mastodon
Please don't propose to use the flagship instance by default
Hello,
Prompting users to join mastodon.social by default wuth a single button could be highly harmful to mastodon and the whole fediverse, as it may lead many users to use the flagship instance, and If a single instance grows too much, it reduces the decentralisation and make the said instance vulnerable to a takeover.
So i think that for the good of the fediverse, you should remove a such feature.
yes please. alternative can be randomizing server suggestion, not only flagship one. mb from list of general common stable servers, something like this
Many social networks and apps ask for people's interests upon sign-up nowadays, so they can suggest things to follow. It really wouldn't be that big of a deal for the Mastodon app to have a few quick questions about the user's interests before sign-up, and then use that to narrow the instances, and auto-select one of the options for the indecisive. Could be something even simpler than what instances.social has, but with the only servers recommended being those listed on joinmastodon.org (plus an option to select an instance not listed, obviously)
I think it's good that the default options come from a curated list, rather than showing literally all available servers in the fediverse, as a new user could end up on a poorly managed server and have a bad experience.
However, I think that instead of just sending everyone to mastodon.social, there could be a curated list with some well-moderated servers.
Mastodon.social is now approaching 30% of all active users, and new people are assuming they have to sign up there because of how the official apps are promoting mastodon.social. It's totally possible it could get to over 50% of the Fediverse, at which point the Fedi would no longer be decentralised.
Could we please switch the official Mastodon app to recommending a featured server from a trusted pool of servers instead of mastodon.social? As I recommended over on the iOS app, mas.to has very similar policies and a reliable track record going back years, but mastodon.social is twenty-four times bigger. Surely it's time to promote other reliable servers now?
As all the people said before, making dot social as default not only makes the whole decentralized social network just in theory, it also makes it less resistant to any attack (censorship, bots... You name it)
Another vote for avoiding centralization. A rotating lottery from a set of good options seems fairer.
This is a real issue to keep Mastodon decentralized: no instance should become too big. Or it will lead to many issues, like we do have in email with gmail and microsoft holding large parts of the market and dictating where things should go and who can contact their users.
Defaults make or break Mastodon's purported values.
I understand that recommending a server which then might do something bad would make some inexperienced people lose trust in the Fediverse as a whole, instead of just moving away from that server. However:
A) Long time users on the Fediverse will inevitably understand what "decentralization" means as their social network grows and they interact with handles (the official app has started to educated users when tapping on handles, which is great – more of this!)
B) We need to extend the assumption of good faith to seasoned server administrators who have done the same by volunteering to run and moderate their public town squares
Taking no action on this is in itself an action. Let's be on the right side of Fediverse history.
I get that simplifying the onboarding process is important and removing the need to choose an instance helps with that - but making the Fediverse more centralised mitigates against one of the big advantages it has!
if anyone could update those "how mastodon works" videos with a link to find different instances instead of defaulting to dot social would likely help as well 👍
