Mastodawn

Apparently there’s another influx of new folks here, so I guess I should give my best tidbit of advice:

You have to really actively seek out people to follow here, much more than you’re used to — and until you do, this place will feel •dead•. Cool stuff isn’t just going to show up. You won’t get many helpful suggestions. No tech giant marketing dept is spending millions to draw you in. It’s going to be •work•. It’s kind of a drag, tbh.

But: your people are out there!! You just have work to seek them out, one account at a time.

Paul Cantrell Oct 11

A thing I did when I was new to find good accounts to follow:

Whenever I saw a post I liked, I didn’t just follow that person. I looked at (1) who they were boosting in their timeline and (2) who •they• were following, so that each new good follow might turn into 5 or 10 new follows.

A week or two of that really helped me find my way to the communities I was looking for.

Paul Cantrell Oct 11

The irony here is of course that the people who most need to see these posts won’t because of the very problem I’m giving advice about solving

@inthehands Another one to me is following hashtags. If I see a hashtag on a post about an interest of mine, it is well worth checking it out and perhaps even following.

Lee 🏖️Oct 11

@inthehands I would also suggest making use of the Lists feature, otherwise you may end up following hundreds if not thousands of people but a lot of good posts will just get buried in your timeline/feed.

Ken Butler Oct 11

@beachcomber @inthehands I have a list called "peeps" of people I want to make sure I don't miss anything from. But you can certainly have a number of lists categorized any way you want.

This is SO important. If you see something you like, don't just follow the person who posted it.

Look at who they follow. If any of them seem vaguely interesting, follow them.... you can always unfollow later if they turn out not to be interesting

Dianora (Diane Bruce)Oct 11

@inthehands I used to do that on Twittler. Good tip here as well.

Jeffrey Yasskin Oct 11

@inthehands I wonder if @scottjenson might be able to think of a way to put this behavior into the default client...

Scott Jenson Oct 12

@jyasskin @inthehands we're actually working on this pretty hard right now. For 4.6 (early 2026) we're working on adding a stronger way to add recommended accounts. It's a version of BSky's starter packs but with some more trust and safety wrappers around it.

Jeffrey Yasskin Oct 12

@scottjenson Yep, I've seen the great progress on making it less dead to start with, but @inthehands pointed out a useful way to grow your network once you find a new person, which might be a good addition to the Follow flow.

Scott Jenson Oct 12

@jyasskin @inthehands Oh yeah, of course, that's a great flow. The trick is how best to encourage that. What they describe is exactly what I did. It's great advice.

I'd love to hear ideas on how to make that easier! If there are any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Jeffrey Yasskin Oct 12

@scottjenson @inthehands 2 ideas, which might already be in your plans: 1) encourage people to build their own starter packs organically, as we follow and boost people. E.g. the Nth time I star or boost someone's post, include a subtle prompt to add them to my starter pack (and maybe include a way to categorize them in case I want to build several starter packs).
2) when I follow someone, show a list of that person's starter packs (or their frequently starred and boosted people if they haven't made a starter pack), so I can take their recommendations on who to also follow. It might make sense to give me a "consider following these people" queue in case I don't have time to consider each person right away.

Scott Jenson Oct 12

@jyasskin @inthehands these are great ideas. I thought your prompt was to encourage following BEFORE we introduce packs. For example we could add some prompts to follow people to the welcome email, or some nudge when people are following with <X followers to follow more, etc

Lars Lehtonen Oct 11

@inthehands Follow fast, unfollow fast. No hard feelings.

Jake in the desert Oct 11

@inthehands did a similar thing. This and following hashtags helps so much.

Wayne Werner Oct 11

@inthehands boost hard and boost often

@inthehands A good way to start finding your new tribe is not to try to find people, but to follow hashtags that align with your personal interests.

@inthehands
What's causing the wave this time?

Paul Cantrell Oct 11

@jfparis
Some bluesky moderation fail, apparently

アイアンハンドガンダム Oct 11

@inthehands you can also follow hashtags that interest you and find people to follow that way too

Project 1789 Oct 11

My advice is don't be afraid to block what you are disinterested in. Otherwise the entirety of mastodon will seem to be dedicated to cats & photos of mushrooms etc.

Maier Amsden Oct 12

@JustRobForNow cats & mushrooms > everything else

Rob Zazueta Oct 11

@inthehands I'd add: It's worth the effort. Be persistent.

*_jߍyrope Oct 11

@Paul Cantrell Who likes myriads of dead bodies among their "friends" and "followers" anyway? nothing to boost one's own ego with, and eventually just a common phenomenon AND misconception of commercial social media as well :) enjoy

(your piano sounds great and special btw)

Paul Cantrell (@[email protected])

35.3K Posts, 732 Following, 8.08K Followers · Composer, pianist, programmer, professor, rabble rouser, redhead Computer Science at https://www.macalester.edu/mscs/ (Student projects: https://devgarden.macalester.edu) Artistic Director of https://newruckus.org Freelance dev, often with https://bustout.com Musical troublemaker https://innig.net/music/ The heart is the toughest part of the body. Tenderness is in the hands. — Carolyn Forché searchable

Hachyderm.io

Tim Bray Oct 11

@inthehands Another suggestion: Search works pretty well here. If you care about monotremes or klezmer or elliptic curves, seek and ye shall find.

RustyRing Oct 11

To be honest with you, I never had more than 1000 followers in 14 years on Twitter, either. Generally, it seems like this social media thing is just a come-on if you don't already have a large circle IRL.

It's OK, though. Just that, is a worthwhile life lesson.

