>So you pre-decided to sign up for a specific instance which was closed to signups and is then surprised you can't sign up.

I saw that elonjet had found a new home there so assumed I wouldn't have any trouble signing up. The "Create Account" button on mastodon.social seemed promising too.

Just take your time and get familiar. I wemt through some teething troubles but have found it to be worth it.

The "Create Account" button does indeed let you create a Mastodon account. Just not on mastodon.social. I can't seem to reconcile your description with what happens when you press that button, though.

The official app has a significantly shittier UX than the webui. Third party apps provide a better experience, but randos who haven't already been on mastodon for years don't know that. This is where I've found a lot of the friction lives.

If users are confused by this process, then maybe the explanation of the process is the problem, not the users.

There are certainly improvements to be made, but people seem to largely figure it out.

I'll note that if you click "Create Account" on mastodon.social at the moment on desktop, it shows a modal that explains that you can interact no matter which Mastodon server you sign up on, then shows a "On this server" explaining mastodon.social is currently closed for signups, reminds people that they don't need an account on mastodon.social to use mastodon, then a "On a different server" header that explains that you can create an account on a different server, with a big blue "Find another server" button taking you to joinmastodon.org/server.

I'm sure this still confuses some people (and more confusingly, if you narrow the window enough the "create account" button takes you straight to the link above without explanation; that doesn't seem like great UX), and I'd love to see tweaks to make it better, but the above seemed odd to me, not least because it doesn't seem like they've tried the regular registration flow, so I have no clue what it is they actually did. It seems maybe they've clicked the "Learn more" link, given the description about a "wall of text" about what they can't do?