It seems like the Mastodon developers look at email and think “if it works for email it’ll work here” and don’t understand that people deal with email because they have to, not because they want to. I don’t want to have to change my email address when I switch providers and I don’t want to have to move all my stuff if my favorite Mastodon server decides to shut down.
That’s not a solution that’s just another problem. It’s bad user experience.
Not sure how that's worse than something like Facebook, where you literally don't get that option. If you want your asserted identity to be reasonably secure and easy to assess for other users, you have to find a trusted host or do your own hosting; that's no different from any other service.
Seriously this is exactly what I’m talking about. This is a textbook example of what I’m talking about.
No end user hosts their own email service.
This isn't difficult, per se, but it's not as easy as signing up for Twitter for the simple dumb reason that you don't need to make that choice. And the concerns about "wrong choices" aren't entirely unfounded; the first Mastodon instance I signed up for was effectively abandoned by its sysadmin. The decentralization still makes it hard to search for new users to follow compared to Twitter (checking right this moment, when I click on someone I follow to see who they follow, it only shows me people they follow on the same instance); depending on the Mastodon client I'm using, it can actually be a little hard to follow someone even when I find them if they're not on the same instance I am. Again, technically none of this is super difficult, but for a user who isn't philosophically committed to the fediverse, tiny little frustrations start to add up quickly.
Most public mastodon instances usually have an about page that describes what their intended audience is. You can also look through the public timeline to see what users are saying first before signing up. If you aren't sure, pick a larger general instance.
Despite all that, in my opinion you'll probably get more mileage out of joining an instance run by someone you know and trust.
>What if I choose wrong? What if I need to move?
On newer versions of mastodon there is already a migration option to import/export your data between servers. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-on...
Regarding your second paragraph: If you'd like to fix bugs in your chosen mastodon client, I'm sure that would be welcomed.
What if you don't know or trust anyone that runs a Mastodon instance? And don't have the time/means/expertise/motivation to run one yourself?
