Brutkey

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@julian@fietkau.social

1. There is nothing about mastodon.social that makes it more friendly for newbies. It is technically identical to signing up on any Mastodon server.

2. People learn how to do stuff. I have spent most of my free time for the past five years dealing with new people on here and they are not as brainless or incurious as you are making out.

3. Saying most people cannot remember the name of their server while also expecting most of them to move their account is contradictory.

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@julian@fietkau.social

When I posted warning about this in 2023 I had no end of people telling me "Oh you are worrying too much, mastodon.social is just for new people, they'll move on to other servers".

Back then mastodon.social was about 10-15% of active Fedi.

Now Mastodon.social is almost 30% of active Fedi.

Are we going to have the same conversation in another couple of years when mastodon.social is over 50% of the Fedi?

Why would anyone join Mastodon if it's mostly on one server? What is the point?

Julian Fietkau
@julian@fietkau.social

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services You're preaching to the choir here. I agree that this is a big problem, and would not object to the statement that Mastodon has been dragging their feet addressing it. That's beside the point of my argument.

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@julian@fietkau.social

It's not a big problem, it's an existential problem. There is no reason for the Fediverse to exist if most of it is on one server.

When I posted about this in 2023 on FediTips, mastodon.social's only response was to ban me from their trends.

When I posted about this in 2025 on my personal account, mastodon.social's only response was to ban that account from their trends as well.

This is not a sign of an organisation dragging its feet, it is burying its head or worse.

Julian Fietkau
@julian@fietkau.social

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services I feel like this exchange is unfolding less constructively than I had hoped. Did I come in too combative? I was hoping for more “what do we do about this together” than “your thoughts are worthless”.

I sure would love if I had any quant research to point to about the forgotten server issue, but I don't know if anyone did any.

I remain convinced that there are more fruitful paths to shrink m.s than to rotate the default server. It could be worth doing anyway, I'm not sure.