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.
@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.