I think this is the way we should communicate, when presented with the question on how to get on Mastodon:
Copy paste from the link:
How do I use Mastodon?
Download the Mastodon app from the Apple app store or Play store.
Create an account (just like Twitter or any other social media)
Follow people, and get posting.
Why do tech journalists say it’s too confusing to catch on?
I have no fucking idea.
EDIT for clarification, don’t take this too seriously:
This “guide” is a bit of a joke made out of frustration. If you actually want to know more, including why I feel it has potential to free us from the dystopian hellscape that is modern social media, here is the “real” guide to Mastodon. It still uses simple language (and has lots of pictures!):
Please share widely
It’s not that simple and I don’t get why people pretend it is. The “instance” concept confuses everyone. The email comparison everyone uses is inadequate.
Edit: The issue is incredibly fundamental. You don’t just download the app, create an account, and go.
You download an app that lets you participate, then you need to decide your instance which is like deciding which specific browser you want tonuse that then lets you see individual communities. But also your instance might have a community with the exact same name as a community in another instance, so make sure you know the difference despite both of them being “news“ or “politics.“ Also all the different instances have different nuances to their federation and voting that you may or may not see, unless you are familiar with how each instance operates.
When using the official Mastodon app (as suggested in the “guide”) “instances” are not a factor at all (unless the user specifically goes out of their way). A new user could have never even heard of the term “instance” and the above steps would work fine.
Actually with Mastodon this is literally how it works.
EDIT: I should say this is how it works now, it didn’t always used to be this way. The official Mastodon app used to ask the user to pick an instance, but for a number of years now it defaults every new account to mastodon.social unless they opt out. There was a big brouhah about centralization but the Mastodon devs felt it made for easier on boarding.
exactly. and trying to downplay potential users as stupid before they’ve even used a social media platform isn’t going to exactly make them want to stay. or even try in the first place.
just makes mastodon look like a place where nerds reign free and normal folks won’t be able to participate effectively.
if you want to make mastodon a destination and not a niche corner to be avoided, this is not the way.
i agree with you completely.
edit: I should clarify, the “guide” above is the thing insulting users. the guide is inaccurate.
Because they are
When I was frickin‘ 14, I managed to grasp the Idea of an Instance and managed to find an instance I liked and register there
And if some 25 y o goddamn Tech Journalists is dumber than a dude in 7th grade with a phone, maybe you should start thinking about if we are really all Albert Einsteins prodogy or if the bar is just set way too low for considering whats „Normal Intelligence“
I gotta say… that’s what the fediverse is (for now), there have been a couple of posts on Lemmy about things being too niche or too nerd oriented (more recently people were talking about the lack of sports), same thing happens on mastodon, if you aren’t from a country with enough users, there’s basically nothing and it gets worse if you are a normie since most of the current users will be nerds who only talk about linux, their job, inside jokes and memes, some games, keyboard-activism and FOSS
mexican ranting
… and propaganda-users who benefits from the lack of real users from a country to spread their shit and mass-downvote the rest (like lemmy and 🇲🇽)
So whenever a normie searches for something (yes, even the so suggested hashtags) they won’t find anything and whatever they post will get buried and ignored, quickly driving them away from it (at least that’s what I’ve observed when it comes to the mexican experience).
And that’s without talking about the terrible browsing experience that mastodon provides (ex: wish I could explore another instance’s local posts while being logged in from mine).
deleted by creator
wha? you didn’t. i just was agreeing with you the whole time.
was just adding my own frustrations to your own, as yours are true.
I very quickly deleted it but I guess you saw lol I totally misread your intention at first glance
its ok I edited my comment a bit, I can see how it seemed like I was arguing with ya. apologies bb <3
No apology necessary. I jumped the gun, should’ve double checked before posting lol
Thanks for the honesty!
It used to blow my mind that the “omg how can the vote for Trump are they blind fanatics!n!?” would be the same “Omg how do you not see how easy this is!!?” people, but now I realize it’s just people being loyal to their team, whatever it is.
Just use mastodon.social
If you feel like you want to join a more specific community then you can
We both know that is not how this should work. If everybody joins the same instance, we’re basically right back where we started. We want people to be distributed among other instances.
If one instance has 97% of the userbase then they basically get to dictate the whole thing. What if mastodon.social ended up being hexbear or lemmygrad? Or some MAGA right wing instance?
Twitter was a shit hole but nobody thought it was going to be where it is now. Your average “liberal” CEO typically has a floor of how shitty they are willing to be because even they have common sense. Musk has no such floor
But this doesn’t happen. Mastodon.social is far from 90%, and the former CEO made the choice of letting control go to an entity that is no-profit, I think it’s the right choice.
I think it’s the “basically” part in basically right back where we started that makes the difference. Even if 100% of Fediverse users were on a single instance, once that instance starts pulling Musk moves, the users can move somewhere else.
Only if that instance defederates from everyone else do we get the Twitter situation again. Or, since that’s actually what happened, Truth Social, which I think is just a slightly modified Mastodon instance with federation disabled/deactivated.