Interest in the open-source social media platform known as Mastodon has risen again as users look for an alternative to Twitter, should Elon Musk’s acquisition spell the end of the website as we know it .
If you’re fleeing the sinking ship of Twitter for Mastodon’s potential life raft, or wondering if you will, here’s what you need to know.
Welcome to the Fediverse
The first thing to note is that Mastodon is
what is known as a “federated” network, a collection of thousands of social networks running on servers around the world that are linked by common Mastodon technology, on a platform known as the “Fediverse”.
You sign up to a specific server, which is run by whoever set it up, usually volunteers who do it out of pocket or who take donations through Patreon. They will have their own rules and policies about, for example, who can join and how strictly the conversation will be moderated.
You can even start your own server if you want to set the rules yourself. Otherwise, there is a list of servers that focus on specific locations or topics of interest. All servers on this list have subscribed to the “Mastodon agreement” which promises “active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia”.
Whichever Mastodon server(s) you sign up to, however, you can follow users on another one without any problems.
Oh, and since this is a volunteer-run system, there are no paid ads in your feed.
Usernames are different
Once you choose a username and set up your account with a header image and profile picture, you’re good to go. Unlike Twitter, your username will be @[username]@[the Mastodon instance you signed up to]. So, for example, you could be @MuskyElon@aus.social. Think of it like an email address: the first part is your chosen ID, the second part is the organization that handles your inbox.
There are apps on iOS and Android that allow you to sign in to your Mastodon accounts.
Finding Twitter users is a task
If you want to track down all the people you follow on Twitter in Mastodon, there’s unfortunately no easy way to do it.
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You can start looking for those you know or go back to Twitter and see if they’ve announced their move. Services like Twitodon allow you to log in with your Twitter and Mastodon accounts and scan for users you follow. But you will only be able to find those users who have also used Twitodon.
Once you’ve followed some people you’ve found on Twitter, you can check their lists to find others you might know.
Posting is similar but different
For starters, you might have to get used to calling your posts “toots” instead of “tweets.”
On the plus side, you’ll have almost twice as many characters (500) to write a post and additional features like clickable spoiler warnings for text and images.
You’ll have more control over who can see your post, from being discoverable through the server to only those you mention in the post, similar to a DM.
Hashtags work similarly to Twitter for trending topics, and you can share someone else’s post with your followers by promoting it, which works just like retweeting. But there is no such thing as “quote quoting”.
Verification is easy and free
There has been a lot of drama on Twitter over Musk’s decision to require people to pay for verification, while at the same time not verifying that they are who they say they are. Mastodon has a verification system available to everyone with their own website.
If you link to a website you control on your profile, then you can be recognized as the owner of that website, giving your followers some justification to trust that you are who you say you are.