Problem is, younger people don't even do that when they make an email address.

They just "create a Gmail".

The internet has become such a sad place.

People don't know what choosing a server entails, because it does matter and a lot of people aren't exactly helpful when they say "just pick any" or "it's like email"

Server choice matters because:

1. Server might federate with a limited number of other servers;
2. Server might be blacklisted by some servers which you might want to interact with;
3. Servers can be running different versions of software, so people might think about security;
4. Servers can go offline
5. Server choice can significantly impact how people perceive you. "Oh look, another tankie from ml"

So, server choice matters and people coming in from corporate shit don't know how much they need to know to make an informed decision, thus giving up.

Boy I don't need the childrape administration to declassify extraterrestrial UFO documents when I can talk to space aliens right here on Lemmy. That's not how email works and if you were a placental mammal you'd know that.

You don't go to email.org, click Join and arrive on a page that says "Thank you for your interest in Email: the open, federated, ethical, cage-free non-instant text messaging standard of the web! To continue, select one of these 44 providers based on a badly rendered logo and three almost identical bullet points. Don't worry, the decision doesn't matter...well it kinda does, for reasons that aren't going to be explained to you up front, so pick one at random, get the lay of the land, then come back and join for real."

No, the majority of people ended up with an email account while signing up for another service, such as gmail accounts for Android users or icloud accounts for iPhone users. You probably have an outlook account if you use Windows (or if you're a certain age, a hotmail account). If you're a dad, you have an email account from your ISP, or you got one from work or school. If you sought out something beyond that, like Protonmail or hosting on your own domain, you started looking for a provider with some shopping criteria in mind.

It is simple: nowadays security awareness is drilled in for most of the online population. If presented with a choice people can't oversee, the default safest option is not to chose. I mean, how many new Mastodon users know any of these servers?

So, as couter-intuitive or even ironic it may seem, the "problem" is choice. People need to learn that social media is no longer a single entity, but more like email or choosing a bank.

I initially looked up a few servers, then I chose one with decent size and no prohibitive policies. Less than 24 hours after creating the account I got banned without reason. I appealed. No answer.

I guessed I was just unlucky, so I found another decent looking server. After creating an account, it took around 2-3 hours and I was banned. I appealed. No answer.

I guess the username was a bit too random andmaybe looked like it was created by a bot. It had a lot of random letters, but it was my usual username. I would assume an appeal would sort it out. Or atleast lead me to an answer.

So my third attempt, I chose another server which looked fine and created a user with a simpler username. A few months later, the server shut down.

So now I'm on my 4th account.

It's not like it was a huge hassle to create the accounts, but it's also not like the system is without issues.

Well I was used to MMOs with different servers and I thought I’d have to create an account for each if I wanted to be with my friends. I didn’t know Mastodon was NOT a mere Twitter alternative, and I wasn’t familiar with the concept of the fediverse.

Because the term is loaded. There are technical implications (who will you be federated with and how do I connect with them?), and it's jurisdictional (which laws apply when I post here?). Also, for non-technical people, you only hear the word "server" in techno-babble word salad from movies. I don't blame them at all for being confused.