My guide to Mastodon! Simple stuff, but not necessarily obvious (to me at least).

- Follow with reckless abandon! Follow lots of hashtags. Fill your feed!
- Make a list with folks you especially enjoy

Then prune:

- Mute with reckless abandon!
- Block assholes
- Filter phrases and hashtags

*Advanced*

- Hide someone's boosts without muting if you don't want to miss their posts.
- Make a list with news, etc. and then hide list members from your home feed to reduce noise/stress.

#MastodonMeta

I'm really leery of the new blocklist sharing feature being proposed as part of Masotdon's Sovereign Tech Agency funding. While I'm excited Mastodon is receiving an STF grant, blocklist abuse has been a recurring issue and I'm not eager to see it codified in the admin interface.

For those that weren't here a few years back, Mastodon has a pretty ugly history with blocklists. They've been repeatedly used to block sex positivity, kink, and LGBTQ+ content. While I agree there are a lot of really bad servers on the Fediverse, I'm nervous that blocklist sharing will lead to the same kinds of censorship we saw a few years back. Plus, and no shade to the people who use it, but the Fediblock hashtag has a lot of posts from people who operate on little to no proof of their claims, or who just want to abuse it.

To be totally honest though, my hangup with blocklists comes from the fact that CubHub still has to deal with being suspended by a lot of servers from a bad blocklist. We were wrongfully flagged because someone didn't bother to check our About page that clearly states we do not allow porn of under-age characters, because stupid people think "cub" automatically means cub porn. ​ It doesn't.

So yeah, I dunno. The other proposals look interesting, and, while I've never been one to think we really need E2EE on private messages and who thought it'd just introduce a lot of friction for users, I'm not opposed to it if they can get the UX of it working well.

#Mastodon #MastodonMeta #MastoMeta #Blocklist

Leave a 👍 if you have a github account and think that mastodon links should show the user's profile image in external link previews:

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/32016

IMO it would be nice if we could have our profile pictures in link previews instead of the Mastodon logo.

#MastodonMeta #Mastodon

I really need to get off my lazy ass and write an acceptable upload policy with more robust content warning guidelines, but I'm not exactly sure how or where to post an AUP page on Mastodon. ​ I don't want it to dominate the (already admittedly too long) About page.

#Mastodon #MastoMeta #MastodonMeta

Hello all!

We're currently trying to move this account to @technically_good (so do not be alarmed if you received a follow from there.)

The only thing is: Setting up the alias at the new account isn't going through at all, presumably due to the high latencies. Importing our follow list & auto-following anyone at #mstdnca fails as well, presumably for the same reason. 😔

Still trying to decide which instance we're going to go with. Setup has been quite the journey so far - hopefully the dust settles soon! 💜

#mastodonMeta #fediverse #migration

oh ok so *here's* a neat feature of #Mastodon lists that I had hitherto been unaware of:

You can set them to include replies from list members to:
- No one
- Members of the List
- Any followed user

This is REALLY COOL. The 🤯 option for me personally is to be able to include only replies that members of the list sent to other members of the list. Great for "Local" lists, or lists for a busy topic bubble!

You can also change this setting later!

#Fediverse #mastodonMeta #fediHelp

When you are recommending Mastodon or the Fediverse to friends who are not here yet, what do you point out to get them interested?

I'm not looking for a technical description, I'm asking because I'm interested in how you present the attractions and benefit.

And I'm not asking for advice! I'm posing the question because I suspect your answers will be wonderful. xo

#AskMastodon #MastodonMeta #AskFedi

Today I learned...

If you quote a toot within a private mention post, the person quoted can see the post, the same as if you mentioned their @.

And when I write it out that way, it is consistent with how Masto quote-boosts work (the quoted account is notified, like mentions) and with how Masto private posts work (anyone mentioned sees it). But… FYI. 🙊

(Not sure how this works on other Fedi servers.)

So much for using quote toots to send funny viral posts to friends privately.

#MastodonMeta

Setting notifications to mute with a timer is one of my favourite gifts to myself.

Sometimes I don't want to unfollow or block someone, but I don't want my TL full of whatever they're posting about at the moment. Temporary Notification Muting is an elegant solution.

For me, this is self care and it's one of my fave features on Mastodon.

#MastodonMeta #Gratitude #SelfCare