Hannah Aubry writes on the Mastodon blog about community initiatives including experiments to change how new users sign up:

At first, we’re planning to recommend the closest geographic server in the correct language based on data surfaced by the app store, so it will only be available initially on the Android and iOS apps. We may also experiment with other logic for recommending a server, including random distribution.

I don’t believe this will help. In fact, it might make users more confused. My proposal remains to move away from email-like user handles.

@manton Mastodon's approach would help to distribute users away from a flagship server.

You approach is about changing the general identity in the fediverse towards a BlueSky model, right?

That feels like two different things to me.

@laurenshof 's latest newsletter "Where does community live?" is a very interesting read when it comes to the topic how Mastodon and BlueSky identify themselves:

https://connectedplaces.online/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=tnp&na=v&nk=738-0fcd2e959e&id=87

@manton yeah, but Mastodon's intention - especially with this step - isn't to tackle the identity problem. It's to avoid monolith servers. It's also about new users here, so no need to move posts.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally with you that a fedi identity that is unattached to a server would clear things up. But wouldn't it also just hide the server problem? Those IDs have to be hosted somewhere, right?

And its a different community approach as Laurens Hof described.