pleroma, mastodon, and other AP microblogging service has the same problem. you have to specifically use the url or @ to find someone or a post. The search feature isn’t really one at all. you can’t discover anything or anyone who hasn’t federated to that instance, and there is hundreds of instances around at this point.

Fediverse platforms is great for small niche communities. but it still lacks the basic feature needed for it to become truly a Social Networks replacement. because of the disconnected nature. I could say It’s impossible for you to discover something without going to other corporate platforms. there’s no such thing as finding interesting creators on the fediverse.


Any solutions?


The complete way to fix discoverability problem.

There are 3 conditions for this to work.

  • every user has to assign which interests they are interested in. (in a prompt or/and in the user settings)
  • (Only public users) user information are put on a list in the instance local repository so foreign instances can access it.
  • Instance owners has to be told (optionally) to register on https://the-federation.info/ in the installation process.

Image description; Instances will make user information available publicly in their respective local repositories. then by reading the instances list from https://the-federation.info/ , Instances can pull in user information by downloading it from other instances.

(to minimize storage/data usage, we’ll only download the user information and interests, and not the posts and bio. this will not federate until user follow them like normal. add an option to download the information less recurrently, if it ever gets too big.)

Assigning interests will help people find someone to follow with a system rather than an intrusive algorithm. features like recommending someone to follow someone from certain topics, and an improved search result can be added from this.

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/16168


For Creators

create a list of creators and interesting figures, (Artists, Musicians, Writers, Video-Creators, and more) and put it on a repository for instances to pull in. (the platforms has to support pulling in the search result from a repository list.)

Fediverse Creators Wiki

I created a github repository called fediverse-creators-wiki, when the devs decided to do add this feature. I’ll make a compatible list for fediverse platforms so they can use this repository.

Contribute; https://github.com/gwynne0190/fediverse-creators-wiki

thanks for the feedback @dreeg_ocedam@lemmy.ml, It’s updated.

  • smallcirclesM
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    53 years ago

    There is Trunk for the Fediverse to mass-follow a bunch of people interested in a particular topic. And there’s Gup.pe groups that you can follow to receive toots of anyone tagging the group in their msg. But stuff sure can be further improved.

  • @dragonX@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    A wiki can’t solve much of the discoverability problem, for these platforms to be real social networks other than independent interconnected instances there need to be something with a wider coverage, and it shouldn’t just be about creators, every account on the fediverse should be equally discoverable.
    The solution that I find the most adequate is having something like a distributed DHT that every instance of the fediverse can query and publish to.
    Peertube for instance when they became aware of this, they created sepiasearch.org to be a one stop search node to all instances, then they added a peertube wide search feature from any instance search bar. but because of not all instances federate it still isn’t as efficient as searching youtube.
    The real problem is because how moderation works across instances, we can’t have as a wider discoverability reach as on central platform

    • @Gwynne@lemmy.mlOP
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      23 years ago

      I had a similar idea at first but I thought non-creators usually don’t want to be found and be private. though just a wiki is not a solution for wide-search. I created this because people want to find creators most of the time instead of just people. other than Artists, Bloggers, Writers, and Journalist and important figures, there’s just people who has little involvement in the internet.

      • Dreeg Ocedam
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        23 years ago

        Mastodon gives you quite a lot of granularity over what is and isn’t public on your account. I think that people that don’t want to be found already have the the option not to be.

        There is no clear way to distinguish who want to be found and who doesn’t want to, and I personally believe that people that don’t want their stuff to be found shouldn’t make their posts public.

        • @Gwynne@lemmy.mlOP
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          13 years ago

          You have a point. They can do what peertube does as @dragonX@lemmy.ml said. or maybe instances can download the search result recurrently to reduce slowdowns.

          there is already https://communitywiki.org/trunk which is a tool to follow people based on interest, thought It’s not much of a wiki than is it just a tool to follow. this one however doesn’t exist yet.

  • ghost_laptop
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    33 years ago

    I totally feel you, when I joined Mastodon I stopped using it because I didnt find anyone interesting to follow and when I tried searching nothing showed up.

    • @fidibus@lemmy.161.social
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      13 years ago

      Maybe in part that was because you were expecting it to suggest that you follow a couple of famous people?

      It took a while for me to get used to it as well, but then I just followed random people who seemed kinda interesting but weren’t famous. This led to my stream being completely different as I was used from other social media and that’s what I like on mastodon. Mind you I unfollowed many of the people that I followed at first, but just because I learned that one person tooting every 10 seconds is annoying or I found people that I found more interesting.

      • ghost_laptop
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        23 years ago

        No, I am not that much interested in famous people, I tried searching for topics but I found nothing. Anarchism, communism, other stuff I don’t remember.

  • Katie Ampersand
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    33 years ago

    finally someone else talking about it, this is something that has always bothered me for a while

  • Metawish
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    23 years ago

    In a sense, I would think that the difficulty of discoverability lends well to the fediverse in the sense that you can compartmentalize. Of course creators would want to be discovered but if it’s difficult to find creators across instances, then they naturally start to gather together on instances.

    I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make since I think your idea is great, but I also think we don’t need to worry too much about it

    • @Gwynne@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 years ago

      I’m focusing on the creator side here, they won’t be interested in the first place to join the fediverse. so I want to put them where It’s discoverable so people know where to find them. and then when the creators here gets popular, more creators will join. well, at least that’s the plan.