This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose?
Go with the one everyone talks about? Closed to new signups. Pick some other one, run the risk that it closes (the owner gets bored, it becomes too much work, they find keeping it up and stable too hard). Or else that it gets “defederated”, and hence you get effectively banned, because someone else disagrees with moderation decisions of the owner which are nothing to do with you personally. And even if none of that happens, and the server you pick turns out to be a good one - then your friend asks you how to join Mastodon, you direct them to the server you use, but it is closed to sign-ups due to popularity, so they have the same issue.
I can’t be bothered. I’m sure I’m hardly the only one.
> This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose?
This is exactly the same thing as creating an email address, and as far as I know no-one is complaining because they have to choose a server/domain to use.
People used to have problems with this ca. 25 years ago (I ran an ISP back then, and it was difficult for people). It took a couple of years and then enough knowledge had diffused to enough people that anyone who struggled just asked a friend and got walked through it.
If Mastodon is successful the same thing will happen again.
Most people get given an email by their workplace, school or ISP. Or there are big corporations like Google and Microsoft offering them (for free and paid). None of that is true for Mastodon now, which makes it not “exactly the same thing” at all
> This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose?
How do you choose anything? On joinmastodon.org/servers you're presented with filter options and descriptions. You look at the descriptions and pick one you think you'll like. If you don't, you can do an account move. Plenty of people will be happy to help.
Personally I'm perfectly fine with making people think twice if they're not willing to invest the time to find a server. It's ok - they can pick something else if that works better for them.
> Or else that it gets “defederated”, and hence you get effectively banned, because someone else disagrees with moderation decisions of the owner which are nothing to do with you personally.
This is a highly exaggerated risk unless you go out of your way to find a server full of racists or other people that should instantly make it clear to you it's likely you'll face blocks. Some people will insist this or that mainstream server is banned everywhere (e.g. some say that about mastodon.social), and in reality unless the server is obviously bad it often turns out to be a few inconsequentially tiny instances which block them. Look at the list of banned instances on a handful of servers and you'll see that most places it's not very long and most of it is made up of a core set of common culprits. None of which are listed on joinmastodon.org/servers - it takes effort or really bad luck to end up on a server where this is a big issue.
> then your friend asks you how to join Mastodon, you direct them to the server you use, but it is closed to sign-ups due to popularity, so they have the same issue.
It's an issue particularly now because signups are 10x-20x normal because of Musk. It's a scaling issue which will go away, as the number of new instances is also rapidly going up and people are addressing it. Additionally, if you e.g. go to mastodon.social and press "Create Account" you're offered an explanation and linked to joinmastodon.org/servers to pick another one.
> I can’t be bothered. I’m sure I’m hardly the only one.
> This is a highly exaggerated risk unless you go out of your way to find a server full of racists or other people that should instantly make it clear to you it's likely you'll face blogs. Some people will insist this or that mainstream server is banned everywhere (e.g. some say that about mastodon.social), and in reality unless the server is obviously bad it often turns out to be a few inconsequentially tiny instances which block them. Look at the list of banned instances on a handful of servers and you'll see that most places it's not very long and most of it is made up of a core set of common culprits
Look at how many controversies there have been about whether Twitter should or shouldn’t ban some controversial figure (everyone from Donald Trump to J K Rowling). What happens if Mastodon gets similar controversies, and then big Mastodon server operators disagree among themselves about how to respond, and then block each other’s servers out of that disagreement? Nobody can say it can’t happen, I can’t see any guardrails to prevent such splits. If anything, Mastodon’s community seems to be full of people who think that Twitter (whether pre or post Musk) is insufficiently moderated and not banning enough people, which seems to make such a development only more likely
Nobody can say it can't happen, but the reality is that the operators of the big instances so far at least have understood that there's an inherent damaging effect to defederating instances that has a sizeable proportion of genuine users that means it's generally treated as a last resort except for "purebred" abusive instances.
What happens if it should come to pass is that users will need to decide whether they like it like that, or move to a third party instance that doesn't block either one or only block the one they want blocked.
And the prospect of a user exodus (for a decision either way) is an incentive for admins to pay attention to what their users actually wants. To me that's just fine (though I'd like improvements to the user migration functionality to make this process even easier).
I could worry about this, or I can worry about Musk's whims. On Mastodon I can move elsewhere (and did; where I started was fine, but I'm now on my own instance because I like having more control). On Twitter, there's no recourse. As such I'll take those future hypotheticals over what's happening to Twitter any day.
> This kind of friction at even getting started doesn’t bode well for Mastodon’s success - forcing people to pick a server: how do they choose?
It's important to know that moving between servers is fairly well implemented; a few clicks and your followers will automatially migrate over to the new one. Your first pick doesn't have to be final.
Go with the one everyone talks about? Closed to new signups. Pick some other one, run the risk that it closes (the owner gets bored, it becomes too much work, they find keeping it up and stable too hard). Or else that it gets “defederated”, and hence you get effectively banned, because someone else disagrees with moderation decisions of the owner which are nothing to do with you personally. And even if none of that happens, and the server you pick turns out to be a good one - then your friend asks you how to join Mastodon, you direct them to the server you use, but it is closed to sign-ups due to popularity, so they have the same issue.
I can’t be bothered. I’m sure I’m hardly the only one.