Hey there! Figured I’d share here since my main instance, Lemmy.ml, seems to be really broken right now. I published an article today focusing on some of the myths and misconceptions Mastodon users have spread over the last few years, with some critical analysis and debunking.
Let me know if you like it!
Strong disagree about the email thing. When people say that, they aren’t talking about low level implementation details like this article goes into. They’re talking about the ability for Gmail to talk to AOL.
Non-technical users have no idea about implementation details of email anyway, so I highly doubt anyone has ever interpreted it that way.
As someone who struggled to understand what the fediverse even was, the email analogy was what made it finally click for me.
For me, it was pretty clear that the analogy was only about how different servers could talk to each other, and that the underlying technology wasn’t equivalent. I never even considered that people might use the analogy that way until this article.
Ahh! So that is why users are [email protected]. it is basically like public email threads that are structured to promote discussion!
Aw, I thought this was about actual Mastodons.
Meee tooo, hard disappoint. I was thrilled there were a whopping 10 misconceptions about the extinct animal!
One misconception is that mastodons sharpened their tusk points with a nail file while giving their enemy the evil eye. Never happened.
There’s a sweet misconception being cleared up, that’s the stuff, thank you stranger!
Why would you expect that from a fediverse community post?
I blame the thumbnail, though.
Edit: or maybe I can’t take a joke…
Same here, as the picture led us to believe.
I’m glad I’m not the only one disappointed.
We want real mastodon facts, damn it.
I came ready to learn about prehistoric animals, what’s going on here.
You forgot censorship. The top default instance social is heavily censored.
I agree with the email metaphor being a bad example. If you’re talking to a twitter user, it’s easier to describe it as a platform where anyone can set up their own twitter website and you can sign up with any of them and see content from the other sites. Then just switch it up to whatever they’re familiar with (i.e. reddit, discord, etc.). I don’t know why people like using email as an example.
