Went to reply and apparently I've reached my daily limit.
20 seems pretty low honestly.
Two excellent, in-depth guides to Mastodon, which should answer many of your questions, are here:
1. An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon by joyeusenoelle: https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon
2. Nikodemus' Guide to Mastodon: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D9gfeKg_-hlsU66R-dLEvUeyMsqEfyIx2pnfUeX0t_E/edit#heading=h.j95atvlbfrn5
*PLEASE BOOST THIS POST* so more people can see this information in their timelines, thank you so much! ❤️
To boost, just click on the boost button below this post, as indicated by the red arrow in the attached image (the icon may vary a bit, by app):
Many of the journalists Elon suspended today on Twitter are here on #Mastodon. Please follow and boost:
Drew Harwell, Washington Post
@drewharwell
Donie O’Sullivan, CNN
@donieosullivan
Steve Herman, VOA
@w7voa
Micah Lee, Intercept
@micahflee
Tony Webster
@tony
Matt Binder, Mashable
@MattBinder
With each new surge of Mastodon users, I feel the need to point out:
1. Welcome!
2. There is a learning curve here, but most people find it short and not very steep. Play around, explore. You'll get it.
3. Lots of people are willing to help.
4. Yes, it's different than Twitter. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes not. But you'll figure it out.
5. With surges especially, things sometimes get slow/glitchy, but they usually get fixed pretty quick.
Be patient.