Just a reminder that federated, user-run social networks like Mastodon won’t leave you out to dry like tumblr’s about to. You’ll always be able to find an instance with rules you like – one that allows explicit content, bans Nazis and TERFs, etc. And if you don’t, you can MAKE one with rules you like. And you’ll still be able to interact with the larger fediverse no matter where you are
I’m going to start investigating ways to post more of my content on the fediverse and slowly start easing away from tumblr in hopes that this place finally dies. Follow me @socalledunitedstates@sunbeam.city
Mastodon(ɔ): It won’t fuck you over!
@socalledunitedstates Thanks for the info. Perhaps you can post some more about Mastodon for those who are unfamiliar like me. I just watched the about video on their website. How do you prevent the community from becoming too fragmented?
Mastodon uses the ActivityPub standard, meaning that each toot (post) has a predictable format and means of interface, and so you can see toots and follow users from other instances as if they’re your own. You can also block users on other instances, and your moderation team can silence entire instances if they get toxic
What’s even better is that Mastodon isn’t the only site that uses ActivityPub. Pleroma, Friendica, Hubzilla, Diaspora, write.as, and even the video sharing site Peertube and the audio site FunkWhale, among a growing list of others, can all interact with Mastodon in the exact same way that Mastodon interacts with itself. Far from being fragmented, the fediverse is more interconnected than anything else online!
Cool Cool. Any tips on getting started with Mastodon? How do we follow folks with weird interests?
It works just like Twitter – you can look through hashtags to see who’s posting about what. Most people make a post with the hashtag #introductions and then put up a bunch of tags to attract followers, so that’s a good way to make friends with people
Edit: What instance you join doesn’t matter much since they all talk, and switching instances is common and almost expected. There are lots of general instances though. I wouldn’t recommend joining mastodon.social since it’s the most popular by far and putting everyone on one instance kinda defeats the purpose. octodon.social is one general one that I’ve seen some good folks on
I know octodon.social is closed right now to new members, but there are many other general instances such as mastodon.xyz and mastodon.host. I’m pretty sure if you got to joinmastodon.com it gives you a list of some of the more popular instances to choose from. Also it’s pretty common for users to join mastodon under one of these general instances and once they’ve found their place in the community they’ll join a more specialised instance.