When you first start out someone gives you an email address. Your ISP, Your employer, Microsoft, Google (push) When you first start out with Mastodon, you have

When you first start out someone gives you an email address. Your ISP, Your employer, Microsoft, Google (push) When you first start out with Mastodon, you have to find a server on your own and hope it's not going to disappear on you in the distant future (pull) The mainstream doesn't do pull. I haven't verified but I imagine sites such as Twitter didn't take off until they started pushing accounts through advertising and word of mouth suggestion (upload your contacts, invite your friends!). Facebook pushed accounts on people in by limiting who could sign up until a certain demand threshold was reached so that when the next wave of potential users look at it, they have an account pushed on them by peer pressure as their friends were already there Leave the decentralised aspects to us nerds. To get it properly going you're gonna need a way to push accounts on people