> How do I find a server that ‘matches’ me but doesn’t make me seem like an over-enthusiastic single-issue or single-hobby dedicant
Just don't care about it that much, really. My main account has been at https://functional.cafe for years now, but I'm posting about pretty much everything there: programming, music, art, politics, current events, shitposting.
> and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic?
Ask someone from your friend circle who's already on Fediverse, but also see the above point.
Then signing up for a general instance (mastodon.social, mas.to, etc.) makes sense. It's like (as in exactly like) signing up for gmail vs. having a custom domain.
It's an exceptional growth period for the servers. Twitter used to have failwhales, and gmail used to require invitations. It will stabilize. (And, if you happen to be interested and have the skillset, you could deploy your own instance. I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a VPS provider that already has pushbutton mastodon deployment in place.)
So, it's exactly like signing up for gmail if gmail was down and you had to either wait for them to fix it at some undetermined point in the future, find another email provider or set up your own email server instead.
Much of the history of the Internet has been exactly like that. New services (or new-you-you) constantly going down with an influx of new users, services (like email) that allow anyone to set up their own machine ... this mild and temporary inconvenience is familiar. A week from now it will be fine.
But I think that's the important point. Right now, there's nothing wrong with Mastodon. Mastodon is working fine. A couple of servers that people commonly encounter first are having growth issues. But those servers aren't Mastodon any more than Gmail is email.
Well, I would say it's a problem that a lot of people are trying to join the fediverse and it's currently quite difficult and confusing to do so.
I would further say there's a marketing problem that Mastodon advocates keep saying this situation is normal, expected and it's working fine, which is obviously quite offputting.
It is a community project, there isn't a centralized marketing message or anything like that. If the community is growing as fast as their servers can handle it, that seems like a fine situation?
> A couple of servers that people commonly encounter first are having growth issues. But those servers aren't Mastodon any more than Gmail is email.
And that's what a lot of tech people don't get, to normies actually Gmail does equal Email and such. You're not going to get the bulk of everyday people on these platforms until you think in their shoes and provide features (and don't have downtime on your main servers) that fit their experiences.
> to normies actually Gmail does equal Email and such
I'd love to hear of some evidence for that. I've never encountered anyone assuming that the bit after the @ has to be gmail.com, or being unclear and uncertain if they can communicate between their work Outlook account and their home Gmail account. This feels very much like someone's taken the idea "to most people, the internet just is the web" and run wild with it.
> So, it's exactly like signing up for gmail if gmail was down and you had to either wait for them to fix it at some undetermined point in the future, find another email provider or set up your own email server instead.
GMail was invite only for a very long time at the beginning fwiw
It's also exactly like when people on the right started leaving twitter and all these alternatives popped up.
And in the end, people (who left willingly) ended up back on twitter anyway just because people kept sharing things from there. But also because the alternative services could not keep up with the momentum, resulting in degraded service. So everyone seemed to collectively go "meh" and returned to twitter.
I predict everyone will be back on twitter once all this blows over, and especially if alternatives can't keep up. Uptime and reliability seem to be more important than features, freedom, or just about anything else.
I remember the failwhale days, but this is different.
Twitter is a VC-backed company that had the resources to build out their infrastructure.
Mastodon is a bunch of volunteer-run servers and it looks pretty obvious they aren’t going to be able to handle the infusion of new users… unless there’s an infusion of resources.
I’m on mastodon.social and it has slowed to a crawl, compared to what I was used to 6 months ago.
Also the UI/UX isn’t great. Say what you will about Twitter, but they’ve built a pretty slick web application and native apps. People used to the simplicity of Twitter are going to struggle, if the complaints on my Twitter timeline are any indication.
There is an infusion of resources. One option that seems common is that users aren't required to contribute towards hosting fees, but donations are easily accepted -- that is how the sustainable ones work from what I have seen. It seems to work pretty well?
It's very transparent, which I like -- "we got a bunch of new users, the server bill is going up $2k a month overall so if you can pitch in please do" is extremely clear and seems to work effectively. An individual server seems like it should be able to charge for hosting your account like with email if it needed to be operated like a business.
So far it doesn't really seem like it needs to operate like a business, it just takes longer for collectives of humans to respond to changes in needs than a giant enormously wealthy company that knew what would happen in advance. I'm sure it will equilibrate, it has the last two times this happened.
How do I ensure I’m not picking one that won’t, now or in a few days or weeks or months end up being associated with views I find problematic?
What I’m worried about is my reputation - what the server I’m associated with tells others about me (the argument that those others are wrong in making assumptions doesn’t comfort me).
These hazards are probably very unlikely, of course, but the alternative of ‘how about I just avoid all these hazards’ is the one my lizard brain is picking.
The same thing was true of Twitter which is why so many are leaving.
Unlike Twitter, you can leave a Mastodon server for another one and take your follows and followers with you.
If you want assurances that a server owner will never act against your will, you need to take the same action you would to mitigate a landlord acting against your will. Buy your own place.
In a decentralized universe you have to start thinking of servers as real estate. Nothing is free but if your goal is to get to share with you what they paid for for free, you take what you can get. Or buy your own server for only yourself, or share with others.
This is what the world looks like without tracking and advertizing trying to make everything seem free.
Dude who cares. Unless youre like a popular figure or something whose going to go through the list of users and be like oh this particular user happens to be signed up to this site along with tens of thousands of other users but Im gonna find this person and trash talk them
what's more likely to happen is that the instance will go offline for some reason and never come back. We had this happen with an adult material related instance. It became brigaded by another crew who flooded it with very illegal material. The users were helpless to do anything but report it, and soon the whole instance was gone.
It was a very unfortunate and frightening view into what can quickly happen with the fediverse.
Did you see the list? Finding a "generic" instance that's open to signups honestly isn't easy, right now. I ended up on fosstodon.org, which is not as generic as I'd like but seemed like the least terrible option I could find in half an hour.
FWIW, most of us don't pay that much attention to it unless it's an instance with a very good or bad reputation, and even then, new users aren't really presumed to know what they signed up for.
Just don't care about it that much, really. My main account has been at https://functional.cafe for years now, but I'm posting about pretty much everything there: programming, music, art, politics, current events, shitposting.
> and also isn’t run by someone whose (perhaps currently unespoused) views I’d find problematic?
Ask someone from your friend circle who's already on Fediverse, but also see the above point.