Okay, this is possibly going to be controversial in some quarters, but it has to be said for the good of the Fediverse:

Mastodon.social is not a good way to join Mastodon. If you're already on mastodon.social, you might want to move your account to another server. I've done an article about this topic at:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server

If you want to move your account, there's a complete step-by-step guide to how to do it here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server

#FediTips #Mastodon #MastodonSocial

Mastodon.social is not a good way to join Mastodon. If you’re already on it, you might want to move your account to a different Mastodon server. | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

@FediTips I basically agree with this, but …

Considering that the Fediverse is fashioned after Internet email to an extent, isn’t it almost inevitable that mastodon.social (or some other dominant server in future, with enough users and a slightly tweaked feature set) will become the gmail of the Fediverse?

I wouldn’t recommend either mastodon.social or gmail to anyone, but most people (and I’m not totally immune to this) love the feeling of ‘safety in numbers’ (among other reasons for going with a popular choice)

@transponderings

I don't think it's as inevitable as it seems.

The fact that the Fediverse exists despite the network effect of Twitter etc shows that there's always hope for alternatives to be created.

It would be especially helpful if there were some good stable alternatives to Mastodon's software, either a hard fork or something totally different. (GoToSocial looks particularly nice but it's still in alpha testing and the devs aren't advising its use yet.)