Founder and CEO of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko recently blogged about the latest change to the decentralized social media site: centralized onboarding. From now on, new users will not have to decide which instance to join — which can be a difficult process. Typically, instances are geared towards certain topical niches, and have all sorts of rules. Even if you care about the niche, you may not want to focus mainly on whatever that topic is.
From now on, users joining Mastodon will be set up on a default instance operated by the company itself. This will facilitate getting past the sticky parts of joining a decentralized network through, well, centralization. However, users are free to pick up their bags and join another server after they have joined.
Making the onboarding process as easy as possible helps new users get past the sign-up process and more quickly engage with others. This gives us a far better chance of showcasing what decentralized social networks have to offer instead of having that person bounce and never hearing from them again. We’ve made strides in upgrading our infrastructure and growing our moderation capabilities to hopefully provide a great first experience to everyone who joins. Of course, if you know what server you want to join, you can still go through advanced server selection from the beginning.
No doubt, fediverse purists may be offended by the option, but it really does make sense from a pragmatic standpoint.
Source: A new onboarding experience on Mastodon
Via Jeff Perry
