what im trying to say, again, is that their panicking is entirely unfounded.
whether you create your account at mastodon.social, fosstodon.org, mastodon.online, vis.social, toot.cat, or your friends totallyraddomainname.com--its not a life or death decision.
particularly because you can simply migrate to another server if you're picky about some minutia that most people don't care about. it feels like overblown fearmongering.
sure, maybe they're experience analysis paralysis, which is definitely a problem sometimes for those who are terrified of technology, but at the end of the day it is over analyzing. one of the reasons mastodon so drastically overtook other federated attempts is because it made it possible to migrate without losing your followers, you just move and poof, you're done. it removes the importance to which server you choose.
As it happens, I picked a server earlier today, more or less at random (one that didn't manually review applications), so I'm set. But the experience was very negative, and fraught with apparent peril.
If the choice of server matters so little, perhaps this site could be improved: https://joinmastodon.org/servers
The phrase is key because it reflects a familiarity which new users do not have. Have you never in your life been introduced to an environment you didn't understand and felt put off by everybody using words you didn't know, or words you did know in ways you didn't understand? Never, in any situation?
Because that's exactly how it feels for many, many, many new users of mastodon now.