Comment by ryukafalz
2 years ago
There's a few browser extensions that help with that. I just started using this one, it's pretty slick: https://github.com/Lartsch/FediAct
The underlying problem is that browsers are not designed with this sort of federated application use case in mind, so Mastodon and friends have to do some awkward tricks to get it to work at all.
Wow, why the hell would any normie use this?
Having to install a browser extension makes it a hard no for many, the most annoying thing for me is there's no app like Tweetbot for Mastodon that's even like 5% as useful.
I know many people used Twitter.com or their official app, but many people find a simpler native app experience much more useful.
The Tweetbot developers are making a Tweetbot for Mastodon https://tapbots.social/@ivory
That's why you see Mastodon customer support here and on Mastodon itself by the techies here just for choosing an instance and even explaining why it is all slower than Twitter. For example: [0]
Normal people do not care enough to go on a safari hunt for finding instances, user names of those claiming to have left Twitter or deleting their accounts or even bothering self-hosting just for a username on their own instance.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042216
To make the user experience more like what they're used to from Twitter.
It's frustrating that the web platform doesn't accommodate federated services like Mastodon that span multiple servers very well, but those are the cards we're dealt. It does work, it's just not ideal.