I'm two weeks into this #Mastodon experience, and feeling increasingly comfortable with its charm, authenticity, and #community.
I love #NoAds and #NoAlgorithms, pervasive on other platforms, trying to part me from my money or telling me how I should think.
Newbies like me may find the attached article useful: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-started-use-mastodon/
The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement.
For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously).
"Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature.
There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content.
It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off.
Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users.
Did an initial update/creation process on my website. Gonna start blogging again soon so hopefully this will continue to be updated (I'm ill today so forgive any code issues!) https://markthomasstevenson.co.uk/ #Website #personaldevelopment #angular #webdev #portfolio
This one is for all the new people on #Mastodon: did you know that the #fediverse has more than just a microblogging replacement? And that they can all interoperate with your Mastodon account?
Check them out!
Facebook replacement: Friendica
Instagram replacement: Pixelfed
YouTube replacement: PeerTube
Spotify replacement: Funkwhale
MeetUp replacement: Mobilizon
Reddit replacement: Lemmy
Podcasting replacement: Castopod
GoodReads replacement: BookWyrm
Forgot a bunch of tags from my #introduction that add to me and my
#ukpolitics
#proportionalrepresentation
#steam
#infosec
#dataprotection
#datascience
#foodie
... There will be more
Tip for the new folk:
Often Mastodon’s features work the way they do because it was first populated by people who had been harassed on FB and the Birdsite.
For instance (not sorry), you cannot search Masto for a simple term. Only #hashtags. Say you’re having a private conversation about iguanas. Anti-iguana trolls will not be able to search for “iguanas”, find your conversation, and drop into it to say, “Iguana luvers suck!”
But if you are wanting to connect with new iguana fanciers on Mastodon, slipping an #iguanas hashtag somewhere into your posts will allow people to search for and find them.
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](https://twitodon.com/) - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
[FediFinder](https://fedifinder.glitch.me/)- Similar to Twitodon
[Fedi Tips](https://fedi.tips/) - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
[Fedi Directory](https://fedi.directory) - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
[Trunk](https://communitywiki.org/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](https://fediverse.info/explore/people) -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
**Mobile Apps:**
[Metatext for iOS ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/metatext/id1523996615)
[Tusky for Android ](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keylesspalace.tusky&hl=en&gl=USt)
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
Seeing as posting an #introduction is key here. I'll give it a go.
Previous life: #pcgamer #aledrinker #nerd who spent his time on #rocketleague and #leagueoflegends while worrying about being single
Current life: #married #dad loving #parenthood still #gaming but mainly #valveindex #vr on #beatsaber or #pistolwhip. #whisky or #brandy drinker, still a nerd but loving life. Mainly #lackofsleep from #sleeplessnights an issue.
Professional: #softwareengineering team lead doing #reactnative and #awslambda as well as #agile cycles and planning the roadmap. History in #android #ios #web #serverless #microservices #azuredevops #aws #kotlin #java #swift #angular #nodejs #csharp #php and loads of others (I know, recruiters hate me)
Probably it for now, first post so let's hope this works!
Engineering Team Lead @ TheAccessGroup
Obsessed with anything Nerdy
Pushed here by @RussInCheshire and #TheWeekInTory
From the UK
Love/Hate #politics
#game on #steam from time to time
Interested in #softwareengineering #infosec and lots of other tech things I need to find the hashtags to