It’d be interesting if everyone “started” in the same place. For example, Mastodon.social. But then eventually, like maybe after 90 days, one was forced to choose a “home” instance to migrate to. Could be through a list of servers presented, or maybe a user has found one through friends, so they just type in the server and it kicks off a migration process. I’m almost thinking like an MMO starting area.
During that 90 days, the user has to (or should) learn about federation, why decentralization is important for privacy and security, what defederation means and blocking options, how and why instances are a thing, how to migrate an account, etc. Maybe even some info on how and why one could stand up their own instance.
And this doesn’t have to like a classroom/book setting. It doesn’t have to be “read this documentation.” Maybe some 1min video clips, brief tooltips, little reminders to read a brief paragraph of two on some Mastodon topic. Gamify it; let people collect badges and achievements.
During all this, users have full access to everything Mastodon users can do. They can interact with anyone on the entry server, plus any server that’s federated with it. Or maybe they’re an already experienced user and want to go straight to another instance; they can either skip all this and migrate or start straight at another instance.
Though I wonder if that’s still too much friction.
It’d be interesting if everyone “started” in the same place. For example, Mastodon.social. But then eventually, like maybe after 90 days, one was forced to choose a “home” instance to migrate to. Could be through a list of servers presented, or maybe a user has found one through friends, so they just type in the server and it kicks off a migration process. I’m almost thinking like an MMO starting area.
During that 90 days, the user has to (or should) learn about federation, why decentralization is important for privacy and security, what defederation means and blocking options, how and why instances are a thing, how to migrate an account, etc. Maybe even some info on how and why one could stand up their own instance.
And this doesn’t have to like a classroom/book setting. It doesn’t have to be “read this documentation.” Maybe some 1min video clips, brief tooltips, little reminders to read a brief paragraph of two on some Mastodon topic. Gamify it; let people collect badges and achievements.
During all this, users have full access to everything Mastodon users can do. They can interact with anyone on the entry server, plus any server that’s federated with it. Or maybe they’re an already experienced user and want to go straight to another instance; they can either skip all this and migrate or start straight at another instance.
Though I wonder if that’s still too much friction.