ArcaneSlime

Fedora KDE here.

Slackware.

Sure, but if they don't know about it it isn't influencing their choice. What I'm assuming is they'll sign up for the one I tell them about and later if they have a reason to switch, like they find out "oh my instance blocks something I want to see" they'll have learned enough to fix that on their own by virtue of using the thing teaching you about the thing. You seem to be ascribing some permanence to this choice, where there is none, you can simply make a new account, or another account and keep both, or 500 accounts if you're a weirdo, it literally does not matter, there's account migration. Furthermore there's guides if you're really struggling with the concept that pop up when you google "what is mastodon." Like sure, my grandma couldn't turn the computer on so she probably couldn't figure it out, but it's really not as hard as people make it out to be.

Tbf, some people want that. I prefer my instance which federates with anyone willing making you choose what to block yourself (aside from the reactionary instances that don't like that we don't block their enemy instances by default so they block ours, of course), but not just anyone can join my instance, so I can't recommend that unless they qualify. If you have a better general instance I can recommend instead of .social I'll definitely check it out!

Well I'd just tell them if I was recommending it to a friend or making a post like "follow me to mastodon" or whatever, and someone curious enough to find mastodon without a recommendation oughta be able to figure out an instance to join, mastodon.social is the first result when searching "mastodon" so it'll probably get them just based on that.

Tbf the internet is entirely comprised of like 6 websites if you ask the average Joe, and I'm damn inclined to agree as someone who remembers webrings fondly and misses geocities (it's like the bell curve meme lol, and btw yes I know about neocities I'm just sleeping on it).

But I agree, if they can email they can mastodon, it's the same shit.

Evidentially mastodon makes it hard to find people on purpose unless you know their name "to stop harassment" I'm told, except I'm not sure how it does that at all and it just makes it harder to use the damn platform. That's my one real complaint about mastodon.

Then they shouldn't be able to decide to move to blusky either if they're that paralyzed by choice.

And tbh I get it, I've been debating myself on just trimming my beard for like 6mo, and that much like "what masto instance should I join" is a preeetty consequence free decision, but imo the masto choice is even less consequential, you could make an acct on literally every instance that'll take you if you wanted for free and lurk them and/or abandon them at will and remake another at will too whereas the beard has to grow for a while.

Also I gotta link this song since it's so relevant lol.

Like I said "sure that makes it a bigger point of failure, but if it ever goes down just make one on whatever server most of your follows are on."

As for the moderation issues, maybe, idk, but then again if you're unhappy with the moderation by the time you get to that point "federation" is no longer a big scary word and you've likely found an instance you'd like to move to by virtue of just seeing it on your feed in .social, and on top of that masto lets you migrate accounts even, so it makes that a lot less painful to do.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, but that was a joke. I am indeed aware of the existence of other email services.

Like Mastodon.social? Afaik it has been around since the beginning and is basically the "default" server unless you're a "hacker" and you're on infosec.pub or whatever, an edgy 4channer and you're on poa.st, a SubGenius on "Bob's" server dobbs.town, or one of the many pervert servers, or one of the asain servers I can't read, but if you're on one of those (for instance dobbs.town) you're joining dobbs.town and mastodon is just there incidentally. Anyone else can just use .social and call it a day until they find out they're really into plants.space or some specific thing.

Hell all the people I've gotten on masto that's how I did it, "Ok make an acct on mastodon.social, great now lemme follow you what's your name? Cool, see there I am! Oh I'm not on mastodon.social, I'm on dobbs.town, but we can still communicate like how I email your gmail from my protonmail, is normal. Now, there's some servers you're gonna want to block..." I don't even tell them about federation until they're already there, unless I KNOW the server they'll want (like when I recommended my Discordian friend hop on discordian.social instead of mastodon.social.)

The real kicker is that none of their precious celebs they follow are on there, as you mention. The weirdos I talk to don't care about that so it works out for me lol.

I honestly don't get the whole "picking an instance is hard" thing, especially with masto. "Just use the default instance, mastodon.social, unless you have a reason not to," bang problem solved. Then it'd become a larger point of failure but if it went down "well now that you sorta understand it make an acct on the server most of your follows were on," bang 'nother problem solved.

Hell I have been diagnosed with executive function disorders and I can figure it out, it's not as hard as people pretend, we've all done it with email since like '95. "It's hard" is just twitter/bluesky propaganda!