esteban antonicelli @geantonicelli@qoto.org

Understanding a little bit more about the #fediverse through data. Here is a plot of all #fediverse instances at instances.social as a function of their number of users and toots (statuses) and if they are open for new accounts. In general, instances are small in the number of users (median = 28). Interestingly, there are a lot of small, very active, and closed servers in the #fediverse. Also, some of the biggest servers are Japanese communities.

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

Fun Mastodon accounts to follow

https://www.howtogeek.com/847422/new-to-mastodon-here-are-10-fun-accounts-to-follow/

Decided to look at network stats again. There are 1M more people using #Mastodon today than there were on October 27.

Mastodon tips (brief)

1. Server choice - tricky
2. Add a pic and bio
3. I prefer 'Advanced web interface'
4. And the 'Light' theme
5. Listen to long-time users
6. Tip your server admins
7. Hashtags pretty important
8. Put Alt text on pics
9. Use Content Warning if in doubt
10. Pin introduction post
11. Do some boosting
12. Follow interesting people
13. Hashtags can be followed too
14. DMs not secure
15. Be respectful
16. Thank you, people who run this

#mastodon #tips #MastodonTips #tootorial

If you come to Mastodon expecting Twitter, you won’t only be disappointed, you’ll probably be angry. The fediverse is a great platform, it’s where I spend most of my social time, and it has an awesome community. It’s also a wierd niche project run by weird nerds, queer people, furries, neurodivergent people, tech people, anarchists, and radicals (I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which of those apply to me.)

We built this thing, some of us over the last 10 years. We built it to provide a place to do Social Media that wasn’t owned and controlled by some behemoth that could be sold to Elon Musk.

Guess what? It was a good idea.

https://ajroach42.com/what-everyone-seems-to-get-wrong-about-mastodon/

Mastodon: What you need to know for your security and privacy

If you’re leaving Twitter for Mastodon, here are some things you should know.

https://grahamcluley.com/mastodon-what-you-need-to-know-for-your-security-and-privacy/

Please reblog/boost if you think this would help folks you know who are new to Mastodon. (Likes are appreciated, but won't help spread the advice)

#Mastodon #Fediverse #choice

Who can see your toots? Whose toots can you see? Found this clarifying graphic at https://axbom.com/mastodon-tips/

The best way to increase everyone's feed diversity is to go follow interesting accounts on other instances :)

It's not #FreeDOS but check out this cool history of #Unix

https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/unix-linux-history

"Many of the commands in 1972's Unix 2nd edition are still used in today's Linux. Learn how Unix started and how it's changed over time."

Looking for a user-friendly way to learn more about @Mastodon and the #Fediverse? Visit https://fediverse.info/ to:

1. Add your account + hashtags to a list of searchable profiles.

2. Find other accounts with shared interests.

3. Check out really cool open source projects in the Fediverse (one example: Instagram alternative called @pixelfed).

4. See a full list of smartphone apps for iOS and Android.

@FediFollows @feditips

https://fediverse.info/

@victoria @benreaves #mastodon 4.0 will be released soon with #edit and #translate functionality

Are you interested in using deep learning for genomic predictions? Join my lab!

please boost

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

Mastodon: an introduction for beginners and for scientists

Via ⁦@giorgiogilestro⁩ https://giorgio.gilest.ro/2022/11/05/mastodon-an-introduction-for-beginners-and-for-scientists/

Hey everyone. Just making sure everyone knows that direct messages on here are not end-to-end encrypted. They work more like a post, with visibility set to the person/people you tag.

This means an admin (like me), can read these by looking at the database/in backups.

I promise never to do this.

If that's not good enough (which is fine, obviously), please use something like signal for DMs

p.s. Twitter DMs are also not encrypted and anyone there can read them too.