Oh my goodness... a LOT of new people... đŽ Welcome! đ
If you need help with using Mastodon and the Fediverse, have a look at:
âĄď¸ https://fedi.tips
It's written for a non-technical audience, and hopefully answers most beginners' questions.
If you're looking for accounts to follow, there are lots of ways to do it summarised here:
If you have any problems, ask me and I'll try to help!
...also:
-You only need to sign up on one server. The servers communicate to form a single network. People from different servers can follow and interact with each other.
-Don't sign up on mastodon.social, it's way too overloaded. You will have a nicer experience on a different server. You can find well-run reliable servers at https://joinmastodon.org/servers and https://fedi.garden
-You can always move and keep your followers/follows if you ever change your mind about being on a particular server
The reason this place works and is safer than Twitter is because people are spread out on many servers. If people all crowd onto one server, it can be dangerous for the network as a whole.
It also makes mastodon.social harder to moderate if everyone is on there. Moderation tends to work better on smaller servers.
Also, servers are all independently owned and set their own rules, and some have nice extra features (like higher character limits etc),
p.s. If you want a more detailed answer there are several reasons why this place is on many servers:
https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/
If you have a telephone, there might be different terms of service for different phone providers, but they all make calls to each other. It's a bit like that.
You don't need to know what is from which server most of the time, but if you want to check just look at the account address of the person posting. You can see it underneath their name on posts and on their profile:
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There are themed sections on here, but most of the time they are cross-server so things like hashtags (which you can follow) or discussion group accounts (which you can also follow).
Each server does have a "Local" timeline, which on large servers is just a random firehose but on smaller servers is a fun little community feed.
Also, there are non-Mastodon servers on the Fediverse which you can follow such as the Reddit-style Kbin (example server: https://kbin.social).
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Yeah, it is a bit different to what people are used to. But it does make more sense once you've been here a while :)
For example, if you experience a problem with how one server is run and you're able to move to another without losing your friends, it is really REALLY nice to be on here. On centralised networks like Twitter or Facebook it's "my way or the highway" if they run it badly because they have no choice of servers there.
FediTips has moved!
Ric Bixter
