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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I was extremely bummed about their sign-up process.

Mastodon doesn't have a snowflakes chance in hell of becoming the de facto Twitter replacement if they don't change that process to a normal, near-instant sign up process that users have come to expect from every other service.

Make the "choosing server" nonsense come after account creation. Ffs.

EDIT: Geez, I get it, there are a lot of Mastodon fanboys that have zero interest in the success of Mastodon as a Twitter replacement. Which is fine, since it never will be with it's current onboarding process.

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I go to Samsung to buy a "cell phone," and I thought it would be a normal, near-instant sign-up process that I've come to expect. But instead they're making me "Choose a carrier" or some nonsense. What is a Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, or uscellular, and why would I want one? Can't I choose one of those after I get my "cell phone number"?

The pedantry is more than I can even believe. How is this genuine and not trolling?

I'll copy my other comment over:

I get your intent - that people don't understand what federation means. But you're completely ignoring that we all live with federated email servers. Federated cell phone carriers, too, for that matter.

This is honestly not that different.

I 100% get what your intent is, but you seem to 100% not get that this sentence was completely false:

> I can sign up for an email right now with a dozen different services and not one will make me complete a mysterious task like "choosing a server"

And the same way that you can't "create your email account first, and then pick a server later," is the same exact reason you can't "create your Mastodon account first, and then pick your server later."

It's literally the same reason.

And you still seem to be completely rejecting that concept. As though this is "just bad UX." It's fundamental to how both e-mail and Mastodon work.

They can't "fix it," the way you wish they could.

Sure, they might come up with something, but it would be inherently worse at some really important things it's trying to do. It wants to be federated. Just like email. And you seem to not have any understanding of that.

AND to be -mad- at the people who are trying to help you understand. As though we're purposefully wasting your time.

What I don't get is how everyone here seems to fail so spectacularly at understanding the needs of the average internet user. Don't ya'll work in tech? Users are not like you and I, and anything other than the standard sign up process is going to devastate the new user funnel. Which is fine if they don't want to become a household name! But it is absolutely not fine for those who desirer Mastodon to function as a legitimate Twitter replacement.

You're going to be frustrated trying to make this banana act like an orange. It just won't work. If by "Twitter replacement" you mean "a place for microblogging," then sure, almost any mastodon server should do. But if you mean "replicating the entire Twitter experience," that just isn't going to happen with mastodon, ever.

So instead of telling people "sign up for mastodon," if it make you feel better, tell them to "sign up for X" where X is one of the ten servers I mentioned in my mastodon explainer post[0], none of which are aimed specifically at tech-savvy people.

0. https://qoto.org/@pwinn/109315562185308969

I legitimately think you have no memory of what it used to be like to get on the Internet. "Average internet users" went through all of that. They learned the incantations, and they performed them on a daily basis, to get at something new.

There are people who do not know how to read any written language, at all, who use Smartphones on a daily basis. They learn how to navigate the icons, without any ability to read.

I think you have no memory of what it used to be like to put an app on your iPhone. Over-The-Air installs and updates didn't happen at first. People had to use iTunes on a Desktop, with a cord plugged in, to do stuff.

My 90 year old grandmother knew how to get into the App Store, install apps, and set up accounts.

I think you're vastly underestimating the number of steps users will go through to get at something good.

So, please, think about that for a moment.

But more importantly, if I send you an invite to the same Mastodon server I'm on, you literally skip the one and only one new step ("pick a server") that you've spent all of this time and energy complaining about.

Yup.

The thing you've been bemoaning this entire time isn't even an issue, if you get an invite link.

And frankly, that's probably how the majority of eventual Mastodon users will actually get there - by following a link a friend sends them.

Have a great weekend.

> But it is absolutely not fine for those who desirer Mastodon to function as a legitimate Twitter replacement.

You know who wants to see Mastodon as a Twitter replacement ? Not Mastodon users, and not fediverse inhabitants. It's all the Twitter serfs who want to find a new place where they will be taken care of. Except that place doesn't exist in the Fediverse.

For some reason people keep complaining about Mastodon not being easy enough, but it's the same people who believe they are expert enough to speak in the name of non-experts. It gets tiring to hear them.

OK so, let's say I completely understand every facet of signing up for and using Mastadon, but still think it's bullshit that few normal users will navigate. Is my opinion valid now?

Anyone can have any opinion they want to have.

But when they make it based on a flawed claim, like, "I can get an email account without first picking a server," don't you think it's better if they understand that their claim was false?

I think instead of "pedantry," you're looking for "facetiousness."

> Geez, I get it, there are a lot of Mastodon fanboys that have zero interest in the success of Mastodon as a Twitter replacement.

You're not getting downvoted because everyone who disagrees with you is a strawman (sorry, "fanboy"), you're getting downvoted because your premise is shaky and every time someone points out an existing ecosystem where federation is normal you claim it doesn't count.

The onboarding process is certainly inferior to that of twitter, but that's baked into the design of mastodon, and literally cannot change. It is definitely the single most challenging thing about mastodon, with the second probably being vocabulary choices made entirely by developers rather than anybody with UX experience.

On the other hand, as a result of this design, no number of oligarchs can run the mastodon network into the ground, so there are obviously trade-offs.

Many mastodon servers do, in fact, have a normal, near-instant sign-up process, although given the huge influx of users, many have switched to manually approve registrations in an effort to control load/costs and keep moderation manageable.

>Make the "choosing server" nonsense come after account creation. Ffs.

Where would you like these account credentials to be stored? Imagination land?

Users expect a company called "Mastodon" to store it, just like a company called "Twitter" stores their credentials for that site. I understand this is not how Mastodon works, so save your breath. The problem is almost everyone else on the planet does not know how Mastodon works and it will confuse and deter them.

