arbitrary restriction. At this point, a basic knowledge of "what Twitter is like" is a pretty general-knowledge thing.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
It is a general knowledge thing, but that means nothing if you don’t actually reference it.
CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Are you saying to start calling all of it ActivityPub? In which case, I would think that’d be extra confusing since lemmy and mastodon don’t cross-interface very well and you really need one client for each type.
Nougat@kbin.social 6 months ago
I said no such thing.
CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Great, can you explain what you mean? I did not follow.
Nougat@kbin.social 6 months ago
The article refers to ActivityPub-based "microblogging" by assuming that Mastodon is the only client application available for that purpose. It is not. Mastodon is certainly the most popular client application for that purpose, but it doesn't have to be. A better client application could be created.
When the point of the article is to get people to comprehend that federated social media is not a "walled garden" --
maintaining the notion that a single client application is the only way to read or create a certain kind of content is a big part of the very problem the article describes.
And the author seems to be aware of this:
GMail is not the only way to send and receive SMTP email. It's certainly a very popular way to do so, but you wouldn't describe a concern over people being blind to their choices of email providers (or, indeed, their ability to host their own email server) as
If the author, or anyone else, wants people to have a better understanding of the nature of federated social media, describing it wrong is not a path to that goal.
wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
I’m not them but -
Forum style posts == reddit.
Short text style posts == twitter.
Just because lemmy is a forum style alternative to Reddit does not mean we should call it a reddit-like.
Just because mastodon is a short text style post alternative to Twitter does not mean we should call it a twitter-like.
It would be like saying reddit is a gameFAQs-like, but for more than just games. Is it inaccurate? Not exactly, but they are their own things. Related/inspired from each other, but so is basically everything that exists from art to practicality.
I think in this case, yes Lemmy was made as an alternative to the forum-image style posting that Reddit is now known for. However, lemmy and mastodon are far beyond that now too due to how it interfaces with ActivityPub (each instance being able to have its own community of the same name). It’s created enough separation that it almost seems inaccurate now to entirely call these a “-like” alternative.