So many people are joining Mastodon and missing one crucial step: verifying your account!

You might think, “I’m not important, why should I care?” Think about it as a way to protect anyone who follows you. Consider:

1. Someone sets up an account claiming to be you, automatically grabbing real posts from somewhere else

2. They get a bunch of followers

3. They post, “really struggling this month, a little could go a long way” with a link to Cash App

How would any followers know it was a scam?

If you're confused about #linux systems like #fedora #silverblue or #opensuse microos they have public channels and forums that you can participate in to ask questions and find information. And in many cases you have access to the experts who work on the stuff! Or just ask someone who has experience with it.

Places like r/linux are inaccurate and overrun by people who have strong opinions about things they don't understand, which we know is par for the course but particularly bad recently.

Less than a month left to go for our 2022 membership campaign. Help us reach our goal! #JoinOSI

https://opensource.org/membership-benefits

Digital Ocean, provider of some of the most helpful tech tutorials around, just published one for how to set up #mastodon !

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mastodon-on-ubuntu-20-04

I wish this had existed before I stood up my own instance, but now it'll help others.