Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes: there are reasons ordinary users might prefer Mastodon to Twitter; as I said: * You can write full posts in Mastodon * You can own your own data, run your own service, or select from a variety of hosted options * The ecosystem encourages good third-party clients and tooling The tooling isn't there, but then, I don't think anybody expected the events of the last few months, so I'm inclined to give it a quarter or…
What about the inherent bubble-y nature of Mastodon? Do you see it as beneficial to have a series of large groups of balkanized servers optionally interconnected rather than a general public network everyone contributes to. I hate the label of "public square", because Twitter should already be opt-in in terms of which content you see based on who you follow, even though it's one big network (ignoring the @jack era AI…
Nobody wants to get shouted at by people preaching stuff they don't like or feel harassed by all day long, so we seek together in social groups that by and large are united at least along some axes of interests, and avoid too much talk of the topics we know are controversial within those the groups.
Some of us then sometimes seek broader forums to try to spread our groups ideas. But a lot of people actively avoid those kind of situations. Many others use different identities in different groups because they don't mesh well.
"Balkanized" servers are only balkanized to the extent people wants them to be (yes, admins can ride roughshod over users, but users can vote with their feed and migrate their accounts and follows elsewhere). Most people want to be widely federated. Some want forums where they can say things nobody else wants to listen to or wants to self-isolate (e.g. Truth Social, Counter Social and Gab all run - or at least ran, not kept up - Mastodon, but either don't federate at all and/or are widely blocked)
> A key difference in Twitter vs Mastodon UX is that users would have to make different accounts for each "Balkan country" server they join. If one server blacklists or is blacklisted they won't be able to participate in others. And this has implications well beyond US polarized politics once it reaches global scale.
If you want to participate in things so offensive to so many people that they're mutually blocking each other, then yes you either have to do that or find an instance that haven't defederated either. Or host/rent your own and not block anything other than what you, yourself choose.
With Mastodon you have that choice. With Twitter you risk getting outright banned site-wide.