If you have _ever_ signed up for an email account, but are now complaining about choosing a mastodon instance… looks like you can figure this out, just pick one my dude. 😎
@adamghill I mostly agree with this, but I have seen a bit of a rug pull on a few that are open-source related.
I am waiting for someone to solve the multiple-domain hosting then I will vote with my feet with a more future-proof name.
@adamghill For many, that means waiting to see which one becomes the Hotmail/Gmail of Mastodon and signing up there
@adamghill Excellent take.
@adamghill or, if you set up your own email server and never "signed up",
Then... Same! Lol check out #shuttlecraft
@adamghill
30 day penalty if you chose badly. Let's not diminish the reasonable fear of choosing badly initially.
@adamghill It just seems complicated because it’s different. As you said, pick one and sign on up! :-)
@adamghill Sorry, but this isn’t comparable at all. First, in e-mails there isn’t a sort of “moderation” on the topics you talk about or who you want to talk with —or can talk to you.
Second, Mastodon instances aren’t as well known or established as the biggest free and paid e-mail providers. This means that one instance can disappear from night to day or have severe performance issues —which again, doesn’t happen with e-mail.
Third, there are significant differences even in the type of usage you can do in a Mastodon instance, like character size of toots and emoticons.
And the list goes on… So it’s a disservice and an utmost display of ignorance what you wrote here.
@adamghill Nobody ever advised people not to choose Google Mail, because that would violate the spirit of decentralization, though.
I don’t have a soundcloud, but donating some money to the instance if you can afford it is always appreciated.
Shout out to indieweb.social: https://www.patreon.com/indiewebsocial
@adamghill Thank you! ✊
@crls Do you think https://mastodon.social/ is going to suddenly disappear? I’m pretty sure it won’t, so it seems like a fine default.
If you don’t think there is a wide discrepency between email services, my Outlook and Gmail accounts would like to have a word.
Most won't care about instance differences -- they just want to chat with friends and see what’s going on. Pick an instance, follow people, and don’t overthink it.
Anyway it’s better than email because you can switch it later. 🤷
@adamghill If you didn’t know or don’t remember, but Mastodon.social was closed for signup for several days during the first “Mastodon rush”. I don’t ever remember Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo ever closing signing ups.
Also you ignored again the fact that this instance has a looooong list of “moderated servers” which you can’t communicate with. For example, the freeatlantis one has an interesting account there which makes graphs about the number of accounts signing up to #Mastodon instances, with growth over time that, if you’re member of mastodon.social you couldn’t follow.
@crls >Mastodon.social was closed for signup
True. Looks like it is still closed. My bad.
>I don’t ever remember Gmail... ever closing signing ups
Gmail absolutely limited the number of signups for a while.
In any event, it seems like you might be in the set of people who really care about your server instance. More power to you. My point is that for *most* people it just doesn’t matter.
Picking any option is better than sticking around Twitter.
@adamghill > “Gmail absolutly limited the number of signups for a while”
Well, that was true in the release phase of it. If you don’t remember, Gmail was “invite-only” in the beginning, and the invites were sold for quite a chunk of money in eBay back in the days. I remember to have friends crazy asking me invites to Gmail and I made a list on Excel for the invites to send to as soon as they were released to me.
Still, after the “release” phase, there was never a sign up restriction.
> “It seems like you might be in the set of people who really care about your server instance”
I actually didn’t care much, until I got a post “moderated” when I replied to an user in other instance preaching hate speech —obviously condemning it, but in a sarcastic way. So I very quickly learned the importance of taking some time to really check about instances. Read my pinned toot in my profile about it.
@adamghill @webology genuinely curious what about "multiple-domain hosting" of fediverse has not been solved by at least one of the available software options. All instances support custom identities using the `.well-known/*` redirects. Some even support multiple domains in a more explicit manner, like Takahē.
@mike @adamghill sure, last I read, none of the servers support running more than one domain on the same instance.
I'd sign up for https://masto.host/pricing/ but I need 3 or 4 domains to future-proof things.
.well-known redirects are fine but it doesn't solve the issues I am running into. Naming, I want to move several accounts but not multiple times since @takahe and others are really close to solving it.
@adamghill @webology @takahe If there are specific rough spots you're waiting on that haven't been identified yet, please speak up.
@mike @takahe sure thing. re: specific rough spots - I don't know that I have any. I have been loosely following since Andrew posted the first demo and I was patiently waiting for the announcement that it was stable vs. alpha/beta state.
If you are saying it's ready to use then I'll make plans to try it out?