having them understand what a “federated platform” is, is too much to ask
Email is the usual analogy.
trying to find a Mastodon instance to make an account on was irritating.
Your average person will just land on mastodon.social without bothering to read the TOS… i mean rules, you know that.
And you missed a real key argument: network effect. If average person’s friends are on platform XYZ, that’s where average person will be (although this is stronger with messengers).
Everyone is using Gmail or Hotmail. So it’s not the same, even if it technically might be.
When I searched for Mastodon a few years back the first page I landed on was one where I had to browse and choose an instance. If that was what most people saw back then during the first Twatter exodus, then nobody is going to look back.
The average person is where all their friends, who are also average people, will go. And that’ll be on the platform that requires the least effort to sign up to. Which isn’t Mastodon.
