@atomicpoet I *like* toying with software. I like learning it, tweaking it, etc. etc. But most people don’t, so learning a new app is a barrier to what they actually want - doubly so in the open source world where #UX is an afterthought at best. So why try 5 platforms that may or may not offer a feature in a way you like, have terrible onboarding and are undoubtedly missing some aspect of #mastodon that you want? Who has that kind of time?

@atomicpoet This reminds me of the era when people claimed that Linux On The Desktop was going to take over the world, but their standard response to “it doesn’t have basic feature X” was “sure it does, it’s just in this other ‘distro’, so you’ll have to install a new system to get it”.

More generally, if I was ever tempted to publicly wish that users would put in more effort, I’d know it was time for me to take a break.

@atomicpoet I think the switching costs for social software are higher for many people (just setting up an account doesn’t really test social software - you also need to have folks to talk with - and for many asking a network to join you on a new platform is a big ask. Or you have to follow and interact with mostly strangers (which is also a big ask for many). Or for example your posted image of the Bluesky feed wasn’t all in English - as a non-speaker I couldn’t understand the feed w/o tools