I saw a few people on birdsite saying "the trouble with Mastodon is that you have to know what a server is".

That doesn't seem like a high barrier of entry to me. 6 year olds who play Minecraft know what a server is...

@tomw there is an argument that one of the reasons Twitter was a dumpster fire is the low barrier of entry - download app, spew garbage. Mastodon, for better or worse, has a higher knowledge requirement but it does set the bar for accessibility higher.