I don't get the"Mastodon is hard" gripe. I just followed, boosted, and alt-texted for a few weeks, and now I feel like this is my safe spot.
@Elleaster @CoachMark I think it’s also the “Where do I sign up?” issue. Most people don’t know how to pick an instance.
@DarkAthena @CoachMark That's what directions are for.
@Elleaster Have you met people? 
@Pineywoozle I'm in adult education.
@Elleaster LoL mine was a joke… you just made it a tragedy. 
@Elleaster @CoachMark Well yeah, you and I know that but have you seen most of ‘em? The ones I’ve talked to can’t even seem to grasp how fedi works.
@DarkAthena @Elleaster @CoachMark
Partly that, and partly ...some people want their feed filled instantly, and want lots of responses within 10-30 minutes when they post.
"Fill the feed" could be arranged by pointing them to the Explore feed on a large instance.
But I have seen people sign up, toot a few times the first evening, then give up because "the place is dead".
Maybe they got responses the next day, but they were used to a MUCH faster pace.
Those people are on Bluesky now.
@Kathmandu @DarkAthena @Elleaster @CoachMark Idle thought here, but one way to remedy that first-post experience would be to require an #introduction tag on the initial post from an account, issuing a guidance note if it's missing.
Sounds like the very first message they're likely to get would come across as a "You did it Wrong" scolding.
Riffing off your idea, positive initial experiences usually work better. An auto-response saying "Welcome aboard! Here are some popular accounts/feeds" might be more to the point. But my impression was they wanted live human interaction - getting people to bring their friends in would be best. Existing social ties FTW.
@Kathmandu @DarkAthena @Elleaster @CoachMark How dare you disagree with me!
(But seriously, of course that makes sense. Just tossing out ideas. 
)
I don't even remember how I signed up. I think I tried for mstdn.social because I saw other accounts from dead bird there. I was pushed to coffee because the mstdn instance was getting bombarded with new accounts during the first migration in 2022. I've been here ever since and not going anywhere. :)
@MagentaRocks @Elleaster Yeh I signed up for mas.to to begin with as it was the only one I could find that was accepting new sign ups (I came across in the second big wave of 2022)
Shortly afterwards mas.to became super unreliable due to server load and I migrated to mastodonapp.uk
@Elleaster 100%. I think it's easy to use in general, and getting better. It probably starts when having to select a server. It took me a few minutes to decide on one. First impressions and all that. The algorithm nonsense is nonsense. I have much better interactions than I had with several times the followers on Twitter/X precisely because no algorithm is boosting someone else's content over mine.
I like it, too! 
It's propaganda.
@vruz I had a tech friend say this to me
@Elleaster to be fair, full text search didn't become reality until a year or two (three?) after the first big wave of people coming over from Twitter/X. If you're used to having topics and people being suggested to you, I could see where newcomers might be like "Ok, now what?" That being said, I think the interface is pretty familiar and intuitive, and apps for Android and iOS abound.
@Elleaster @CoachMark It wasn’t difficult at all for me. I was lucky, maybe, that I was presented a great instance to choose from right off.
@j258853 @CoachMark I'm not a tech person, I thought it was easy too.
@Elleaster I think choosing an instance is a different concept to explain, and I wonder what Masto could do to improve language around it. I'm sure the difficulty is the specific language. There's also choice difficulty at that step - which is best? Which to choose? I chose mine because I thought I had to because I'm in the UK! (happily, it's awesome and I'm very happy!) but I didn't know the "which" or "why" of choosing an instance.
Not just 'how to choose' - the first several I liked all were not taking new users, or you needed an invitation. (I could see from the 'Explore pages' that they were nice neighborhoods, but didn't know anyone there to invite me.)
So people need a list of open-for-signup servers, and then an easy way to choose.
@Elleaster I think maybe not having come here with prior social media experience made it seem easier for me. I didn't have any previous expectation of how it was "supposed" to work, so I just plunged in and ad-libbed.
I had already been "lurking" and reading things for about three months beforehand. So that probably also helped ease the start. There were already some folks who were writing things I enjoyed reading. But not being a member meant I had to just wait until they turned up randomly. Signing up for myself meant I could check off the people I wanted to read right away, so I could always find them.
Over my first month, I gradually discovered more interesting people to add, so now I have a lot of good stuff to read here. And now and then, I try putting up something on here myself, as I get more comfortable. It's busy enough to be interesting, but not so much that it's overwhelming. Just a nice manageable experience!
@Elleaster it’s not hard. It is safe! 
@Elleaster someone explained to me that a lot of the time "Mastodon is hard" means "Mastodon is hard because there's no algorithm for me to game" and it was very eye opening for me
@Dunstable that's the crux to me.
@Elleaster @rpmik I'm technically quite literate so probably a poor judge. But as the "go to" tech help in my family I can say, from years of observation, that what makes tech hard is not wanting to use it.
Self-diagnosed “I know nothing”s can do very well if they see value in the task. A little self-confidence can go a long way, too, which is why people like me need to have an even temper.
@Elleaster I find it no harder to use, but it was initially harder finding people to connect with.