Do you like the Mastodon approach of consistent branding for different instances?

[noodlejetski@lemm.ee]

the "consistent branding" is only really there on major instances. you can use custom themes (like Tangerine) or front-ends (like Mangan) as the default experience on your instance

[tired_n_bored@lemmy.world]

I like consistent branding because non-technical people get confused when they have one billion different names for everything when you could just say "join a Mastodon instance"

[smeg@feddit.uk]

Is it not a lemming?

[cris_color@lemmy.world]

It is, and somehow that escaped me...

[cris_color@lemmy.world]

Oh neat, I'd never seen that before

[hendrik@palaver.p3x.de]

I think the sane approach is: the developers offer one good theme and branding that is the default setting and works well out of the box. And instance administrators can then either be lazy and leave that in place, or (better) go ahead and tweak their place to their liking. Decorate it, make it unique if they like. I think it shows how much effort someone put into something. But on the other hand, you often can't mess with 20 different free software projects and change the CSS code just for the sake of it. I think it's also fine to just leave some things on a good default setting.

[mat@zelk.space]

@tired_n_bored they don’t need to know it’s a mastodon instance tbh

[kichae@lemmy.ca]

No. I think it works to hide the distributed nature of the fediverse, and works to make things that are inherent to a distributed model seem uncanney and broken.

It also strips some value out of the 'local' experience, communicating that each Mastodon-based website is the same as any other, and presenting something that looks like a dumb terminal, rather than a stand-alone website.

Ultimately, I think it's bad for the fediverse.

[roguetrick@lemmy.world]

Actually one of the reasons I like misskey derivatives and their diversity.

[tired_n_bored@lemmy.world]

But people are used to one and only Twitter. If we create one billion different brands for the same Mastodon instances nobody is gonna hop on them cause they will understand even less than what they understand now about Mastodon and the fediverse

[mat@zelk.space]

@tired_n_bored I don’t rly know, we need people to learn how to use fediverse, not mastodon

[lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org]

My kneejerk reaction coming from the '90s is that if I wanted the same branding for everything, I'd just use Apple or Gnome. At the same time, constructing brand image on top of a third-party base that is in development and can change over time can be difficult, or just "not worth the $RESOURCE". So I'm currently in the position that something like "universal Mastodon view with brand accents" would be the most fitting thing for the Fediverse.

[fizz@lemmy.nz]

I like what we have here on Lemmy with the multiple different frontends.