I use twitter and I really like the furry art community on there. I also like Mastodon or related ActivityPub services.
Due to recent events lots of people search for alternatives and I feel just very frustrated see all those artists looking for Zucks Threads or Jacks Bluesky when Mastodon is right there, without a chance of a twitter situation ever happening again. They seem to avoid Mastodon like cats avoiding water.
What have we done wrong, and how can we make it better.
This is something I’ve been thinking about, imagine you have no experience with Mastodon, and you go to an instance that looks good. You go to sign up and you are hit with a form saying “Please leave a message with your application”.
Of course, we know that it’s just for rooting out bots and obvious trolls, but without that experience, it looks like you are being judged as to whether you are a good “fit” for the community. Most people’s experiences with “applications” are for jobs, university, that sort of thing, where you need to convince someone that you are good enough to join them.