Condor Puma Serpiente Oct 11

@inthehands On here, effort is the algorithm and it pays off way better dividends

Lou 🏳️‍⚧️Oct 11

@inthehands
And once you follow enough people and/or people that boost a lot, you'll get overwhelmed x) (No? Just me because I read everything in both my TLs? 🙈)

poetaster Oct 11

@inthehands ah, it did not take me more than a month to feel flooded! I think you do protest too much.

Paul Cantrell Oct 11

@poetaster
The very thread with which you are obnoxiously well-actuallying says “a week or two”

poetaster Oct 11

@inthehands I don't understand? I was only saying I felt like there were a lot of people popping up fairly quickly? What's obnoxious?

poetaster Oct 11

@poetaster ah, I still do not see the thread you refer to. Perhaps therein lies the confusion.

Kimota94 Oct 11

@inthehands I started with searching for people who I’d enjoyed following on Twitter. That got me a dozen or so accounts to follow. Then I paid attention to which people those dozen were boosting, some of which I began to follow. Then I used the Search (Magnifying Glass icon on the iPad Mastodon app) to browse posts “in the wild,” and that got me another several accounts to follow. I’ve been here a couple years now and it’s a much better experience than any other I’ve tried.

@inthehands I wonder why there is no "onboarding on mastodon" tutorial that can be enabled on a server for a tutorial on how mastodon works and what you have to do to see things... for new users at least.

Nicole Parsons Oct 11

Ah...the rewards of hard work resulting in worthwhile connections with real human beings...

The Bird Oct 11

@inthehands I followed a bunch of tags that related to my interests and found people that way. The following tags in most fediverse clients is the best thing ever honestly.

inomyabcs Oct 11

@inthehands Great points. Also, these may help: @FediFollows @FediTips

Helgi Crookehorne Oct 11

@inthehands it could be useful to search in hashtags, though as I've noticed most of such defenders of Palistinians would also insist that Ukrainians are not a nation but some colonial slaves of Russia and they need to surrender and die because the clowns have grudges against the US (and Israel!)

Blamellors Oct 11

@inthehands Welcome newbies .

Magnus Ahltorp Oct 11

@inthehands Apart from the great suggestions in the replies about searching and hashtags, I would also recommend looking in the ”Explore/Trending” at least once in a while to see things that are more generally popular. The posts might not be for you, and if you never find anything interesting there, look there less often or not at all.

0pt1cal_r1dge :3 🏳️‍⚧️ 🔞Oct 11

@inthehands After maining Bluesky for awhile, I really had to relearn all of that

Great advice, Paul!

And once you’ve followed a handful of folk, you can explore the followers of your followers with this

https://followgraph.vercel.app/

*if your Followers (settings > privacy) is set to private, you can temporarily set it to public in order to use the tool

Followgraph for Mastodon

Find people to follow on Mastodon by expanding your follow graph.

Lee 🏖️Oct 12

@inthehands Sadly this looks like it's not compatible with all Fediverse software, at least Gotosocial.

@inthehands all the new people have known each other for years, it's very alive on our side lol

Fedi.Tips Oct 11

There are things that can help you discover new people, for example following hashtags and following groups.

There's a complete list of all the ways to discover people on here at https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends

How do I discover accounts to follow on Mastodon and the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

Mastodon Migration Oct 12

And don't forget to have fun.

The Turtle Oct 12

@inthehands start with cat pictures... all else will follow.

On birdsite it was "follow librarians and lesbian authors.". And cat pictures.

@iveyline Oct 12

@inthehands It's worth it.

Johannes Link Oct 12

@inthehands I can see that you (seem to) follow 704 people but trying to access the list I get „no accounts in this list“. I guess it depends on client software and the instance one is on.

Claudius Link Oct 12

@jlink @inthehands
Interesting. I get a list (in Tusky) but far from the 700. Most of the accounts are people i follow too but not all

Johannes Link Oct 12

@realn2s @inthehands Of the 2000 you follow I can see a dozen.

Johannes Link Oct 12

@realn2s @inthehands On the web client I can follow a link to your instance which shows me all the people you follow, well at least a few thousand. Don’t know which clients allow that too.

Mark Wyner Won’t Comply

@inthehands good call. Searching, especially for hashtags, really helps. That’s how I found lots of folks to follow when I first arrived.

https://markwrites.io/guide-for-using-mastodon-search/

Mark W.rites - Guide for Using Mastodon Search: It’s Easier and More Powerful Than You Might Think

One of the biggest complaints I hear about Mastodon is that its local search is unusable. It certainly was. But not anymore. Now it’s quite powerful, if you kn…

Mark W.rites

Maier Amsden Oct 12

@inthehands I still prefer digging to being spoonfed outrage bait by Big Info.

Lord HeeHaw II Oct 12

@inthehands
Very good advice. Thank you.

ikuturso 🇪🇺Oct 12

@inthehands while we're also getting an implementation directly in Mastodon that will address some of the problems these can have I think starter packs as offered by Fedidevs can be really helpful for getting a new user set up with a follow list. I just wish there was even more of them for various topics available.

https://fedidevs.com/starter-packs/

Mastodon Starter Pack Directory | Fedidevs

Discover, create, and share Mastodon starter packs to help new users find interesting accounts to follow.

Cătă 🇷🇴🇺🇦🇲🇩🇪🇺Oct 12

@inthehands Not sure if it does much, but I reshared your post. Hopefully this will reach a wider audience

@inthehands I would agree, it takes time to find those with common interests or people to follow, but it grows organically. It feels so much better that way, sick of stuff being pushed at me by algorithms, I like to be able to search and find for myself.

Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦Oct 12

@inthehands @ShaulaEvans a useful shortcut for newcomers here: follow *hashtags* and look for folks there.