Yeah, federation is not gonna get off the ground if the general public (who for the most part don’t know or care) are thrust into it and all it’s confusing quirks.
The best way to make federation work is by users not even having to know or care. Do users even know email is federated? No, they just sign up with a provider and it works. Same with the phone network, sign up somewhere and you can call everyone in the whole world.
I think part of the reason that users don’t get it is that the federation is sometimes explained too much.
Beehaw sets a really good example here because it doesn’t really promote itself as a lemmy instance but as a unique community that just happens to be connected.
I really don’t see that. You’ve got 3 million users who are happy using the platform- if it were me I certainly wouldn’t turn on federation for them without asking.
I’d probably have a process that initially
Make federation opt-in for existing users
Make federation an opt-in during onboarding of new users
Start promoting Turing federation on for existing users
Seems like a reasonable way to soft-launch federation to me.
Yeah, federation is not gonna get off the ground if the general public (who for the most part don’t know or care) are thrust into it and all it’s confusing quirks.
The best way to make federation work is by users not even having to know or care. Do users even know email is federated? No, they just sign up with a provider and it works. Same with the phone network, sign up somewhere and you can call everyone in the whole world.
I think part of the reason that users don’t get it is that the federation is sometimes explained too much.
Beehaw sets a really good example here because it doesn’t really promote itself as a lemmy instance but as a unique community that just happens to be connected.
A bit disingenious if you promote your protocol as the future of federated socials though.
I really don’t see that. You’ve got 3 million users who are happy using the platform- if it were me I certainly wouldn’t turn on federation for them without asking.
I’d probably have a process that initially