"Mastodon is confusing to use" is something I didn't quite get. I just got a mastodon.social account for lack of any alternative. When I'm on a different server, it presents me with the "enter your home server" if I want to interact. People can understand the difference between @gmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses.
Is there a list of specific difficulties or speed bumps somewhere? All the articles I can find are just vague "it's too complicated" or list choosing a server as the main prob.
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@AlSweigart I really don’t quite understand the difficulty either 🤷♂️
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@slothrop @AlSweigart We need difficulties!!
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@AlSweigart I suspect it's the "this server" / "other servers" / "all" views under the "Live Feeds" tab, vs the home tab.
I think most newcomers are expecting what they see on "all" to be their home tab, or perhaps the trending posts view that's under "Explore?"
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@AlSweigart I held off for quite awhile because I had this impression it was complicated. Someone comparing it to email like you did helped the most.
And yep, really not that complicated! Sign-up was easy and usage has been easy as well.
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@AlSweigart Just watch anyone not technical try to sign up without guidance/help. I am constantly bombarded by confused new users who don't know how to login or find people or know what a "home server" is.
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@huertanix @AlSweigart
They don't know how to log in? What does that mean exactly?
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@negative12dollarbill @AlSweigart Watch them sign up, not understand/remember what server they registered on and months later when Elon upsets them again, watch them try to log in.
Rather than collecting shared anecdotes though, I would recommend simply watching people who you know are not technical try to use this stuff without intervention. Bonus points if you don't mention there's a website/websites for Mastodon and don't include hints that it's not just an app.
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@AlSweigart I was initially confused when you click a profile and it goes to their homeserver, if different from my server, it feels like I got logged out at first. I ended up creating accounts on multiple places before realising I don't need to do that.
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@dunderhead
This. I've seen multiple new users creating accounts right and left because of this.
@AlSweigart
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@dunderhead I'm on mastodon.social, and when I click your profile it takes me to https://mastodon.social/@dunderhead@vivaldi.net
I think it might not have done this a couple years ago maybe? Is this not the default behavior on other servers?
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@AlSweigart ya I notice now that the behaviour I had found confusing is not there. Tbh I have no clue if I am doing something different now or rather that I think previously it used to open their page in their original server itself.
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@AlSweigart big tech teaches people to be tech illiterate and that having to think about how technology works is just a sign of bad technology.
conveniently, switching away from their technology does require like five minutes of thinking about technology, even if only to understand why you should do it.
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@AlSweigart @oliver
Let me state first that I’m really enjoying Mastodon, but I still think that “mastodon is easy, what are you on about!?” arguments are shit.
Why would you choose mastodon.social and not any of the other instances. No one tells you.
The “enter your home server” argument applies when you’re on the web. It’s 2025, people use apps on their phones, like it or not, this doesn’t work in apps.
And people don’t know shit about email, they’re still using their hotmail.com email
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@AlSweigart for someone used to centralized social media, the significance of the server selection is obscure. The analogy you are making here obviously makes sense to me, but fediverse software makes it deliberately weird. When you “sign up for gmail” you go to gmail by typing “gmail” into google, and then creating a new account. You’re making a gmail account, not a yahoo account. It never attempts to explain to you that email is DECENTRALIZED?!?! in the process
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@AlSweigart When you “sign up for mastodon”, you go to mastodon by typing “mastodon” into google and it asks you to select a server. But why are you selecting a server? Isn’t … mastodon … the server? You already typed “mastodon” into google, why do you need a double-server?
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@AlSweigart even pixelfed, which has somewhat stronger branding, goes out of its way to make it weird, with pixelfed.social and pixelfed.art, what is the significance of that distinction, even I don’t know.
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@AlSweigart Eventually I think that services will solidify around wanting their own branding, people will sign up for “zombo social” or whatever , maybe it’ll run mastodon and maybe not, but you will be interacting with zombo in the way you interact with gmail or yahoo and not in the strange arms-length way you interact with the “mastodon” brand which is spread across dozens of apparently-identical instances
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