@HilliTech I’ve been sitting on this exact thought for some time. I don’t belie it’s all that difficult. At all. You choose a thing. You choose another thing. You’re done.

I dunno if it’s gatekeeping, but even major news outlets are talking about it like it’s a foreign entity, and frankly, if you can navigate a news site, this should be a walk in the park. It’s certainly curious that this myth has evolved.

@HilliTech it's brought up because "pick a server" is a barrier. Understandably it's not that hard, but no other service that people sign up for today that's widely popular involves choosing a server.

I know people that work with software creation everyday (eg designers) that got stopped by that step and decided meh, I will check this later.

@HilliTech

One major issue is related to the management of instances being totally unregulated and so the process of picking a server comes with a lot more trepidation and concern from a user perspective.

One off-putting issue for me, at first, was the lack of being able to move data from one instance to another in case the server you are currently on does become unreliable.

I kinda got over that by just considering that wall garden social media sites don't allow you to automatically shift all your posts to another site either.

And so to judge Mastodon for not having that feature would be unfair.

I have been looking into how to overcome both of those issues, though. I have a couple of ideas in planning stages, but won't be able to work on them until later on this year.

@HilliTech I have a lot of thoughts about this particular subject.

I was one of the migration events. I came in a lot slower than others and I adapted, I think, readily into the flows. Just giving you the details so you can see through my eyes.

I had so many people explain how hard, technical, and impossible it was to even sort out the concept of Mastodon. The majority of those people were very active on Twitter, saw what was happening and have desperately clung to their audiences, or tried to find purchase on all the sites all while screaming how hard things are.

As you said, it's no more difficult than signing up to a million other things people do all the time. The only difference is the gap they have in people "moving their cheese".

Sure, there are some struggles to learn the new environment. But people are competent. Overall - people are entirely capable of growing into areas they want to. If they want it.

I don't think people want it. Most people, don't really want to change anything. We are creatures of habit and like to do things that we understand. Bird site is so synonymous that it is basically assumed you have a massive followership if you're a company or even real. People learned that THAT, the large followership, was somehow the measure of success.

They don't want to try it over here. It's risky having to pivot your business model. Or your engagement model... or your entire product model. For some people, posting to twitter is literally all three.

It's hard to convince someone of something they are paid not to understand. Twitter feeds them - until it stops, they'll resist admitting it's over.

@HilliTech I suggest if you find anyone struggling, send them here:

https://paulstamatiou.com/mastodon/

And scroll down to the "Getting started with Mastodon" section. If this article had been around when I signed up, my experience would have been much better.

The top part also does what you suggest, so maybe just have them read the whole thing.

@HilliTech Hey, normal guy here. I tried to get people to join this place in the past five years. A lot of them give up on it, and it's not on them

The weirdoes forming weird attitudes about this place can turn them off but I don't think that's all there is to it

@HilliTech in my experience main issue is that 90% of people use email from big companies that will (likely) not collapse overnight like Google Microsoft or Apple.

With mastodon and fediverse the problem is that many artists and merchandisers are dependant on discoverability. They can either risk setting up an account on an instance that can be gone one day, losing history of posts or go through hassle of creating their own.

On old socials they just have one account, that’s it.

@HilliTech I’m not super surprised by this. One of twitters big criticisms was that it was “hard”, it wasn’t like the other social networks. You get dropped in to an app where out of the gate, you don’t follow anyone, and no one sees your posts. You need to poke around and “figure it out”. This is partly why the stupid algorithmic feeds are so important to Twitter. They surface content from minute one.

Mastodon is no “harder”. There is just one more minor speed bump.

@HilliTech I think it just proves how much choice is debilitating to movement.

Just having to choose an instance makes you think - I might choose wrong and it’s easier not to choose even though at the end of the day your choice is irrelevant.