[ohtwenty]

>who in their right mind thinks about "servers" outside of tech circles?

the way a lot of subreddits are used, for example, is intuitive enough to people who get used to the concept. 'servers' or 'instances' as a word might be too technical, but the concept of different groups you join, while still being able to talk to others? Of course my experience is 99% people who have persisted and joined, but they seem to enjoy it.

Mostly because you join, you think "this is confusing but I've arrived" and there's a few hundred people on the same instance who are interested in similar things, who know people from other instances who have similar interests, etc. I think it might help build a network quicker (or at least, that's what I've heard from a lot of newer people that have joined since I've been there!)

[mynameisvlad]

But you can only create your account on one server. It feels limiting compared to subreddits, which you use a centralized account to subscribe to several.

[AsyncAwait]

You can follow anyone on any other Mastodon server with that one account, so it's basically the same. That's what the federation is for.

[rainbowmverse]

I had to stop using Reddit with the recent redesign. There's no way to get at a community you like without being stuck on the platform. The growing ActivityPub ecosystem is different. I can hop over to another instance and still talk to the same people.

I can't do that with /r/DaystromInstitute. It's lost to me because I don't want to deal with Reddit. Maybe it's less intuitive--and I think nerds give average users way too little credit--but I prefer it to losing access to a community over platform decisions.

[ohtwenty]

To combine what two sister comments said: you can create multiple, but you can follow people anywhere. So you don't _need_ to create multiple, but you could. Like subreddits. Some people have their "meme/funny stuff" account for reddit, and a nsfw one, and a 'news/serious stuff' account. Likewise you _could_ do that all from one account, but you don't need to.

[egypturnash]

You can have multiple accounts on multiple servers.