A front page article on the Washington Post telling people how to get started with Mastodon?

That’s a big deal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/17/how-to-join-mastodon/

For your first day on Mastodon, just a few humbly suggested steps! Welcome to the party!

1) Consider if you're on the server for you, your hobbies, and your moderation desires. You can always migrate your account, later. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

2) Make a profile! These can be longer than Twitter ones - and you can format them with line breaks, italics (using asterix), and loads of emoji if your server supports markup. Check the emoji on your server, here! https://emojos.in/

3) If you liked who you followed on Twitter, use https://debirdify.pruvisto.org/ and/or https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ to create a csv of all the people you followed there to upload into Mastodon, using the web menu option Preferences > Import. Now you are following the same folks!

4) Using https://debirdify.pruvisto.org/, you can also export your Twitter blocklist, and import it using the same function in Mastodon.

5) Create an introduction post! Use lots of hashtags to help people find you and your interests, as there's no algorithm or string search function here. Make sure to add the hashtag introduction!

6) Get used to using hashtags in your posts regularly, so that people can find them manually or using the hashtag following function, or the rss feed function.

7) Use CWs liberally, to help people decide what to see. Follow your server's guidelines, but definitely CW those movie spoilers!

8) Use alt text in your images whenever possible, to help people with screen readers enjoy it here, too!

9) Enjoy your new community, and have a lot of fun!

#MastodonTips #MastodonNewbie

Notice something interesting from this Wired article?

Media is already branding Mastodon as "Twitter's most popular alternative".

Not Post, not Hive, not Gab—it's Mastodon.

And once a media narrative takes shape, that becomes the story.
https://www.wired.com/story/mastodon-features-that-twitter-should-steal-but-wont/

If Musk "steps down" as Twitter CEO, per his latest bogus "poll", some things to remember:

1) He'll still be in control. The owner sets the policy the CEO carries out. The owner decides in the end.

2) He lies incessantly. Nothing he says can be trusted, ever.

3) Big Journalism will breathlessly cover the charade as if it meant something, and will continue to support a man who loathes honest reporting and has contempt for genuine freedom of expression.

Twitter was transformed into a vital tool the Black community used to amplify its collective voice to protest injustice, organize, commiserate, and spread its unique brand of tastemaking cool, humor and wit. In 2019, I wrote about how for Black people, quitting Twitter was never an easy cut-and-dry proposition as it is for those far more privileged. Revisiting this piece now is very bittersweet. #BlackMastodon #BlackTwitter

https://medium.com/free-thinkr/why-quitting-twitter-is-not-so-clear-cut-for-african-americans-and-other-marginalized-groups-b794d2746f1a