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What’s the best way to get started on mastodon? I looked into a bit after it released, but all of the weird manifestos on home servers kept me from making an ac

by davemp 3y ago

What’s the best way to get started on mastodon? I looked into a bit after it released, but all of the weird manifestos on home servers kept me from making an account.

tambourine_man 3y ago
Don't sweat about it. You either completely identify with a server or you go with .social or .cloud In the first Mastodon wave I thought about setting my own server with my domain and it sounded awesome, but of course, I never did. In this second one, I just went the mainstream way and was done.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > go with .social or .cloud What impact does it have if you change your mind later? I have personally never looked, but the people talking here about actual conversations with a small number of people make it sound interesting.
  - roomey 3y ago
    You can move, it brings your followers and details, but I think it looses your post history. I just picked one from my geographic region, all good!
  - omoikane 3y ago
    You might end up having to create accounts on multiple servers if the servers decide to not federate with each other. (I am on doll.social and mastodon.social, and found that it's impossible for users from the former to follow users on the latter.)
krapp 3y ago
The way I do it: Go to https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers or https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/ and find one or more instances you want to join. Use the same account name (but not password, obviously) for all of them. Think of instances as subreddits, but each subreddit is on its own separate server. You can manage those identities though a third party app or just a folder of browser bookmarks. If you're already on Twitter, you can find anyone on your follow list who is also on Mastodon and follow them. You'll wind up with a json file you'll need to upload for each account. It's easy to join or leave instances so there's nothing to worry about. The better way would be to manage your own identity server but i'm not there yet.
egypturnash 3y ago
1. get a mastodon.social account 2. start following people 3. if you notice that a lot of people you are following are on a particular server, consider getting an account there and using the account migration tools to move all your current followers over there 4. alternatively, set up your own server, maybe just for you, maybe for some of your friends and/or family, with your own set of rules and a manifesto that is perfectly sensible and not weird at all because it is yours.
- timbit42 3y ago
  More importantly, follow hashtags. This is the real power of Mastodon.
- davemp 3y ago
  So I'd basically have to hope posts from people I'm interested in filter their way onto the server I start on and sort of crawl around until I find communities I'd actually want to participate in? How does the cross pollination between servers work? I haven't seen a good description on it besides that you can DM people across servers. The content is also structured in a twitter microblog + replies style. So I'm seeing basically private forums of old, but twitter format and some weird soft discovery thing. Overall I like the idea of federation, but mastadon seems half baked. I signed up and I'll get it a try for a week or so though.
garganzol 3y ago
You can just use one of the root servers like mastodon.social or mastodon.online and start from there.
donio 3y ago
Once you are on you can try following some hashtags on subjects you are interested in to get your feed jumpstarted.
rsynnott 3y ago
Instance choice largely doesn’t matter (caveat: there are some instances which are widely defederated). Probably easiest to start on .social, and you can always move later.

by davemp 3y ago

What’s the best way to get started on mastodon? I looked into a bit after it released, but all of the weird manifestos on home servers kept me from making an account.

tambourine_man 3y ago

Don't sweat about it. You either completely identify with a server or you go with .social or .cloud In the first Mastodon wave I thought about setting my own server with my domain and it sounded awesome, but of course, I never did. In this second one, I just went the mainstream way and was done.

marcosdumay 3y ago
> go with .social or .cloud What impact does it have if you change your mind later? I have personally never looked, but the people talking here about actual conversations with a small number of people make it sound interesting.
- roomey 3y ago
  You can move, it brings your followers and details, but I think it looses your post history. I just picked one from my geographic region, all good!
- omoikane 3y ago
  You might end up having to create accounts on multiple servers if the servers decide to not federate with each other. (I am on doll.social and mastodon.social, and found that it's impossible for users from the former to follow users on the latter.)

krapp 3y ago

The way I do it: Go to https://joinmastodon.org/servers https://joinmastodon.org/servers or https://instances.social/ https://instances.social/ and find one or more instances you want to join. Use the same account name (but not password, obviously) for all of them. Think of instances as subreddits, but each subreddit is on its own separate server. You can manage those identities though a third party app or just a folder of browser bookmarks. If you're already on Twitter, you can find anyone on your follow list who is also on Mastodon and follow them. You'll wind up with a json file you'll need to upload for each account. It's easy to join or leave instances so there's nothing to worry about. The better way would be to manage your own identity server but i'm not there yet.

egypturnash 3y ago

1. get a mastodon.social account 2. start following people 3. if you notice that a lot of people you are following are on a particular server, consider getting an account there and using the account migration tools to move all your current followers over there 4. alternatively, set up your own server, maybe just for you, maybe for some of your friends and/or family, with your own set of rules and a manifesto that is perfectly sensible and not weird at all because it is yours.

timbit42 3y ago
More importantly, follow hashtags. This is the real power of Mastodon.
davemp 3y ago
So I'd basically have to hope posts from people I'm interested in filter their way onto the server I start on and sort of crawl around until I find communities I'd actually want to participate in? How does the cross pollination between servers work? I haven't seen a good description on it besides that you can DM people across servers. The content is also structured in a twitter microblog + replies style. So I'm seeing basically private forums of old, but twitter format and some weird soft discovery thing. Overall I like the idea of federation, but mastadon seems half baked. I signed up and I'll get it a try for a week or so though.

garganzol 3y ago

You can just use one of the root servers like mastodon.social or mastodon.online and start from there.

donio 3y ago

Once you are on you can try following some hashtags on subjects you are interested in to get your feed jumpstarted.

rsynnott 3y ago

Instance choice largely doesn’t matter (caveat: there are some instances which are widely defederated). Probably easiest to start on .social, and you can always move later.