But it's also not entirely @gruber's fault because the media doesn't really talk about the Fediverse, and when they do, it's as a synonym for "Mastodon".
How would @gruber know about the massive development efforts to build more user-friendly alternatives to Mastodon?
No one in the media talks about the growth of *key apps, and how they're now the #2 most used Fediverse platform.
Whenever I tell people that Mastodon isn't the Fediverse, the Mastodon stans start saying, "Oh, you sound like a guy who's complains that Linux isn't called GNU/Linux."
No, there's a massive difference.
To most people, whether you call something Linux or GNU/Linux doesn't affect the user experience of using the OS.
Referring to the Fediverse as "Mastodon" definitely affects the user experience of using Mastodon.
And it is because they claim that people are confused when they are going to chose a server.
I personally, think that changing the word "server" to "community" during the signup process would make the process easier for new users (I think/hope).
@atomicpoet@oblomov One simple solution to this that maybe @Gargron could consider: have the #Mastodon app cycle through numerous different instances (say 100) as the default sign up instead of just @Mastodon.
This would make on boarding easy for the user as well as promo decentralization at the same time. Of course, the other admins would have to agree to receiving a lot of traffic.
Plus it would be helpful if those instances had “mastodon” in their name to avoid confusing new users.
I echo that worry - having to leave posts behind when migrating - and add to it another:
The situation where you click on a post and you don't see all the replies, unless you go to its original location on its original instance. Then of course you can't interact with it (or the new replies you've now found) from there.
It is an amazingly attractive quick introduction to the Fediverse and it guides people to open Fediverse alternatives for the closed platforms that they are currently used to.
The response to this thread on Bluesky seems to be, “Saying that regular people should be able to afford a BGS is like saying they should afford to operate a web search engine”.
Indeed, that’s what I’m saying.
Funny enough, the Searx project makes this possible.
@atomicpoet@nyquildotorg Any experienced writers who would like to volunteer for the Calckey documentation team, that project is about to get better organized. We could use you. Please DM Chris or me.