In October, 2022, I reached my limit with Twitter. After 11 years on their platform, I decided to close my account there and stake a claim to the Fediverse. The fediverse, for the uninitiated, is a world of interconnected platforms that can exchange messages with each other. The closest thing in your experience is probably email, except the messages can be read by everyone. There are many many different platforms that interconnect with with each other and form the fediverse, including Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, Kbin, Lemmy, FunkWhale, PeerTube, Pixelfed, GoToSocial, Friendica, Calkey, and on and on.
I chose the Mastodon platform for its microblogging capabilities. Mastodon as a platform consists of many mastodon servers. Some servers are small, and some have hundreds of thousands of users. As a new user getting started, I recommend choosing a large server to begin with. Later, you might decide to move your presence to a different server. The cool thing about Mastodon is that you can export your followers and the accounts you follow, and upload them to a different server. Your account is essentially portable.
I chose Mastodon.social, then later moved to a different Mastodon instance.
Each Mastodon instance gives you three feeds. The first is your home feed, which if you are a brand new user, will probably look empty. The second feed is the local feed, showing you real time posts local to the Mastodon server you joined. The third feed is the global fire hose of all the Fediverse content reaching your server. I began by following interesting accounts from the Mastodon global Feed. As I said, this feed is a fire hose. Some if the global content is great, but some of it can be a little sketchy and downright nasty. If you zero in on the great stuff and follow it, you will soon find lots of other great content. Do NOT zero in on the bad stuff, or you will get more bad stuff. However, you could also just as easily start your exploration of the Fediverse using the server's local feed, which now that I think of it, might be the better place for you to start.
The other way to find good people to follow is to enter hashtags into the search box. If you like cats or dogs, then search for #cats or #dogs. Recent posts about cats and dogs will be displayed. Scroll through and follow people whose posts (or pets) you like.
In the beginning, follow liberally. You can always unfollow later. But by following a lot of people you like early, you populate your feed with stuff you like. The people you follow will further populate your feed with content they appreciate and boost onto their own timelines. If you see content in your home feed that you don't like, you can block, mute or unfollow those accounts so you see less of it. Block, mute, and unfollow just as liberally as you follow. As curating your feed becomes easier and more automatic, you will come to love your home feed as it reflects your own interests and tastes.
There have been quite a few news articles recently about how Mastodon is dead, how people tried it and hated it and left. Nothing could be further from the entire truth. Mastodon is a more engaged and interesting place now than it has ever been. I'll be the first to admit that Mastodon isn't for everyone. It's not for people who like to view ads and to have their viewing activity culled, profiled and sold. It's certainly not for people who think there is no place in the world for open source distributed social media. It's not for people who are really good at projecting a loud, brash, noisy persona that the Twitter algo rewards, who think their offensive content will play on Mastodon as it does on Twitter. Its also not for people who really enjoy paying a right wing antagonist $8 a month.
That said, I also understand that people would leave who, having joined a server and spent no time discovering and curating a decent home feed, would think Mastodon was dead and over. Like in real life, you'll get out of Mastodon what you put into Mastodon. But you don't have to work very hard to find interesting people to follow and new friends to engage with. Like anything, some people never will like Mastodon. I happen to love it, and have no intentions of ever going back to Twitter.
In my 8 months on Mastodon so far, I enjoy four times the followers I ever gained on Twitter in 11 years. The engagement with real people through comments on my own posts, or my comments on theirs, is way beyond what I ever experienced on Twitter. And the engagements are more positive and friendly. Now is a great time to join Mastodon and the Fediverse, because with millions of active users you can still be heard and discovered. Instead of being one in a billion or one in a hundred million, you are joining a smaller, more engaged community where you are important, and once you find your tribe, you will be heartily welcomed.
With all of the above said, let me also remind you that Mastodon and the Fediverse are also part of the real world, and there are bad people everywhere. Do not engage with bad people. Block and mute them at the first poor interaction. These people tend to hang on servers that allow bad activities and harassment to fester. While some of these shithole servers and accounts are blocked by Mastodon.social, new ones spring up fast. The good news is that what you see is largely up to you. Be safe, stay engaged, follow interesting people, and spend time going down lots of rabbit holes, and I really believe that you will enjoy your time on the Fediverse as much as I do.
Always follow people you enjoy.
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