mmooss parent
What makes it cool?
Well, I won't debate whether "cool" is the right word. But ideologically I think federation is better than centralization when it can be made to work in practical terms, and Mastodon works.
No "algorithm" shoving ads down your throat. Just a timeline of the accounts you follow with the posts in chronooogical order.
It shoves dark mode down your throat whether you want it or not. What could be cooler than that?
There's an option
Really. Where? Unhelpful answers of the form "Just install extension X for browser Y and use it to run script Z" are all anyone has ever been able to suggest when I've asked this question elsewhere.
If you click on Preferences, it's under Appearance which is the first section you see. You can change the site theme to a light option. At least on Mastodon.social.
There's no Preferences button. If there is, they've either hidden it well, or it's not visible without a login.
There should simply be a button -- a conspicuous one -- that toggles the color scheme. It's trivial to add such a button. It doesn't need to be tied to a user ID; it doesn't even need to set a cookie. The fact that no such button exists is a choice someone made, a poor choice that disregards decades of human-machine interface research.
Failure to go full Karen about goofy things like this has made the Web a little worse for almost everyone in one way or another. So... there ya go.