I dont want to sound too jaded, but people will sign up for anything without reading the TOS. It'll be fine, just try to give them the best possible first impression so they stick around.

The practical thing that trips up most people is the wealth of possible servers to register with. Give your friends a leg up and give them a signup link to a reliable, friendly instance you think will fit them (probably one you're already on).

Just give people a low-friction way in, let them get a feel of the fediverse/a specific, local feed. In my experience over-evangelising the nuts and bolts only turns them off the whole concept.

I think we often try to sell the fediverse too hard on the technical and idealist perspectives. Yes, federation is great and, yes, isn't it lovely that there is no manipulative algorithm, or no billionaire can buy it out and build it into his failed space exploration empire?

But the majority of internet users don't care about those things. Even for those that do, it'll be way down their priority list.

[–] halm@leminal.space 1 points 21 hours ago

Ugh, posted before reading the other comments. Loads of people put it shorter and better already. This is just a +1 to all of the above 👍