This week I talked to two different friends who are still on Facebook, and independent of each other they both said it was because of how the Facebook groups gave them easy access to information about their hobby, e.g. knitting.
So I need to ask: Can Mastodon compete with that and how?
Nir Krakauer
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •earthling
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Show them what they can find on Mastodon.
#books
#knitting
Mastodon Migration
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •clew
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Usually it’s Ravelry that provides that…
I see lots of knitting chat and advice here, but I don’t know of a specific server.
@randahl
Savannology
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •clew
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Can you ask who provides the information?
If fellow enthusiasts, there are probably some here, and they’ll be fine if they come in a group. Or find a group:
about.fedigroups.social/direct…
If knitting stores and manufacturers, there’s a tradeoff between the stores not wanting to do the socials on yet another platform BUT surely it would be nice to have a business channel not under the thumb of a platform trap?
If influencers… man, I don’t know, although also I don’t actually know.
@randahl
FediGroups : Directory
about.fedigroups.socialJan Johannesson
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Here is a start. Because you need to join if you want it to grow.
fedigroups.social/@knitting
Emma Davidson
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Nerb
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •I have a similar situation. I facet as a hobby. All I use facebook for is that. Both for access to the manufacture who seems to think that is fine for support and other hobbyist.
In a way I am a drag on facebook since I use adguard, privcy badger ublock and other items so I do not see most of the crap they want me to look at. And I avoid those reels things and such like the plague.
4 groups on facebook are all I use. If they moved offsite I would follow. There are a few groups on here but they are dead. Maybe a message every few months at most.
JBeanz
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •🇨🇦 CleoQc 🍁🦜🧶🚐
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •I'm getting lots of knitting advice and support here! More than I do on FB.
That said, I'm still on FB for some particular groups. Weaving doesn't seem as strong on the fediverse as FB.
But knitting? Yup! There's a decent size crowd!
#knitting
Kerr Avonsen (she/her)
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •At least it does for #knitting and #crochet - follow the hashtags and/or follow the groups @knitting and @crochet
There is also @crafters but that isn't very active, perhaps because its focus is too broad.
Sozan
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Schmaker
in reply to Randahl Fink • •It's always the same .. "can #Mastodon do thing A that #Facebook do?"
No, it can't. #Fediverse can!
Just follow group created on #Lemmy / #Kbin / whatever and the functionality is there. Easy as that...
Anders Cornelius Madsen
in reply to Schmaker • • •@schmaker
"Easy as that..." - was that a joke?
First, do an online search for Kbin. I get results for kbin.social and kbin.pub, both of which are defunct - one redirects to a non-existing subdomain, while the other is a test page at OVH Hosting.
OK, make a wild guess and search for Kbin on GitHub. Aha! Found it.
Scroll down to the readme-section and see this at the very first thing except the description of the project:
"Note: This is a very early beta version, and a lot of features are currently broken or in active development, such as federation."
If the choice stands between something that looks like a phpBB forum from 2005 and something that does not work, I'd say that the Fediverse is falling very short when it comes to replacing the functionality of Facebook groups.
So, to answer the question asked:
No, Mastodon can't compete with Facebook groups, and, frankly, neither can the Fediverse.
Lemmy is probably the best bet here, but the user interface will scare most potential users away. It's functional, but looks like something you can't take seriously in 2026.
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Schmaker
in reply to Anders Cornelius Madsen • •@Anders Cornelius Madsen
I did not said you have to use these instances. I say there is option to do so.
I can do groups in #friendica as well. People should stop ask what #Mastodon does, but look for possibilities across #Fediverse instead.
If you expect billionaire funded UX from free platforms, then think again - they also took a while to reach where they are now 😀
@Randahl Fink
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Anders Cornelius Madsen
in reply to Schmaker • • •@schmaker
I'd say that you're probably pinpointing the biggest weakness in the Fediverse right there: "look for possibilities across the Fediverse instead".
People have no idea what to look for or how to find it.
If you have a unified system that does everything that they want right now, you really, REALLY have to offer them something enticing and user friendly if you want them to move away from what they know.
Facebook offers a solution where one single login gives you microblogging, forums, chat and image sharing.
You just have to accept that whereever you go on the internet, you will have a small army of invisible Dolores Umbridges running behind you with their clipboard, noting every single action you do, probably smacking their lips disapprovingly as they go.
