Signing up for Mastadon is depressingly difficult.
1. Go to joinmastodon.org
2. “Select a server”
3. OK… well this list of 200 servers is very long. The first four on the list look unpromising. The only one I can sign up for immediately is in German.
4. OK I’ll Google for the best Mastadon servers.
5. OK… it seems like most of these servers are run & moderated by amateurs & might disappear or become very slow at any moment.
6. Oh cool mastadon.social is the official one that most people use.
7. *spend a minute looking for signup link*
8. Hmm, they’re not accepting signups because they’re overwhelmed by demand. Weird how I had to find that out on Reddit.
8. Why would that even happen… they’re using scalable cloud compute, right? Right? Oh.
9. OK I'm just going to go for the one with the most aesthetically pleasing domain name that accepts instant signups and isn’t obviously run by a teenager in their basement.
10. Shortlist! mstdn.social, mat.to, mastadon.lol
11. Ah, the moderation policies of each sever are different. Wait… I thought I was joining Mastadon so I didn’t have to worry about bad moderation policies?
12. The policies for all three servers are incredibly vague. I’ve no idea if I’ll be allowed to post e.g. research by an evolutionary psychologist on gender differences.
13. What happens if the moderators decide that I have broken the policies? Unclear.
14. Fuck it, I’m just going to create a handle and then hope that @michael_nielsen is wrong that a lot of the cool kids are leaving Twitter.
15. Alright, I’m in! But I have no friends or followers. How to fix that? Well, no advice in the website, but luckily Michael Nielsen mentioned movetodon on Twitter.
16. Phew, only 79 people I follow on Twitter are on Mastadon. And only a couple are among the top 50% most interesting people I follow.
17. But wait, where is Michael Nielsen? Argh, movetodon didn't find everyone?
18. OK it’s time to write this rant.
19. I want to tag Michael, but I can’t unless I follow him. Google.
20. I press follow. But we’re on a different server so I have to... copy-paste his URL into the search box.
21. I can’t find the search box (I'm using an iPad). I press a lot of buttons (icons without text, no idea what they do).
22. Ah, the # button gets me to the “Explore” screen, and the search box. Follow!
I am fine with the hour I spent setting this up even though Twitter has recovered after the footgun: this account allowed me to again tell a hundred people that I think they are cool and worth hearing, and was told the same back.
(I was on here in 2017 because I viewed Twitter as the Big Hate Machine. Which it is, but it is also the world's finest scientific discussion venue.)
