Ed Brown 🏳️‍🌈 🇦🇺 @reallyedbrown@qoto.org

I'm enjoying Mastodon a lot but I am also still on Twitter. Essentially, I am now on both the heroin AND the methadone.

FOUND HIM!

https://mastodonapp.uk/@stephenfry

If you are leaving Twitter, do not deactivate your account. Instead, please set it to private. (If you deactivate it, someone else may be able to claim it in future, and identity squatters are a problem no-one needs.)

Did you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.

The four stages of Mastodon user:
* what’s a Mastodon
* I feel lost and alone how does this work
* oh wow this is actually pretty cool
* I have compiled a linux kernel

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

The collapse of Twitter is a system breakdown. Mastodon and the fediverse represent something different: _system change_. From for-profit "Big Tech" to nonprofit, open source, community-owned public spaces.

System change is always harder than you think. It always incurs short-term costs, with hoped for long-term benefits.

The next few weeks will be really tough for the fediverse. Stick around, vibe with it, and you just might help us put a huge part of the web back in community hands. <3

“I want news organizations to not only set up their own servers but also to start adding share-on-Mastodon buttons to story pages. That will send a message to Elon et al, endorsing an alternative.” — @jeffjarvis https://buzzmachine.com/2022/11/05/hope-for-a-post-musk-net/

why isn’t every mastodon iOS app called Toot Suite