It is annoying that every time Mastodon is made a little bit easier to use, you get these viral posts from high-follower accounts about "threat to the fediverse!!!"
Yes, choosing a server isn't the biggest barrier in the world. But from where I'm sitting, the problem is that many people hesitate for a long time at that step and so never sign up.
You're not helping the health of the fediverse overall by fighting pitched battles against every small UX feature.
The obvious problem of loudly screaming about how Mastodon sign-up should work is that we are only hearing the people who already signed up, and not the people who gave up because it was too complicated.
@tomw fundamentally I think the disconnect here is over differing ideas about what Masto/Fedi should be. If rapid upscaling/wide adoption is your goal, improvements to onboarding make sense. Usually this goes along with a worldview that sees Mastodon as a competitor or adversary to Twitter, or at least defined in the context of Twitter. Not everyone shares that worldview or agrees that those are the correct design goals. I say all this from a position of fundamental agreement with your post btw
@tomw while I have no interest in/respect for elitist/exclusive mindsets related to Fedi, consider: by conceptualizing app design choices around Twitter competition, we select for features that replicate existing patterns. This may be good or bad, but it might also (by opportunity cost/negative selection) close out other directions of development that might open out into new and unforeseen kinds of functionality. Obviously this is conjectural and abstract, and I don't have a specific example.
@tomw so my point here certainly isn't to argue with what you're saying, since I think I do share your premises and at least broadly the same kind of hopes for the Fedi systems. But there is something, I think, to the idea of the opportunity cost of repeating existing social media patterns
@mrcompletely@tomw Alternatively you could argue that uniting the opposing viewpoints of maximising accessibility and maximising uniqueness is just not going to happen.
If taking that as a premise then continuing down that road is just a disservice to everyone vs. pushing hard for accessibility to encourage forks or other protocol-compatible alternatives.
@AngryAnt@swamptin Yeah - in that sense .social is the Ubuntu of instances. A lot of people are very annoyed about it but it is reasonable to use it until if/when you have developed your own opinions about the topic.
@tomw also, the messaging that "it doesn't matter which one you pick, you can always move to a different one!" is horribly misleading, on top of the already overwhelming number of choices.
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