[lainsoykaf]

Mastodon.social is sadly one of the worst instances to join. Onboarding / Selecting a good instance is the hardest problem for the fediverse.

[grishka]

The problem isn't even that. There's no global account catalog you could search. Thus, you have no way of knowing who of the people you know is on there already. Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer. I have an idea about making a DHT out of instance servers, but at this point it's purely theoretical. If it does work though, you'll be able to easily import your existing friend lists from centralized services. Could use either their APIs or — better — the GDPR-mandated export feature.

[FalconSensei]

> Asking everyone if they know about Mastodon and which instance they're on isn't the answer.

Ironically, the only way to do that now is posting on twitter, asking people to reply with their mastodon accounts