Mastodon seems like the most mature solution in the Fediverse, so I think it's fair for new users to ask if it can be a Facebook-replacement, given that this is actually what they want. Can it do microblogging, forums and chat as a minimum, and can it do it with an interface that is modern and useful, and with a single login?
Until the answer is "yes", moving people away from Meta is going to be very hard indeed. Telling them to search for other options on different services with different logins is not going to cut it.
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Schmaker
in reply to Anders Cornelius Madsen • •Nobody said it's perfect, but it's definitely possible 😀
People are lazy and people have chosen to be sold. That's okay somehow. But nobody should ever say you cannot do it on Fediverse as it's clearly possible, just not as user friendly as comercial soc-nets are.
Until someone throws huge money at Fedi devs to work full time, you cannot expect huge twists, it will take time.
Until then you can just use Lemmy, the functionality is there...
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Anders Cornelius Madsen
in reply to Schmaker • • •@schmaker
I think we fundamentally agree on a lot of this, but I don't agree that people have chosen to be sold and that they are lazy as a general principle.
If people are trying to move to the Fediverse, they are clearly trying to break out of the current system, and if the Fediverse can't show them how to do it, even though the functionality is there, the Fediverse has failed them.
Sometimes I can't help but think that if someone had made a UX for Lemmy that is as appealing as the Mastodon UX is, we could have had a whole different conversation right now, because then Lemmy would perhaps have been the go-to solution for all these people, and we would have seen a much larger base of instances.
Anyway, I get that I am not fair to you right now - you don't control any of this.
I'm just very frustrated that we currently have a huge number of Facebook users in Denmark that are royally pissed with the US, and want to move away from US-controlled services, and I have no real alternative for them except Mastodon, which does not really do what they want.
Hell, if anyone could point me to a gorgeous Lemmy UX that I could put on top of a Lemmy instance, I would even consider hosting it on my own right now, just to have SOMETHING to offer those people.
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Schmaker
in reply to Anders Cornelius Madsen • •Maybe crowdfunding a dev may be a thing?
@Randahl Fink
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Anders Cornelius Madsen
in reply to Schmaker • • •@schmaker
Could be, yeah.
It would very much depend on how the Lemmy developers would take something like that, since the ideal scenario would be to have that UX included in the default version, rather than it being a bolted-on solution.
But yes, it's not a bad idea.
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Schmaker
in reply to Anders Cornelius Madsen • •@Anders Cornelius Madsen
Not sure what about lemmy, but for example I have seen PeerTube dev chocobozz (excuse wrong spelling) actually calculating coding price on some bug reports and someone can actually "buy" the feature.
So it's clearly possible to push Fediverse forward 😀
@Randahl Fink
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Anders Cornelius Madsen
in reply to Schmaker • • •Ohh - interesting concept. I had not heard about that.
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Radio Free Trumpistan
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •zbrando
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Jeppe
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Grant
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Elizenery🔻
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •The Animal and the Machine
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •If you think of Mastodon as content on knitting. You need to create an app that reads that content.
Apps can contain algorithms too. This is not an anathema. The idea of Mastodon is the freedom to choose, not anti-algorithm.
On the one hand, people are asking for a decentralised platform and on the other hand people are complaining it’s not behaving like a centralised platform. And they are asking the central body to centralise.
I have said this before. Just make an iPhone and Android app that reads all FOSS and give it the means to take filters and deploy optional on device algorithms.
To look at Mastodon is to look in the wrong place. Mastodon is already doing what it should.
gusseting
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Prior to that, I blogged about knitting, attended socksummit (yeah, it was a conference for people who knitted socks by hand in Portland, Oregon with 3000+ attendees).
How do you get them over here?
One way? Crowdfund a new instance/thingy just for them. (cont)
Anna
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •mastodon has loads of knitters. Many questions are answered within minutes. We hold knitalongs. We share stash. There are yarn shops, too. And you can get all of it without having to dodge a single ad.
So yes, I’d say it competes. #knitting
SandraSchützSewingforyourLife
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •LemLems
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •For me I’ve found it to be an improvement. By following the knitting hashtag I get to see all the posts about knitting (not just those of people who’ve joined a particular group) and only the posts about knitting - no off topic threads.
The knitting community on here is, in general, very active & happy to share knowledge and encouragement. I don’t tend to join in with knit alongs and the like but I see plenty of them going on
helgenug
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Noah Mittman
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •