Folks seem reluctant to join Mastodon because the signup process is a bit more involved. Specifically the choice of server is what puts people off.
Yet this is intrinsic to the nature of Mastodon. It’s federated - distributed and decentralised- so that one person or company cannot control the whole thing.
We should celebrate this aspect of Mastodon and not be afraid of it.
@badams but for them, that is not a compelling reason to get beyond the friction. They're scared of landing in a corner without being able to access the rest. They want/need simple and able to see/interact with everyone.
They don't get/understand the advantage of the federated view.
@badams is it? Or should we accept the use-case that #mastodon solves is not the same use-case as many people want solving? And that it might be all the better for that?
I'm not sure, it might actually be the use-case they need, but they don't understand it, but, given the state of twitter comes from how people behave, bears some detailed thought I think.
@badams The difficulty I found is that you're asked to make a pretty foundational decision (which server) before you really know what it all means.
Perhaps there could be a "temporary new user" server as a default, which pushes people off to their "real" server?
@johnmu the server decision is not that fundamental, there is a server migration feature that allows you to move wholesale to a new server.
But yes a better onboarding proces is probably welcome.
@badams I guess I just have the weird SEO mindset that picking a domain name is important :-)), but perhaps site moves here are easier than with search engines.
Or perhaps the end-goal should be to just run your own server so that you have more control.... (time to check my long list of unused domain names)
That's a good point, with your server instance visible in your handle, it's part of your identity.
And it gave me long pause for thought. Should I join the techiest instance I saw? Or the social one? Or the metal head one? Where's the one for cyclists?
Does the domain enforce a single choice of your personal identity and re-enforce tribalism?
@badams @johnmu I find a big difference between #digitalFirst people and the mass market is that we're not afraid of making a choice/picking an option and dealing with the consequences or working out how to fix or change it.
Many people I know won't click a button unless they are SURE it won't break things. 'It says "do you want to add to cart?" what do I do?' - heard too often...
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