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1. Embed this notice
   RetroWizzard (retrowizzard@oldbytes.space)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:45:20 JST RetroWizzard

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs
   The huge directory of instances isn't helpful either. It's just overwhelming.
   A "setup wizard frontpage" which chooses the instance for you would be great.
   Answer 3-5 questions (or choose 3 topics you're interested in) then get presented with a choice of 2-3 instances to click on and boom sign up.

   • Embed this notice
     Zperretta (zperretta@techhub.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:46:01 JST Zperretta

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs at most if you were to be an absolutist about everyone being on different instances you could have a random lottery where they are given a random instance chosen from a short list of the most reputable instances, (and then hide that from the user to avoid confusion) although the simpler option of just defaulting to a single instance is probably easier and better for getting people on board

   • Embed this notice
     Steven Hilton (mshiltonj@universeodon.com)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:49:44 JST Steven Hilton

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs People choose grocery stores. People choose streaming services. People understand choices.

     I don't think the problem is choice or choosing. It's the fact that it's different from corporate social media that is controlled and managed by a single entity.

     Like email -- and people don't have a problem with email.

     Not having to choose an instance means only having one instance, and I don't want corporate social media anymore.

   • Embed this notice
     Pēteris Krišjānis (peteriskrisjanis@toot.lv)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:53:52 JST Pēteris Krišjānis

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs you can make that choice easily accessible. Which was not done in this case. Much easier railroading was chosen, which irks lot of people considering we now see fallout of one place controlling conversation.
     Yes, it is annoying to have this conversation, but I think it is justified, even if design was well meant.

   • Embed this notice
     Zperretta (zperretta@techhub.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 00:55:57 JST Zperretta

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I also feel like it would be easier (for getting people on board) if Google and Apple were to make their own instances in the same way that they have with Email,
     As much as I disagree with it, I've noticed that alot of people will be fairly afraid of new tech unless it has a massive corporate backing.

   • Embed this notice
     Sean Riley (dogriley@tausibs.org)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:00:02 JST Sean Riley

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     @thomasfuchs I believe this to be a red herring. It is more than just choosing an instance this focus helps trivialize. That 'you have to work at it' may be a better way to describe the problem.
     
     People are addicted to the algorithm(s). It does most of the work for them and delights them with material they like to see with virtually no effort.
     
     Here you have to:
     1) Choose an instance
     2) Learn a new interface
     3) Learn the 3 ways to post (DM, Followers, Public) and remember to use the right one
     4) Find people to follow with little search capability
     5) Manually cut and paste addresses from profiles on another server to your server to follow
     6) Learn and adapt to new social norms (CW/ALT text)
     7) A bunch of other things I have forgotten...
     
     So the addiction is so much easier than something that seems like 'work'.
     
     Some portion of this is just tech stuff to solve for, another portion is retraining people to be considerate of themselves and others.
   • Embed this notice
     Eric Eggert (yatil@yatil.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:06:12 JST Eric Eggert

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs Lovely how people also use ableist language for people who don’t want to or can’t engage with the complexity of this system.

   • Embed this notice
     Diane 🕵 (alienghic@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:09:27 JST Diane 🕵

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs

     I sometimes wonder how effective a quiz "what mastodon instance are you?" might be at helping pick an instance.

     I think what's most important is ending up somewhere where you'll agree with the moderation, and thats kind of a combination of politics and community.

     There's also some instances offer a stronger local sense of community.

     I feel like there's the possibility of making a good recommendation using the silly internet quiz format

   • Embed this notice
     DualWieldingDad :terminal: (dualwieldingdad@techhub.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:13:13 JST DualWieldingDad :terminal:

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard I like this idea. Get them in an account with the least friction possible. Then they can choose a server later when they learn how things operate.

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan T (jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:16:04 JST Jonathan T

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard I don't disagree with you but how would that work in practice? A 'generic' instance in this case would get very large, very quickly. And that would mean that people's experience of Mastodon would also have the potential to get very shitty, very quickly due to the prospect of a lack of or poor moderation. Thus the experience could be worse than they would have had from randomly being assigned an instance or choosing their own.

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan T (jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:20:53 JST Jonathan T

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard But it doesn't though. They'll go back to where they were before and tell everyone that this place is terrible - and they'd be justified in doing so - and you'd get more people not even bothering to try joining.

     I don't think the instance problem is one that is trivial to solve.

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan T (jonnyt@mastodon.me.uk)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 01:28:27 JST Jonathan T

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard Again, I'm not disagreeing that being assigned an instance rather than having to pick one is the wrong approach but just shoving everyone into the same 'generic' instance may also not be the best way to do it. Using mastodon.social as an example - they did struggle back in November with moderation when the first and second large influxes from Twitter occurred and it almost got them defederated by a lot of other instances at the time.

   • Embed this notice
     James Baker 🍁 (grumpusnation@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 02:42:41 JST James Baker 🍁

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs "Like a broken record" is just one of those metaphors that don't make sense to teh kidz anymore… Sad!

   • Embed this notice
     Jonathan Hendry (jonhendry@iosdev.space)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 02:55:39 JST Jonathan Hendry

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️
     • Jonathan T

     @JonnyT @thomasfuchs @RetroWizzard

     Spin up a bunch of instances based on geography, and put people in the instance that corresponds to the region they're located in.

   • Embed this notice
     Donald “chronos” King (chronos@masto.chronos-tachyon.net)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 02:59:13 JST Donald “chronos” King

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I'm less concerned about having a default instance -- yes, it's true, I'm concerned about that, but it's a pretty minor concern. I'm more concerned that that instance is m.s, which has had massive moderation problems because Eugen has historically behaved in a way consistent with the idea that only coding counts as "real work", not moderation or community management. While he's far from a full-on "freeze peach"-er, he seems to have a lot of unexamined Reddit/HN-adjacent libertarian ideas that come through in his behavior, and he's burned a lot of bridges with people who were volunteers or employees because they didn't write code.

   • Embed this notice
     cayleyh (cayleyh@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 18:06:31 JST cayleyh

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs this is 100% the largest problem for adoption. Email has the same issue, except: email is now required for basic everyday things, and gmail/outlook.com exist, so they ARE the system defaults for email.

   • Embed this notice
     Andy (ely_peddler@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 18:18:05 JST Andy

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs "choose an instance" is definitely a hurdle to wider uptake & that's a bad thing.
     Do you have opinions on solutions? Better directory / lookup / search that hid the decision behind questions about interests in might work but feels a bit clunky.
     Wider uptake might come if orgs set up their own instances & people joined the one for their work / sports team / newspaper / political party etc. So that interests led to an instance rather than finding an instance that matches interests.