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You say that only a relatively small percentage of the population ever used BBSes, and that's true, but what is also true is that only a relatively small percentage of the population ever used a social microblogging service, whether it was Twitter or not. You're really leaning in to 'choose an instance', which has only really been a problem for tech experts. Everyone I know on Mastodon just clicked one of the listed instances on joinmastodon.org and never thought about it again. And no, most people didn't have to go anywhere to sign up for Facebook. For an extremely long time, there was a LinkedIn-like email invitation system, and when you made your account it suggested "people you may know" and generally guessed right. Literally all you needed to do to get a Facebook account was make up a password. I'm not familiar with whatever the current growth hacks are. Anyway, it's easy to make comparisons by ignoring many key details. You did it too, you just described those key details as "obscure exceptions" or saying they don't "really count." I'm not sure what anyone is supposed to get from your text except that you're really stumped about decentralization. To this day people have to "choose an instance" to sign up for email, because people use email before they get jobs and they can't hang onto primary-school accounts after they leave school. Sure, most people sign up for GMail or Apple mail, because their phones tell them to. That's still choosing an instance, and Microsoft, Yahoo, Fastmail, and other providers continue to exist and turn profits, even though their users had to battle the indominitable hellscape of having to choose an instance. |