here's another free tip for all you lovely #TwitterMigration people:

you don't have to censor words here to evade search - there is no plain text search on Mastodon :) in fact, you actually shouldn't censor those words because then they won't be filtered out for all the people who set up filters. But you don't have to worry about random people jumping in your mentions because they name searched themselves - this just isn't possible on the fediverse :)

it's cool like that 

I think I now understand Elon's idea with Twitter!  

Ofc he knew people where gonna use the  pixels to impersonate others so they're now banning those people actively  

Basically Twitter now sells troll-subscriptions I guess  

I'd rather buy a lighter and set the rest on fire. At least I have a lighter then 

Now Signal has "Stories", too?!

What's this obsession with copying the same shitty feature across 50 services. You're a messenger, not another flippin' social network 🙄

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

I was just now listening to my playlist full of game songs and as soon as "Dragonborn" started playing, my calendar reminded me that tomorrow is Skyrim's anniversary LMAO WHAT

#music #GameSoundrack #Skyrim #SkyrimAnniversary #Bethesda

#Introduction post!

My name is Hari Rana, but I'm known as TheEvilSkeleton online. I go by he/him. I'm from Montréal, Canada.

I'm a blog writer who writes articles about the Linux desktop, mainly GNOME and Flatpak.

I am currently a part of the Fedora QA team, member of the GNOME Foundation, developer of Bottles and Upscaler and writer and editor at Fedora Magazine. I'm looking to work.

Due to Mastodon's limit, I can't go in depth. Feel free to look at my About page: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/about