You definitely can't click that handle and add follow them, I could put https://cooldude.example.com/@cooldude and you could click to their profile on their instance, but there would be no way to follow them directly from there on your mastodon.social (or whatever) account, you have to go to your instance and type/paste in their handle and then click follow.

Edit: There is a remote-follow workflow that involves clicking a link and entering your full handle to get redirected to a page where you can follow them. Maybe slightly better, but still not great.

I mean, I'm not saying that mastodon is super duper easy to use for everyone but in this particular example you seem to be going out of your way to make it more complicated than it is.

If the thing you found on hn was a link to their profile your flow would make sense, but if you have an id@domain the flow is really simple and basically the same as other similar things (ie. put it in your email client).

With email addresses, you have the mailto: link, which works pretty well so you don't have to copy paste. Maybe we need a follow: url scheme that browsers know what to do with.

Which you can, regardless of what instance they're on.

Moving in bulk is also easy, using something like Debirdify

https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/

Correction: You can't do it if you are linked to their user page https://mastodon.social/username...that doesn't work if you're not on mastodon.social. And often I seem to find myself at these URLs and can't see if I'm following the person, and have to go through extra steps to follow them.

Is copy/paste also too much to ask of technology's current generation?

There's a big (and only) search bar at the top of the homepage. You can simply search the username and they'll pop up across instances. There's a little follow button next to their name you can click and you're done

Exactly like Venmo or Snapchat or Instagram. It's already in the cultural norms to ask "what's your insta" or "what's your venmo".

What's your mastodon?

for example. if i want to search for @[email protected]... i do that, and click follow.

thats it. i click follow. like, where are you guys having so much trouble with this?

1. View a user's profile page on another instance.

2. Click "Follow".

3. A "remote follow" window opens with the message "Enter your username@domain you want to act from".

4. ???

How profile pages are displayed changes depending on whether you middle/right click ("open in new tab") or left click on a user's name from your own instance. If you left click, you get the profile page on you own instance. If you get the link by any other means (including e.g. someone sends you a link to their profile), you get the above. It's confused me more than once.

I think it means going to your home instance, searching for @[email protected] and clicking the follow button that will show up. But maybe you mean something else? Either way it's not easy to find it.

You can just search for "@personiwannafollow" and they'll show up and you can hit a single button to follow.

It's the big, and only, search bar at the top of the home page...