Theory: the Iranian surge of new Mastodon users only happened because mastodon.social was open.
The difference in friction for a user to get started in Mastodon when mastodon.social is open versus when it isn't is _huge_. If you say that creating an account in any other instance is just the same, you don't get it.
I saw regular people trying to google "mastodon social network" on their phones (at my request) and trying to find their way in the instances list and getting totally puzzled.
@hisham_hm This is so much like the initial boom years of Linux, around 20 years ago. So many people going 'help what is a distribution what is this Debian and Red Hat and Slackware business, I just want Linux, can you give me the phone number of the Linux CEO'
And they're not wrong. Trying to pick an instance is a bit like trying to decide whether you should make an elf or a dwarf on an RPG you haven't yet played and don't know what the classes mean.
@natecull @hisham_hm And with Linux, simply recommending Ubuntu to beginners was (and probably still is) a very common thing. Email, which has been federated for decades now, stopped being very well distributed once the mainstream got online, wanted an email provider, and looked for the "standard one", and ended up with Yahoo, then Hotmail, and later, Gmail.
My suggestion would be to present it more accurately: not as a site, but a different kind of Twitter.
If Twitter is Netflix, Mastodon is the Torrent Network (the legal aspects aside).
@hisham_hm @natecull We are running up against the same phenomenon that creates pop stars, creates large corporations, etc: Lowest common denominator and Follow The Leader.