Comment by aquova | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aquova | Hacker News Reader

I agree with some of the complaints mentioned here. The biggest hurdle to joining Mastodon is deciding which server you actually want to join, which has a big impact on your experience and isn't (and probably can't be) clear to a new user. I'm not sure what they can really do for a better onboarding experience. Perhaps one of those "pick which topic most interests you" wizards, which then will give a user a list of servers that have identified themselves as catering towards those types of users. Even then, I don't think this will really help things, and will probably just drive traffic to the biggest servers.

As for some of his other issues, I've been pleased to see that de-centralization hasn't happened largely, as there's been a large number of new servers popping up. I thought as well that Twitter exiles would likely congregate to a few large servers, but I've seen a pretty diverse listing of servers in my own feeds.

> Your handle on Mastodon is more complicated than on Twitter, because you need to name your server also.

I actually like this, it gives a sense of what types of topics the user is interested in, and what their profile is likely to focus on.

Not sure if someone has already coined a term for "a feeling when you don't know which Mastodon server to join", but I'm currently here. I am probably wrong, but joining some themed server makes me think that I should be writing and discussing only about that theme and nothing else. Or joining a server not from your region just feels wrong. Of course, I could just spin my own instance, but how to make it attractive to other users, because one user per server ain't very optimal.

They have now:

Masto-daunted.

And: masto-debated

Yes, I believe you're referring to Mastodoubt. I have it as well.

I've had an account on mastodon.social for ages, but there's nobody there talking about topics I care about.

I wound up creating two. One is on hachyderm.io, which is a medium-large instance with lots of k8s nerds. The other is self hosted.

I’m leaning towards just keeping the hachyderm account. Self hosting on digital ocean is a bit more than $50/mo. Instance is underutilized with basically just me on there. I think I’ll maintain a self-hosted fediverse home, but:

- I want to run it in my homelab to avoid cloud fees

- I’ll move from Mastodon to something lighter, like maybe Pleroma.

- I need to figure out how to bootstrap enough subscriptions to make an independent instance useful.

Really, I think we need more managed hosting options. The only one I know of is masto.host, and they’ve frozen signups.

One user per server is absolutelty fine. Don't fall for the hype telling you that you MUST be part of an existing instance: the Fediverse goes beyond your server.

Honestly at this point if you don't want to self host just pick any random instance. If/when you decide it's not the right fit, moving is a straightforward operation.

I had Mastodoubt, torn between not mastodon.social because it’s going to be too big and internetofshit’s server because that’s silly and small. I read that a searcher will only see you if there’s already a connection between their server and yours. I went with mastodon.world.

Next: find an appealing mobile app.

Fedilab, from F-Droid, ties into ntfy.sh [0], which is wonderful. It means I still recieve notifications from Fedilab and Element, without needing Google Play Services.

[0] https://ntfy.sh/

Honestly just pick a medium sized instance with a theme that interests you. You're not expected to only post about that theme at all. The local timeline will be useful because it'll have a lot of people interested in -- though not necessarily posting about -- the theme.

Huge instances are bad because it's like drinking from a firehose. There's too many people with too many diverse interests. Tiny instances are bad because it makes discovery hard. On a medium instance you simply browse the local timeline to find interesting people, and their boosts will introduce you to people from other servers. Which also explains why boosting is way more important on mastodon than retweeting is on the bird site.

Worst comes to worst you can migrate fairly easily to a different instance. Possibly a self-hosted one once you've built a bit of a network of people to follow, since by then the discovery problem is solved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com