my main frustration right now is the inability to follow somebody on a different instance from a web link, coupled with all instances using the same theme. when somebody links to https://mas.to/@paulg, i end up on a site that looks exactly the same as mastodon.social, except i can't sign in to it, and i can't actually click the follow button there. if i want to follow @paulg, i have to go to my instance and search for @paulg@mas.to

1. you can copy-paste same url ( https://mas.to/@paulg ), no need to re-format, event simply writing `paulg` will start the search and likely find intended user pretty fast

2. https://indieweb.org/webactions

Agreed, this is annoying. I just have to go back to my instance, and search for the link (https://mas.to/@paulg) in the search bar, then I can follow them.

you can pin tab with your instance, or even open it in a sidebar

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webpage-sideb...

if that's the biggest obstacle

both those options are bad UX and papercuts that cause me to not want to use it. if you "just" have to take a second step or prepare your environment in a particular way for the most important part of a social network, following someone, that's a dealbreaker.

yeah, i have no idea how people seem to use internet for everything but cant bring themselves to copy paste a single url

maybe it just show how little someone else's content is important to you

>maybe it just show how little someone else's content is important to you

i mean that's pretty much it. i barely care about the whole thing, but if it's easy enough it's a bit of decent time waster. twitter was easy enough, adding the tiniest of steps is enough to make me decide i don't really care.

Mastodon's UX isn't bad, it's just not actively pressuring me into interacting more than i really want to, the way twitter generally did/does.