Using the term “Open Social Web” instead of fediverse or mastodon seems to help a lot. TechCrunch and other news orgs use the term more nowadays and Meta mentions it as well as the about us on Bluesky.

This is the most common reply to any mention of onboarding newcomers, but it’s not helpful. It’d be much more productive to hear specific criticisms so we can address them.

• Is clicking the big “Join” (the default server) on joinmastodon.org really that big of a hurdle?
• Is a firehouse home feed required to engage users from the start?

Correct.

Here’s a thread about who owns and funds Bluesky.

Open AI changed to a for profit company in a heartbeat and these folks can too.

More worrying is who owns them and their funding sources.

Seconded, some specific examples would be helpful.