Fediverse/Mastodon primer

The "Fediverse" is a decentralized collection of software and services communicating with via the ActivityPub protocol (and sometimes other protocols). In other words, it's a bunch of websites that all talk to each other, run by lots of different people. It's neat.

This is my little guide for getting into decentralized social media—in particular, Mastodon (which works kinda like Twitter, and makes for a good starting point because it's relatively well-known and easy to join).

tl;dr

A very good step before anything here is to just look around! Go to mastodon.social or to the account of someone you know, and check out the trending posts, click into people's profiles, follow links to other instances, see who people are following, etc. It's easiest to think of this as a bunch websites that talk to each other ('cause that's what it is) and embrace the web-iness of it—the friction is part of the fun.

When you're ready to dive in:

1. Sign up for an account on a Mastodon server. There's a decent list here, but the important thing is to find one that does a manual review of sign-ups instead of open registration, and that you're comfortable with the server rules. Some recommendations: mas.to, social.coop (I'm here), beige.party, social.lol.
2. Introduce yourself. Set a profile picture, bio, and maybe a background image. Then, make your first post introducing yourself, using the #introduction hashtag.
3. Fill up your feed. Your "timeline" will only show you what you explicitly follow, so be liberal with the follow button. Find things you like, and then see who those people follow. Another good way to get outside your social circle is to follow hashtags you're interested in.

Nitty gritty

Here are more detailed takes on a bunch of other aspects of Mastodon/the Fediverse

More on establishing a feed

Actually following people is critical to making Mastodon worth your time—there's no automatic algorithm, so you only see what you decide to follow.

One of the best ways to find cool people is to find someone neat and look at who they follow. These people may be on different servers, which means the full list of followers may not show up if you're looking at it from your own account: to get around this, there should be a "view on <account>'s instance" option somewhere (maybe under a three-dots setting button) that will take you to the website where the account actually lives.

Another great way to find things to follow is checking out hashtags. You can search hashtags, and if you find one with interesting posts going on, you can follow the whole hashtag to get any posts tagged with it in your feed. (This also means that using hashtags in your own posts is a good idea!). Local hashtags are handy to follow (e.g. for your state or city). One of my favorite general hashtags is #AskFedi, where people post general questions or ask for recommendations—it's a fun way to see little opportunities to be helpful to strangers you can turn into friends.

"Boosting", or re-sharing a post, a big part of the algo-free networking—you'll see boosted posts from people you follow, and any post you boost will be show up in your followers' feeds.

Be liberal with liking, boosting, and hashtags; they're the things that make the network go 'round!

Social norms

The Fediverse and Mastodon in particular sometimes have...strong social norms. Since there's no central authority, you can technically do whatever you want, but it's nice to be nice.

Some tips:

• First of all, there are a contingent of vocal people that think of themselves as the HOA of the entire platform and try to aggressively police norms. Don't be these people. There's a difference between offering friendly advice and harassing someone into compliance.
• Add alt text to images you post. Alt text is a big deal for people with sight disabilities, or using screen readers, or who just want to know more about an image. It's an easy accessibility step you can take, and many people will even intentionally avoid sharing alt text-less posts out of solidarity, or will reply to posts they see without alt text with their own descriptions.
• Be thoughtful about replying. One implementation detail that has haunted Mastodon for years is that you might not be able to see all the replies to a post! This means it's easy for something to turn into a dogpile, even if well-intentioned (and especially if not well-intentioned). Before replying to a popular post, it's worth considering—or even checking—whether there are already other replies saying the same thing.
• Use content warnings if you're posting something people might not want to see. There's a lot of discourse about what should be hidden behind a content warning; some cases are usually explicitly covered in server rules, like nudity. People also use content warnings for content that may be triggering, or stuff that's annoying/noisy, or even just as a joke setup. You'll get a feel for how you want to use content warnings, but just don't forget that it's a handy tool in your toolbox for being a conscientious internet citizen.
• Listen to Black people. Mastodon in particular has had a history of being an unwelcoming place for Black and POC users because of an infuriating mixture of social, technological, and governance issues. It's worth going out of your way to follow the people who have stuck around and to take their insights seriously.

Server selection

The server you pick is usually not a huge deal...but can also dictate who you can interact with, how much harassment and abuse you encounter, and whether your account continues to exist at all. Lots of smart people have written lots of smart things about picking Fediverse servers, here are a couple points from me:

• Moderation and governance are most important factors in joining a server. If your server lets in a lot of bad actors, you're going to see a lot of bad actors (and you might stop seeing some interesting people, because other servers might entirely cut your server off to save themselves the trouble). Relatedly, because there's not a billion-dollar company backing your server, it's handy to know whether yours has plans in place if the people actually running it day-to-day get sick or burnt out or bored. If it shuts down, you'll have to move, which isn't the end of the world, but is inconvenient.
• Hobby-based servers are an anti-pattern. Your account is your whole identity; do you really love TTRPGs or gardening or the San Francisco Bay Area so much that you want to put your internet presence solely in the hands of your book club leader?

Software selection

Mastodon isn't the be-all-end-all of social networks. It's an easy place to get started, but there are other cool and promising platforms like GoToSocial, Akkoma, Bonfire, PeerTube, Funkwhale, snac, and dozens more. The fun thing about the protocols behind all of these is that they can federate and interact with each other, so you can follow a PeerTube channel from your Mastodon account and like a reaction from someone's GoToSocial instance.

Some of these are better than others. For example, I didn't list Pixelfed above because it doesn't play nicely with others—if you're not on the main server, it's a ghost town, even if you're following lots of people.

Clients

Because Mastodon (and pretty much all other Fediverse/ActivityPub servers) are just websites, there are lots of ways to interact with them! Your user interface comes from a "client", and there are lots of options. You can just log in to your server's website itself, or you can download purpose-built apps that come with alternative layouts and features. I'm a big fan of Phanpy, which just runs in a web browser and has made some really nice design choices.