At this point I believe more time has been spent arguing that people will be confused than people spent being confused. "Choose one, you can change it later if you want", done.

Yes, it's different. People will get over it.

You still need to explain why Mastodon should cater to people who want the Twitter experience and nothing else.

Email did alright with users choosing servers.

Email only took off among the non-nerd population when easy-to-use webmail sites like hotmail became available.

More importantly, email has become extremely consolidated. It has most of the disadvantages of being federated, and not very many of the advantages (Google sees most of the emails I send and receive even though I don't use them).

In reality, the vast majority of email users don’t pick a server, they pick a service/brand.

Gmail, Outlook, iCloud… nobody picked a server.

And certainly there was no concern that if I pick the “wrong” one, I may not be able to receive email from one of the other big providers.

Oh, there certainly was no concern I might end on a email server with an ideology I don’t agree with.

Not sure what you are talking about. I can sign up for an email right now with a dozen different services and not one will make me complete a mysterious task like "choosing a server".

The sign-up process doesn't actually begin until you pick an instance and go to it directly, just like with email. It's like complaining about a website that explains what email is and gives you a list of service providers to choose from.

The email service of your choice is the "server" you've chosen. If you go directly to a mastodon instance (the "server") the sign-up process won't require you to choose a server.

Right, and like I say below, there are very rational and coherent explanations for how Mastodon works, but those explanations mean nothing to the average user, many of whom will not complete sign up because it is so radically different than what they are accustomed to 99.9% of the time when signing up for a new website they heard about (like Twitter for example).

Each of those "dozen different services" is analogous with "a server".

You choose a service (server) and then sign up there. The sign up belongs to a server, not the server to the sign up. You can't ring a door bell before picking a door first. ;)

To the user, Mastodon is the service. But the very first step of sign-up, Mastodon says the user must "choose a server". They just did! It's called Mastodon.

Now, you may see it differently and want to offer an explanation. I'm sure your explanation would be coherent and rational. But your explanation means nothing to the average user. They click 'sign up' and expect to sign up and get to using this new website called Mastodon they heard about. And when they realize it's not that simple, many will abandon the process. It's a simple as that.

That's like saying "to the user, email is the service"

No, it is not, because "email" has been in the dictionary for 30 years and is universally understood.

The term "Mastodon" means, to most people, either "a website just like Twitter " or, more likely, absolutely nothing.

Is that difference, and the barrier it presents to new users, somehow unclear?

Not sure what you are talking about. I can sign up for mastodon right now with a hundred different servers.

Yes, people might be expecting a single corporate entity called "Mastodon, Inc," but that's why the (very poor) analogy to email is bandied about. You have to pick a service provider in order to use email (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc), and you have to pick a service provider in order to use mastodon, too.

Twitter, Inc, is the single provider of the twitter service, but that's falling apart because there's no way for the twitter service to route around the damage being done by Twitter, Inc's new owner.

So there's a dozen options. But in order to sign up, you have to pick a single server. Isn't that the same situation? There's no single "www.email.com" that you use to sign up for an email address.

Hi, you may like to try "E-MAIL!"

Chose a server:

1) GMail

2) Yahoo! Mail

3) Outlook

etc...

Are you trolling me? Do you genuinely not understand the difference from the perspective of the average user?

You wrote:

> I can sign up for an email right now with a dozen different services and not one will make me complete a mysterious task like "choosing a server"

You absolutely, 100% had to "choose a server" for your email.

To the average user, how do you decide between Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, GMail, Outlook?

This is 100% analogous, except Mastodon also makes it nearly trivial to change your server, with no effort taken by anyone who is already communicating with you. It's literally easier than an email server migration.

You are working under the assumption that people read the phrase "Mastodon" like the read the phrase "email". That is absolutely not true for almost all people. They think of Mastodon as similar to Twitter, and they expect a similar sign up process.

Also, "almost all people" have never heard of Mastodon, and will never hear of Mastodon.

I also think you're forgetting that most people had no idea what "The Information Super-Highway" was, and had no understanding of what an "ISP" was or why they needed to pay a monthly fee to access free content. And tie up their phone line.

People who were on AOL thought they were on the Internet. And Compuserve. Delphi. Prodigy. GEnie.

This is not a new problem.

But it's not like you could just make an Internet account, and just pay them. You HAD to use a federated ISP. And some of those ISPs tried to be Walled Gardens, with a weird side-door that ALSO let you get to "The Internet," but that was mostly porn and weirdos.

Once upon a time, you had to go to a college that had been invited to The Facebook, in order for you to get an account.

The beginnings of new things are always complicated.

We all learned the difference between .com, .edu., .co, .uk eventually...

Those dozen different services are servers, that you chose from.

Right, and that is atrocious UX that will put a hard cap on how popular Mastodon can become.

Agreed! I, for one, am enjoying the small-town vibe of my chosen mastodon service provider, and I'm delighted that it can never become "to big to fail."

You keep saying "users" when you should probably just say "I," but maybe you understand it a bit better at this point. The onboarding UX is atrocious, mostly because people want it to be something it's not, and partly because developers often don't do UX well. But the UX isn't going to change, so focusing on helping people understand how and why it works the way it does seems more important than cursing the design.

You're welcome to stick with Twitter, Inc, if you want a single oligarch to control your chosen microblogging service and everything about it. Or you can venture out and pick a server that supports the mastodon service instead.

And who knows? Maybe someday a big company will grow a giant mastodon server so that something like 30% of all mastodon traffic happens there, just as with Gmail and email traffic[0] today.

0. https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/

too bad Mastodon requires an email to signup though

There was a posting on HN yesterday about how original maintainers were kind of flooded & overwhelmed by Twitter refugees who didn't understand that Mastodon wasn't really meant to be the go-to Twitter clone.

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