There have been a lot of fresh faces here recently. If you're totally new to Mastodon or the Fediverse, welcome! 👋
It works a bit like email: you only need to sign up on one site, because you can follow people on other sites as the sites talk to each other. Telephones are similar, you can call people on other phone networks without having to buy a new phone, because phone networks are all connected together.
There are lots of good reasons why the Fediverse works like this, here's a thread explaining more about this: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/107083735491993183
If you're looking for people to follow, here are a couple of good places to try:
Trunk is a community-run opt-in directory of people looking for followers, you can browse it at https://communitywiki.org/trunk
FediFollows is a directory of accounts dedicated to specific topics, you can browse it at https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/106855947486154929
If you have any questions about Mastodon or the Fediverse, @ me or DM me!
If you're used to centralised networks like Facebook, you may be wondering why Mastodon and the Fediverse are spread across thousands of sites. Why not just have a single site where people sign up? There are many important reasons, but maybe the most important is this: Networks on single sites tend to be bought by bad people when they get popular 😠 It happened to Instagram (bought by Facebook), it happened to Whatsapp (bought by Facebook), it happened to YouTube (bought by Google). It can happen to ANYTHING built entirely around one site. No matter how much you trust the people who run a site, when someone offers them billions of dollars they may just take the money. Decentralised networks, where there is no central site, are much more resistant to buyouts. No one owns the global email network, thousands of indie players like @[email protected] and @[email protected] are able to offer alternatives, and if one provider behaves badly you can switch to a different provider. #FediTips #Fediverse