First impressions, #mastodon seems like cryptocurrency: made by computer scientists to be clever rather than usable. #twittermigration

@diyspaceprojects it is definitely something with a learning curve! I am enjoying the high character limit so far. What do you think is the thing keeping you from loving it?

@derickflorian I'm sure some of it will just take a while to get used to, but onboarding on the Android app wasn't great. The first step was to pick a server, without really knowing what that meant. It also seems to launch a browser a lot. How do I view the community feed on another server in the app? If I select someone's handle, it opens the browser. If I choose to follow them, I have to scroll down and copy the link, then return to the app, paste it into the search, and then choose to follow again. Just a few things that feel like they could be smoother.

@diyspaceprojects I agree the server selection was a dice roll. I figured with qoto and the stem theme I would find a bunch of people smarter than me posting about really cool things. The other thing I like about this instance is the “local” part has a trickle instead of rush of posts so I can see what’s going on and engage with people.

One thing I read earlier which helped me out is that the official mastodon app isn’t the best for iOS. I am using MetaText now and it has a proper home tab with people I follow, a local table showing the instance and a federated tab which is just a firehose of posts from a bunch of instances.

The tech and the rules like hashtags being encouraged but somehow I really like being out of my old Twitter “character”

I will try to find the post that helped me and share it under here!

@derickflorian

There are a couple other mine features here that don't exist on other instances like there are a lot of services that are also hosted on the DNS. Or as already mentioned the large character count or that you can write in markdown and/or LaTeX.

Some features are easier to implement via an app (e.g. I use Tusky and setting up lists is easier than via the browser). You can hide the other timelines if they are too confusing for the beginning.

A nice feature here is that you can follow a local timeline of other instances, which is a great feature for following niche instances like on #WikiData or #OpenStreetMap.

The only downside I have with the Tusky app is that longer posts need to be written in external editors and then copy-pasta over.

@diyspaceprojects