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It's like email. When you create an email account, you also choose a provider like Gmail or Yahoo. With Mastodon, you choose a server. You can follow and be followed by anyone regardless of which server they're on. Just like you can email a Yahoo user from your Gmail email account.

There are two main criteria why you should prefer one Mastodon server over another:

1) You are looking for a niche community, and Mastodon offers a "local" feed of all the users on a server, so this is helpful to discover new accounts to follow in your niche interest

2) And / or you care about privacy, trust etc. and want an organization that hosts the server that you can trust.

But it's easy to switch from one server to another without losing followers or followees, so compared to email, much simpler. So, you can't really choose a "wrong server".

Now, I can understand why this can be confusing for people who are only used to centralized social media platforms. In the end, it's just something new for a lot of folks, but it's not a complicated or difficult concept to grasp.

>It's like email.

Not really. Email providers don't associate with any interest/affiliation. Almost all Mastodon instances do.

Most instances may have an emphasis on an interest or affiliation but that doesn't mean most people are on such instances or pay it much mind. Most instances are quite small. The largest instances tend to be generic.

And people do mildly judge others based on email providers.

Only if you count generic providers like Gmail or Yahoo.

There are millions using @faculty.university.ac.uk style addresses, or employer addresses, club addresses, etc

If I choose to I could be using my local car club email address.

It's all evident in the domain name.

I see your point and identify with the frustration, but at the end of the day that's kind of the entire point of Mastodon and the main distinction that makes it stand out from Twitter. It's decentralized. There is no one server, and there can never be a complete and up to date list of all servers. Discord isn't a perfect comparison because even though they separate communities and sign-ups, it's still all hosted and operated by Discord.

The most frictionless way to join Mastodon is when a friend or group of friends invites you personally to theirs, or if you discover a community online that really jives with you and you want to join.

I think the argument still stans: mastodon as a relevant technology is one that attracts Twitter users which it does by emulating Twitter.

Users are joining Mastodon now despite the federation ideas underpinning it, not because of it.

Some users are doing that for those reasons, sure. But a decentralized app doesn't need to measure it's relevance or success by user base unless it's part of the design goal. Twitter is a business, so of course its success is tied to popularity and user engagement. Decentralized apps' value proposition is that it gives you control over your data, no opaque feed algorithm, no corporate censorship, etc.

Why does Mastadon need to attract Twitter users? All it needs to do is exist for the types of people who value the difference.

Mastodon doesn’t need to do anything. But a mastodon that deserves the attention it gets in the Twitter turmoil is one that can - and actively tries - to be that Twitter alternative.

If it doesn’t do that in a hurry now, then it’s still a good project it’s just not one that will be worth any broad attention because it’s so small and niche.

It's more like email or irc. You downloaded a client, but you need a server to make your account on. Servers can come and go. If twitter or discord brings down their service, discord servers stop existing and the client stops working. If a mastodon instance stops existing, you can use the same client and connect to a different one. It's my understanding that currently your account and data will be lost in that case.

It's not a Twitter replacement, it's a Twitter alternative. It's actually not necessary or desirable that every platform has to "win" and replace all other similar platforms, this is the thinking that gave us giant privacy-destroying monoliths in the first place. People that are satisfied with their Twitter experience should definitely stay there, Mastodon really won't work for them.

> the current list of Mastodon servers feels very limited

Try this site: https://instances.social/

It helped me find some instances that matched my interests. Just keep in mind, most instances will die out if they're not sufficiently funded either by donations or the pocket money of the owners. This is why I treat all my Mastodon accounts as potentially ephemeral accounts that will die out given enough time. The more popular instances seem to be in it for the long haul, so go with those (as much as you enjoy the smaller instances).

Yes, one of the biggest problems of Mastodon is that taking a centralized social media and making it decentralized doesn't automatically work.

Twitter was specifically structured to be centralized, you can't just have people create a trillion twitters and federate them together.

Sadly Mastodon doesn't want to be twitter and it's not actually something I'm personally interested in in it's current form. I'm still hoping t2.social turns into something big. Despite people wanting a twitter alternative, Mastodon is not it and will remain a niche toy for a subset of the tech crowd.

If you, or other readers are still confused and want a geberal run-down if what's going on...

This is what i posted on another thread:

I found DeviantOllam's introduction on Mastodon/Fediverse[1] to be quite interesting and useful.

He covers contact discovery/migration from Twitter, and also mentions a fediverse contact search, although I forget what it was.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-jYZLs2j1Q

>Needless to say, if Mastodon is looking to replace Twitter (maybe they're not?), they need a better, more frictionless way to onboard new users.

Pretty sure Mastodon will never replace Twitter. It's just too different, can't attract users who want to know what's happening outside their social circle, and probably can't attract any brands either.