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On Mastodon it’s pretty easy. Download the official app and go through the prompts. They should probably have a little note saying “just go with the defaults if you’re not sure” but this shouldn’t be a road block for any normal person. The fact that Mastodon has a standard migration method makes this a low-impact decision.

Lemmy is definitely harder. “Jerboa” doesn’t sound like an official app, and I don’t think you can even create an account in Jerboa. So the first step is finding an instance on the web with no guidance. That’s bad.

I still haven’t joined Matrix because it’s too hard. People say I shouldn’t use matrix.org for various reasons (like bans without warning) but I can’t find an alternative that seems sensible. All the guides I found are basically “you should really host your own, but if you’re too much of a noob, here are some Polish lolicon-themed servers you can join”. If it were possible to sign up without feeling like I’m doing something wrong, I would have many years ago.

I like it here, but I feel like the community needs to rebrand already. “Fediverse” just sounds like something that’ll never catch on

IMO things would work a lot more smoothly if the official website had a button that made an inversely weighted random selection from the top 20-50 “general purpose” instances and just sent you straight to their site or signup pages. To those who are unwilling to do extensive research, picking from the list they have is basically just choosing randomly anyway.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, defederation should be removed from the protocol. (And replaced with a default ban list that can be overriden by the user).

Each instance should basically just be a set of default settings that are used to access the same shared pool of content.

This removes the new user hurdle, because they can now join any instance and not be worried that they are making some important, permanent decision. If they find that they don’t like something about the instance, they can tweak their settings later.

Also, some of the other solutions to this issue carry significant risks. Pushing users towards a ‘default’ instance increases centralization. Apps that are preconfigured to use a specific instance are even worse (since people wont want to change instance if it means giving up a familiar app). Without some degree of vigilance decentralized services tend to centralize over time. This gives too much power over the entire fediverse to a handful of instance admins. If an instance with 60% of all users starts defederating all smaller instances, most users will just migrate to the larger instance.

This isn’t just some theoretical that I pulled out of my ass, its an easily abusable weakness of federated services. It has been abused in the past, and there is no reason to believe it wont be abused again.

Google used it to kill XMPP. Facebook will almost certainly use it to kill mastodon, once they siphon enough users and content to build a critical mass. Microsoft is so notorious for using this strategy that they has their own internal phrase for it: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I’ve been trying to decide what the best, smoothest, option is to make the fediverse “better”.

I think that making a line between a “Fediverse client” and “Fediverse Server” is the answer. A client that can easily browse multitudes of servers, letting you join lemmy subs and follow mastodon accounts might be the answer.

It’s about as complicated as choosing an email provider.

Yeah, you can go with gorillamail, or just go with gmail/outlook like everyone who doesn’t have a specific reason not to.

If you suggest to a new user anything other than choosing a big name instance, you’re part of the problem.

Regular users are going to learn by experience, not theory.