The Elephant In The Room

Again. 

A lot of people have just bailed out of some kind of dystopian nightmare at Twitter. It may come back from the brink, or it may not. I hope it does, but Mr Musk has started a thing he can't easily back out of. Like many people I've jumped ship, and in this case it was Mastodon that I jumped to. The name has been gaining a snowball avalanche's worth of traction online, I've had two accounts there for a while, and so I made two new accounts and linked my old ones to them too - and so did a LOT of people, by the time I write this it could be a million. 

And most were lost to begin with but we got shown tools to find our feet - and now I'm paying it forward. 

Joining. 

There are thousands (quite literally) Mastodon servers out there. They're called instances out there. Join pretty much ANY of them for now. (Obviously, unless you want to be a fascist or axe-murderer in real life, don't join a server with "fascism-r-us" or "murderdeathkill" in their name...) The names of the servers often mean nothing, but some are there to form community cores. More on that later. 

Try Mastodon.help's instance server directory, or this one, pick a smaller one, join. If you know that a large number of your friends are on a particular server, see if that one has places left and join. But in the long run it won't matter, you can move there later and still follow all your friends from most any other server. More on that later, too. 

Just join first. They're a slightly less uptight crowd of people on the Fediverse (Mastodon servers and a lot of other servers for various things are "federated" meaning there's no central authority but they can all share between them. Don't worry, more on this later, too.)

Finding Others From Your Old Crew.

There are a few directories if you just want to explore, I'll get back to them in a tick. Since I feel I'll mostly be speaking to people who've recently left Twitter we'll deal with finding your Twitter crew first.

First is the direct approach. A lot of Twitter users are putting their Mastodon handles in their profiles, or will tell you it. While logged into your account you can type their handle into the search box, no matter what instance they're logged into, and once you follow them, their posts will show up in your "Home" timeline. (Yes there'll be a bit more detail down below as to what that means.) 

Next up is DeBirdify. The site has been copping a beating recently so sometimes it may not respond the first time you try. But you need it. Put your Twitter handle in, authorise it, select which mob you want to follow - or all of them - and let DeBird work its magic. It'll come back with a L-O-O-O-N-G list of handles and confusion. Do not panic. Automation will take care of you.

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, select to have the list you want to "export as a CSV" and take note where that file ends up.

Now go back to your Mastodon account, click the "Preferences" gear, find "Import & Export," then "Import" - and now just select the CSV file in the page and click "Import." ALL the names in that file that have Mastodon handles will be followed by your account. 

You. Are. Done. 

Finding Other People.

If you want to find people on Mastodon that are new to you, there are a few directories, like Trunk wiki which is a fairly large directory, or Fedi.Directory which is a more curated list by subjects people are known for, "Art" or "Tech" etc. If you ask around there'll no doubt be other directories as well. 

A better way is to use your "Local" feed. If you look down the right side you'll see "Home," "Notifications," "Local," and "Federated" buttons. Everyone'll probably be eager to inform you, but I'll mention it here for completness' sake: 

• Home is the people you follow, and will also show you replies to your posts.
• Notifications is just that , a list of notifications. People you've clicked the notify bell on, their posts will appear here, also when someone boosts your posts or replies to them,
• Local are all the other people on your instance, your server. And people they follow. This is why it's good (eventually) to find a server where you fit right in. But you can always move instances once you've found your feet.
• Federated feed is everything and that means the messages of everyone (close to seven or eight million at the time of this writing) on the federated Mastodon servers.

Community Standards.

One thing about the federated Mastodon network is that there's no single overlord, and there are also no algorithms deciding what to spoon-feed you next. There are no ads. But just because there's no "Great Ruler" or "Community Standards Algorithm" doesn't mean it's the Wild West, oh no. Each server is owned and maintained by a person or group of people, and some of them have quite high standards indeed. 

If you find an instance where trolling and shitposting are allowed, chances are it won't be connected to many others in the Great Fediverse. Because the flipside of federation is defederation and that too is at the discretion of each instance operator. So if you joined rowdybastards.instance and the people there are rude and rowdy, chances are many other instance operators will have defederated it. 

The operator of rowdybastards.instance can ask to be rejoined but other operators will generally follow the wishes of their users. And if you are the only rowdybastard on that instance then maybe the operator will cut you loose to stay in the federation. 

So the system maintains itself, really. Once you find the one instance you'll be sure stuff will stay pretty much the way you like it. 

Now (see next section) there are also things other than rudeness - some people get triggered by certain sensitive subjects, most people don't want to hear about Twitter or your local politics, so use the next section to limit where your posts go and that way you'll be apples.

Some Ways To Comply Without Complying

There are ways around it. If you look at the text box where you send messages out, you can see a bar at the bottom with a paperclip (for attachments) and a bargraph-looking thing (for polls) then a thing that can be either a world or a padlock or an @ sign, that will say where it's being sent to. You can choose to limit your poll to be Public (world globe) or Unlisted (open padlock) which means it's there but not listed or Closed (closed padlock) which means it'll only be visible to your followers, and finally the @, which means you have to put someone's handle in the message because only people whose handle you put in the message will see it.

Then there's CW, the Content Warning. Remember no algorithm? So nothing spying on your photos or posts and deciding it isn't safe for kiddies. Let me make it simple for you - if it might trigger someone such as mentioning Twitter there, see "Some Other Resources," or it's a picture or video some people will find distressing, just click that CW, add a reason ("Twitter rant" or "nudity" or "animal eye contact") - and that last one apparently is A Thing so - use CW liberally. It's better that than being censored right off your instance and being blacklisted.

Using the above tools to ensure messages don't annoy people but still get to the people you want them to get to.

One Word Of Warning: Just like with Twitter, the operators can if they want to see your messages including @ (DM) messages and read them. Not explicitly of course, but if they choose to go poking around in their server database. 

It's one of the reasons I'm not okay with Musk's takeover of Twitter, he's proven to be not very stable, not very unbiased, has no filters or controls on him - and now he can read the DMs of EVERY WORLD LEADER that uses Twitter. Let THAT sink in . . .

Some other resources.

There are several sites that let you crosspost messages between Mastodon and Twitter, moa.party being the one I use. They easily allow what you post on Mastodon to be sent to Twitter under your account there, but I'd be wary of going the other way. Most people will just silently block you if they see Twitterlitter in your timeline and some will even ask the operator to politely issue an ultimatum or even send you away. 

If you just go to mastodon.help there are a LOT of tips and explanations there. 

fediverse.info, trunk.wiki, and fedi.directory have already been covered above.

Want More Federated Software? 

One of the largest collections of federated (ActivityPub based, mostly) software is this page. 

The Mastodon help page linked a bit further back has a few.

The beauty of 'federated' apps and sites is that you can be logged into Mastodon but follow someone's videos on PeerTube - right in your Mastodon feed. You can post full blogs on a federated blogging platform like MissKey or WriteFreely and someone on Diaspora (which is a somewhat similar affair to Mastodon) can read your blog posts in their timeline as you post them. 

The other beauty of federated sites is that they can't easily be overtaken by some corporation or 'managed' by any authority. Individual instances may be closed down (and I believe one was, but only in one country) but with suitable planning the information will survive, and the rest of the fediverse will continue to work.

WORK IN PROGRESS.

Please forgive the mess below, I'm still researching.

• PixelFed is similar to Instagram;
• PeerTube is similar to Youtube;
• Friendica is similar to Facebook;
• FunkWhale is similar to Soundcloud; 

• Write.as and Plume are blogging platforms; 

• Hubzilla is a powerful multi-functional platform.

ActivityPub

https://alternativeto.net/feature/federated/