This day in 2017 - nine years ago - Mashable published an article saying that Mastodon would not survive (https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive).
Thank goodness it was wrong.
If Mastodon, and indeed the broader fediverse, had not survived, I would not have all you fantastic, amazing, fun, interesting, and diverse people to share things and chat with.
Yes, that includes *you*!
It is a genuinely delightful social media experience, and I am incredibly grateful for it.
@neil I am also glad it persisted but there are still some real issues around discoverability here especially for people wanting the tools to do so without extensions, 3rd party apps, or whatever.
Still, it's the only social media platform I use and I don't see that changing
I see Fediverse account discoverability to be similar to email address discoverability: there is none and that's okay.
I can share my Mastodon account in the same way as my email address (with private messages to have some control over who knows it, or posting it on my website or on another social media profile for public sharing).
The disadvantage of discoverability is that you can "discover" the wrong person's profile without realising it (someone with the same name or a deliberate scammer).
Mastodon helps to protect us from that by allowing an account to be verified against a particular website, and you can visit the website to check that it's really the person you're thinking of, but then I think it's probably easier to go to the website you already know first and find the account from there.
Neil Brown
hoboshrimps
Alys