[patrickdavey]

Have you actually tried using it? I love mastodon now! You can just follow people as normal, a number of pretty interesting folks hang out on there (Brian Krebs etc).

No ads, a timeline which isn't endless and you can actually just read. It's actually really nice! I also think the decentralized non proprietary model brings us closer to something which is becoming ever more important in this world we find ourselves in.

[franga2000]

Using it isn't the problem, joining it is. Finding a server that has the right combination of

- isn't The Big One (defeats the point) - has a nice domain (that's your name forever) - is stable (major downtime or data loss is unacceptable these days) - is guaranteed to stick around forever (no, migration isn't solved and it will never not suck) - has rules you agree with and can guarantee you'll follow - is running the right software (no, "fedi" isn't compatible, you either run Mastodon or things will always be ever so slightly broken)

[seabass-labrax]

Some of the points you make are still true, but I think you're a little out of date.

Migration is not solved, but it also doesn't suck - unless you're doing it every week nothing will break, and several people I follow have already done it and it's been just fine.

Stability is also fine - if your server is down for a couple of hours, your timeline will catch up when it comes back online, and likewise your sent posts will stay in a local outbox until they can be sent. That's absolutely no different from email or Jabber or anything else.

"Fedi" is compatible enough that I run my own GoToSocial server, which is technically still beta software, and I haven't experienced any issues following and interacting with anyone on Mastodon, Pixelfed, Pleroma and quite a few other platforms.

Would I recommend it to a non-technical user, someone who wasn't really interested in 'servers' and 'clients' and 'protocols'? Yes, although I'd suggest they just go for The Big One, as you put it. What I would say though is that this is no longer just a technology for Web nerds any longer; it's a very viable alternative to centralized platforms.

[akk0]

I made a serious effort to look into it, but without already knowing where I want to be it was impossible to decide which server to sign onto and it's an expensive choice to make upfront since they don't all federate with each other and even the ones that do federate are not guaranteed to not start beef with each other. That's before even getting to the fact that I can name at least 4 different protocols off the top of my head (Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey) at various levels of not-entirely-incompatible with each other. I remember there being work on between-server account moving mechanisms in some state of almost-partially-working, too. Maybe things have changed now but I doubt it, everything I saw in the ecosystem just seemed to promote balkanization as a feature.

I'd love a truly decentralized model for this but fediverse isn't it, fediverse is a Hellenic League of city states where your ability to interact outside your bubble is beholden to your and their local leadership and shifting realities of protocol war jank.

If you do think my opinion is uninformed or mistaken at least know that I know many times more people who bounced off the idea for these reasons than people who actually managed to make heads or tails of this. Fwiw I don't use xitter/bsky either.