Post #3347131

2026-06-18 12:05 UTC

After Bluesky, Threads, and so on, the whole #WSocial thing is another reminder that it was never about the #Fediverse being "too complicated" or "just for nerds". A bafflingly large amount of people genuinely only act on a gut feeling telling them that only commercial products with fancy marketing owned by a for-profit corporation can be trustworthy, 'official' and 'legal', for the lack of a better word. If something is a commercial offering by a competent-looking, rich family man in a suit, it's clearly an official, legal, trustworthy product. You can be proud of using such a fancy-looking service. When they see a community-run open-source project or a grassroots initiative, their first instinct is that it must be shady, illegal, complicated, broken or predatory in some way. It's probably some aftermarket grey area bootleg made by weird tech nerds, political groups with an ulterior motive, conspiracy theorists or some naive teenage hackers. They'd also be embarrassed for using it in front of their peers and neighbours; who uses some free back-alley software, are you poor or something? The same people are the reason why Google is using the word 'sideloading', why scammers love wearing fancy suits, why people suddenly act childishly helpless in front of LibreOffice, or why DIY HRT is so demonised. They trust any kind of 'official approval' over their own senses. If someone does something that isn't 'approved', they're a bad person or clearly endangering themselves and others. No idea why exactly, but psh, it must be wrong somehow, or everyone would do it, right? If people on the Fediverse understood that the whole "it's all so complicated and clunky" thing is just a thinly veiled excuse for a general disdain for non-commercial software, we could finally stop making all our software imitate their corporate equivalents in a futile attempt to appease people who never gave us a chance in the first place. You'll never convince them to treat it in good faith no matter how much effort or money you put into UX or 'ease of use'. All you're doing is making the software worse, e. g. through things like dot-social, verified accounts or begging brands, corporations and politicians to join and give your product some kind of 'official' validation. #mastodon #openSource #linux

Replies (16)

@davew@mastodon.social 2026-06-18 12:15

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click it's true that's a real impulse.

Open ##3374369
@rpmik@avgeek.social 2026-06-18 13:11

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click @davew@mastodon.social 1000% I have seen this exactly all my computer-using life

Open ##3374370
@aronowski@furry.engineer 2026-06-18 14:56

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click who uses some free back-alley software, are you poor or something? I do, I might be poor, and I live my life like I want - if such people have a problem with me being "too poor", it's a good idea to never interact with them.

Open ##3374371
@earth2marsh@hachyderm.io 2026-06-18 15:10

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click It is the difference between "professional" and "amateur". Do it for money or do it for love. Somehow it's easier for people to see money as a proxy for reputation and trust, as if it makes the motivation more obvious. (Spoiler: it does!)

Open ##3374374
@avoca@gladtech.social 2026-06-18 18:54

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click "... If something is a commercial offering by a competent-looking, rich family man in a suit, it's clearly an official, legal, trustworthy product. You can be proud of using such a fancy-looking service..." Its hardly surprising really. It's the reason Religion has been so successful. It's called fear.

Open ##3374375
@glamcode@openbiblio.social 2026-06-18 20:03

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click There is some truth to this. Community-run open-source projects should still put much more effort into UX and „ease of use“. Just because some people tend to always prefer products that are „approved by an authority“, that does not mean we shouldn‘t make software with good UX and design 😎

Open ##3374376
@HeptaSean@social.tchncs.de 2026-06-18 21:55

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click Interestingly, in other areas of life, they have no problem distrusting the corporate world. Rather letting their car be repaired in some back-alley shop than to the overpriced official one. Rather trusting a friend of a friend for medical advice than a professional because the latter is allegedly (or sometimes actually) bought by big pharma. …

Open ##3374377
@pre@boing.world 2026-06-18 22:12

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click Yep. If some isn't selling it to 'em then they ain't sold.

Open ##3374378
@CassandraVert@indieweb.social 2026-06-19 04:24

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click True across the board. People are both afraid to trust their own judgment and want to have someone else to blame if it goes south. People feel more secure as followers.

Open ##3374379
@lil5@social.last.nl 2026-06-19 05:46

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click Totally agree with this sentiment but what about the fedi servers that are closed source? Shouldn’t they have taken over the “market”? Minds.com and Threads come to mind.

Open ##3374380
@athena_pronaia@mastodon.social 2026-06-19 09:03

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click Overthinking. The people you talk about just go wherever the other people are. If influencers told them to move here, they would.

Open ##3374384
@jscholes@dragonscave.space 2026-06-20 16:39

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click @modulux@node.isonomia.net It frustrates me when it's painted as one or the other in this discourse. I think people put far too much trust into commercial and proprietary platforms and the image that surrounds them. And I also think Mastodon has usability problems.

Open ##3374385
@reiddragon@fedi.catto.garden 2026-06-20 19:34

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click > You'll never convince them to treat it in good faith no matter how much effort or money you put into UX or 'ease of use'. All you're doing is making the software worse, e. g. through things like dot-social, verified accounts or begging brands, corporations and politicians to join and give your product some kind of 'official' validation. I think this is the part that needs to be said the loudest. A lot of projects I used to really enjoy (both on and off the fediverse) went to complete shit by trying to be more like the corporate thing I ran away from to begin with. You don't fix anything by building an open source copy of the torment nexus, you fix shit by spitting on the torment nexus and building something better than it

Open ##3374386
@phl@mastodon.social 2026-06-21 18:28

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click On one hand the whole thing of "if it's grassroots, it must be bad" resonates with me because that's exactly why the more grassrootsy parties in Hungary never got any traction, no matter how much visible work they did on the local level. (And I'm sure that Magyar's popularity was in part due to him having eXpErIeNcE) (haha so one of the most common retorts was, I don't know if from trolls or legit, that "and how would these newbies know what to do if they become government?" XD)

Open ##3374388
@Maxtimot@eldritch.cafe 2026-06-22 01:06

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click 100% agree, this was absolutely visible in the open when Bluesky started and people were excusing every issues and clunkyness of it (IT WAS NOT HAVING VIDEOS FOR ONE YEAR AND A HALF !!); while at the same time finding the pettiest of excuses for not using Mastodon. It really feels like if something isn't corporate it's almost repulsive to them.

Open ##3374389
@sarvo@novoa.nagoya 2026-06-22 08:22

@lianna@micro.webgarden.click I think you are right, but I think the correct word is legitimate, and the fediverse is illegitimate, it was made by and for hackers after all.

Open ##3374390