ChicagoV @ChicagoV@qoto.org

Ironically, the Great Banning is the first time that Mastodon has felt like it's fulfilling the role for me that Twitter once did—a place to keep up-to-date on a fast-moving event, where everyone is talking about the same thing

Okay this might be a long post

One thing that I realised is making #twittermigration harder for people to switch is because the whole concept can feel daunting & overwhelming for non-tech savvy people.

With Twitter to them it was straight forward and easy to find topics they enjoy but with mastodon its a bit different.
So if you’re new to mastodon or you want to introduce someone to mastodon here are some tips, useful sites & tools:

Tips:

• Choosing a home instance isn’t as importance as it seems, don’t overthink it. Yes moderation rules & policies may differ but they all have one thing in common: Be a decent human. You always have the option to migrate your account to a new instance.
• Toots (or posts if you think toots are cringe ) are what we call micro-blogging instead of tweets
• You’re supposed to “boost” AKA “reblog” toots that you like.Since Mastodon does not have an algorithm that surfaces toots that have been liked a lot, boosting is the best way to help spread stuff that you like, and to show appreciation. (credit to @orsvarn for this comment)
• Another way to fill your timeline with content you enjoy is to: Find other people with similar interests, follow them, favourite their posts, boost their posts, use hashtags. rinse, repeat. (credit to @garry)
• If you ever feel yourself getting sucked into arguments on the #Fediverse, you might want to take advantage of the instance mute/block feature!
  Instances tend to foster a culture, so if you find people from a specific site tend to be bothering you, muting/blocking that instance will keep other members of that community from bothering you as well.
• Finally do not share private/sensitive information via DMs on Mastodon. Direct Messages are not E2E. Keep it in mind

Useful tools & resources:

Twitodon - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
FediFinder- Similar to Twitodon
Fedi Tips - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
Fedi Directory - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
Trunk -Trunk allows you to mass-follow a bunch of people in order to get started with Mastodon or any other platform on the Fediverse
Fediverse.info -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
Mobile Apps:
Metatext for iOS
Tusky for Android

Lastly if you are interested in setting up your own instance you can learn via https://learnfoss.org/ its completely free and its made by the wonderful @stux

I apologize for the long post lol, just hope this helps anyones transition over

Them: "Mastodon is hard to use."
Me: _gets started easily_
#coops

Them: "The #fediverse is fragmented - hard to find anyone."
Me: _easily finds many folks here I know or enjoy_
👋

Them: "It's just white male tech nerds"
Me: _discovers fairly robust presence of non-white, non-male folks_
✊

Them: "It's set up so it's antiviral"
Me: _sees more interest in my thoughts here than ever on the birdsite_
🙃

Them: "Local servers are like isolated islands."
Me: _finds a canoe to explore archipelago_
🛶

Fediverse is pretty cool. Only thing missing is a bunch of my tweeps.

The Twitter debacle is also a good reminder never to make big purchases when stoned or pissed

Okay, Mastodon definitely needs a gif library