I am mentally preparing to be called an idiot and/or causing a shitstorm, but I really want to get the answer.

I really want to completely get out of all other social media platforms and to become more involved in the Fediverse, but there is one thing that still bugs me about the underlying concept or at least the frontend behavior.

Let’s say I get to discover a very interesting account. Why is it that I cannot just click on the “Following” stat and see what other accounts that person or organization is itself interested in and then just click on follow from there? Every time I have to open a browser, and I only get to look at them since I don’t have an account on that instance. And the same thing with followers of course.

I completely understand the interest to remain federated, but the federation being reflected in this kind of UX is, IMHO, a terrible hindrance to growth, or, in the most optimistic scenario, cause a slow migration to a single server.

I would be ok with keeping the power for servers to completely obscure even all the rest of the Fediverse if they want, but if you are showing me a bit of information and allowing me to click on it, you shouldn’t then punish me for being interested.

I have no idea whether this is due to ActivityPub, to the single servers (I am on Mastodon.uno btw) or to the clients, but it’s, as of now, the only thing I can think of still keeping me from letting myself go and truly join the Fediverse.