[Barrin92]

>I as a developer have yet to even figure out how it's supposed to work

You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous), fill in your username and email and you're good to go.

Why do people invent fictional horror stories about a service that's at this point functionally as easy to use as any bog standard website?

[anigbrowl]

You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous)

Regular consumers hate this because they don't know what they're getting into, and it feels like the social media equivalent of a crypto scam where you're invited to buy a coin, any coin. It was probably intended to resemble arriving at college during rush week and pick a social/activity club to join, except you have to pick a server without any real way to browse around and understand what differentiates them.

[monknomo]

heck, I'm not a regular user, and I find it annoying to pick a server without knowing what the vibe is. I want to lurk without any transaction costs before I sign up for something

[adparadox]

You can see posts on any server to "find out what the vibe is" without registering. For example: https://fosstodon.org/public/local. What are the transactional costs here?

[ramesh31]

>You go to https://joinmastodon.org/, click on "join" (or pick another server if you are adventurous), fill in your username and email and you're good to go.

And that gives me access to the entire service? Or just bits and pieces of it? And how do I find other services? Asking around? Who's seeing my data if I sign up on another server? What are the anonymous operators of said server doing with my password and email? How do I message someone from another server? Are those messages secure at all?

Decentralized works for motivated parties. It does not work for the masses.

[Barrin92]

Yes, it gives you access to the entire service, you don't need to find anything. Messages and accounts in Mastodon are visible across the network. The operators of almost all instances aren't anonmyous, the address of the default server operators is literally listed on the about page.

If you have zero knowledge and don't care Mastodon functions exactly like Twitter. If you care more, you can invest time, host your own server, do what you want, that's optional.

If decentralized systems don't work it's amazing that my grandfather is able to send emails every day. Which is btw the exact equivalent to Mastodon. You don't care you sign up for Gmail, if you do, run a server out of your basement.

[lxgr]

> If you have zero knowledge and don't care Mastodon functions exactly like Twitter.

That’s simply not true. Even as a technical user I sometimes stumble over things like not being able to follow an account after being linked to their servers web site. “Wait, why am I logged ou– oh, this isn’t my server.”

[tedunangst]

And you know the answer to all those questions for bluesky?

[anigbrowl]

Those questions aren't there, when you sign up it's just like any other service. If you want to do the decentralized thing or wonder 'why do some people have specific domain handles and the like, the information is easy to get, but you could also use it without ever knowing any of that. So very low friction for non-technical users.

[ramesh31]

> And you know the answer to all those questions for bluesky?

Nope. Just pointing out the downfalls of decentralized, and the fact that compromising with some centralization (as Bluesky is doing) is a better way for most people.

[fragmede]

the masses don't ask questions at that granularity though, it either works or it doesn't.