this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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If they want people to use Mastodon, then make it user-friendly and easy for the general public. I downloaded it, tried it, and was lost/confused on the whole server/instance thing and finding communities etc. Whereas Threads is pretty straight forward, it's just a Twitter clone. User experience is more important than privacy to the general public and developers need to realise you can't compromise user experience/ease of use/accessibility.
I've never tried it. Is it really more confusing than Lemmy?
Nah, Mastodon is a lot slicker and more robust in my experience so far (been on there less than a year, but still).
I think the "confusion" is just from having to pick an instance although iirc they made mastodon.social the "default" one for people who didn't want to choose, so maybe that hurdle is gone now, not sure.
I thought mastodon.social was closed to new accounts for aaages now
Still looks like it's the default when you sign up from the mobile app, but both my accounts are on tiny servers so I'm far from an expert here 😅
Might've just been around when I started. I think they were struggling with everyone signing up there at the time. I went to mas.to instead
They are about comparable, once you understand the instances it's pretty straightforward. But I'm ngl, I was confused at first. I'd made my first Mastodon account in 2018! And didn't use it till recently because I didn't understand it for the longest.
I don't use it either, but I guess someone from your instance has to follow someone on another instance before you see content from there…? Maybe someone else can chime in. I just get this stuff third-hand from reading things other people say and listening to nerdy podcasts.
If you use the official Mastodon app, or an instance that has disabled it - you are unable to see the Federated timeline, which is why you would only see the Local timeline - IE things the people on your instance are sharing or following.
The federated timeline is a chronological stream of everything. A bit fast, but kinda magical in a way because I discover so many people just by spending 10-15 minutes combing through it during my visit each day.
I've also started following the same celebs/orgs that I used to follow on other social media.
And most importantly, I control what I see - not some algorithm funneling me into a partisan view of the world, which is a massive part of the issue with Twitter and Facebook and their relationship to current political situations.
Thanks for clarifying!