So this is anecdote and not data, but I'm interacting a lot more with Quakers on Mastodon than I did on Twitter.

Honestly, I don't think services need to be dumbed down so much, people can figure it out. And having a little friction might be a good thing, unless the goal is just to rack up engagement numbers as high as they can be optimized - and arguably that incentive is one of the things that was really wrong with Twitter.

There's a thriving community for several communities beyond just tech - people who want to rekindle some of the community they found on twitter.

I'm on med-mastodon (healthcare workers and researchers) and the server has several thousand people.

This is exactly how it was on twitter during the early years.

It's not for regular folks for the time being. Because account creation from joinmastodon.org is such a mess. Try it out. Click create account, and then what? It's hopeless for regular folks.

If main server mastodon.social could handle masses it would be much simpler experience.

Tech people are patient and adopt it first. Mastodon needs a new way to join, a main server that can handle huge masses.