> it's not that difficult to migrate between them.

If you've never used the fediverse before, you don't really know that, do you? I've heard of the "move your account" functionality before, but I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."

> What could federated services do that would make the obvious choice not feel lame?

I admit this is an inconsistency on my part, and probably only limited to people a lot like me: on the one hand, the whole promise of federation is that you can avoid massive centralization; so joining the One Biggest Instance seems kind of pointless. On the other hand, I don't want to join a random small instance which may not be well-maintained; and I don't want to join an instance which is going to pigeon-hole me ("A mastodon instance for developers!" "A mastodon instance for Christians!").

There are different parts of my brain that all want different things, each of which vetoes any particular decision. But this is very much what the "paradox of choice" is about: in many cases, having more options makes you less happy.

I do think it was good that Mastodon embraced this in a way that earlier federated options didn't (e.g., I believe at some point diaspora stopped new sign-ups to their main instance to "encourage federation"; from my perspecitve it encouraged was people to go elsewhere.)

So "what could federated services do better" to solve the paradox of choice? Nothing as far as I can tell -- if you want more choice, you're going to have the paradox of choice; Mastodon at least has already done the only thing I can think of which mitigates it somewhat.

> I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."

I think that's fair, the resources around joining don't make this particularly clear. Part of the problem is that 'Mastodon' as an organization is not very invested in making this widely known, they would rather people stick with the easy choice because they run mastodon.social. For people who are already on the network it's pretty well understood.

It is listed on this page, at the very bottom (facepalm) - https://joinmastodon.org/servers

This is a better resource if you want more information on it - https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-anot...

I do think there's a paradox of choice issue going on and I can understand why that makes it more intimidating to try it out. One thing that I wish was more widely known is that you can just create an account on multiple servers. If you're not sure you'll like the vibe of a server, create an account and try it, you can either migrate that account or delete it if you decide that server isn't for you. I hope this perspective might make people feel more curiosity and less decision paralysis, it's not a problem to have alt accounts.

>> I don't really think until today I had anyone say to me, "Look, don't worry too much about which server you choose to start out with -- just pick one, because it's super-easy to switch later if you want to try a different one."

> I think that's fair, the resources around joining don't make this particularly clear.

It's also not actually super-easy to switch later.

It's fairly easy, it could be better but it's like three steps. Switching away from any other social media in comparison is monumental.