Seeing this some non technical people will try out this Mastodon thing. If they can get past the initial hassle of choosing an instance to sign on they will try to 'Follow' the BBC account on the social.bbc instance, only to be greeted by this user friendly process:

1. Finding the string you have to search for of the BBC account

2. Opening up their home instance

3. Going to the terrible search menu

4. Pasting the identifying string of the instance

5. Hoping the search doesn't bug out

6. Clicking follow and hoping the request doesn't bug out and remain in pending for months (yes, this happens)

Instead of the process on 'traditional' social media which is:

1. Click the big shiny button

Why they haven't yet fixed this glaring UX flaw using something like URL protocols is astonishing. I guess this is why technical people shouldn't design products. Nobody cares how it is built if it offers only friction to the end user.