Brutkey

Julian Fietkau
@julian@fietkau.social

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services And yes, I understand the cons.

IMHO the path forward is to improve the scope & simplicity of the account moving process, and then encouraging people on m.s to use it after some time. Not to abolish the default server.

I've been holding my tongue on this since @andypiper@macaw.social said Mastodon may reply to this with a blog post. But I hope we can acknowledge that a “rotating servers” suggestion is incomplete without an idea to (unobtrusively but reliably) teach people about their own server.

Evan Prodromou
@evan@cosocial.ca

@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @andypiper@macaw.social

One key might be to stop encouraging people to join barely-memorable servers with which they have no real-world affinity, and instead encourage people to launch their own servers for a group which they have a real connection to, like their employer, university, city, family, church, club, or similar.

I don't forget my work email address because I know where I work.

It's a lot harder but long-term retention will be better.

Evan Prodromou
@evan@cosocial.ca

@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @andypiper@macaw.social it may be easier if you can connect an instance to existing user databases, like Google Workspace, Slack, or Discord.

Julian Fietkau
@julian@fietkau.social

@evan@cosocial.ca @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @andypiper@macaw.social 100% for setting up small servers. The Fediverse is almost certainly best off with lots of fairly small and fairly socially cohesive servers.

There is, however, a mismatch between the suggestion to set up a server and the audience of people who have heard about Mastodon somewhere and are willing to download an app to give it a shot. We're veering close to the “the Fediverse is built for tech-savvy people” kind of elitism that I'm personally hoping we can grow out of.

Evan Prodromou
@evan@cosocial.ca

@julian@fietkau.social @FediTips@social.growyourown.services @andypiper@macaw.social I agree. I wonder if there's an onboarding flow that's like, "First, find out if you already have a server you can be a part of. Second, set up a server for a group you're in (either by hosting it yourself or getting one from a hosting provider). Lastly, try one of these..."

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@julian@fietkau.social @evan@cosocial.ca @andypiper@macaw.social

We need to give options for every kind of person who wants to join.

The option this thread is about is the kind of person who just wants to be told one server to sign up on, which is why the official apps and site currently say "sign up on mastodon.social".

All Masto gGmbH have to do is swap out mastodon.social and insert a server from a pool of reliable servers with equal or better track records.

That would then serve people who just want to be told one server.