I met Matthias Keller on Patrick Beja’s Phileas Club when we were both guests on episode 114 entitled “The Social Media Sickness”. Matthias mentioned how he’s on Mastodon, which is a new-ish social network. I’ve tried to figure Mastodon out, and hadn’t cracked the code, so I asked Matthias if he could come on Chit Chat Across the Pond and explain to us how it works and why he thinks it’s useful and fun. Matthias explains what federated instances are, how the local timeline works and how you can follow people who aren’t in your instance.
If you’d like to connect with Matthias on Mastodon you can find him at: @[email protected]. He also says you can still find him on Twitter at @Matzekult. I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet, but you can find me on Mastodon at @[email protected]
Matthias mentioned during the show that there are tools out there for finding instances to join. I asked him (without warning them) what they were. He didn’t have them off the top of his head, but after the show he compiled this list of helpful sites:
- Tool for finding instances – https://instances.social/ (limited)
- Search for (hash)tags used on different instances – https://mastodon-tags-explorer.hcxp.co/tags
- Tools to view the public timeline of instances – https://mastovue.glitch.me/ & http://www.unmung.com/mastoview
- Official Mastodon site with instance picker – https://joinmastodon.org/#getting-started
- Website with data about instances (Mastodon Monitoring Project) – https://mnm.social/
- One of the many lists with some tools for Mastodon – https://chriswere.neocities.org/links.html#mastodon
- A guide to Mastodon I found while searching that isn’t a clickbaity tech
site (it’s mostly up to date it seems although not everything in there
is probably relevant for everyone) – https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon/ - A list with suggestions for people to follow sorted by topics (which
will always be incomplete, so look for people on your own as well 😉 – https://communitywiki.org/trunk
Just a small follow-up:
Maybe I overstated the importance of searching for an instance a little bit and since we were just winging it we probably spend a little too much time on that specific subject. I just wanted to convey the concept, that Mastodon is all about the people you talk to and that searching for them in a surrounding with similar interests might be a little bit easier. Also a common complaint from people joining a(ny) new service is that they are either alone or that there is too much going and they don’t know where to start. Hence the idea of a smaller more “specialized” instance.
But as I said: there is nothing wrong with signing up for any of the larger instances and just dive in. It doesn’t limit you in terms of functionality etc.
Also I think I misspoke at some point and wanted to prevent any confusion in case it wasn’t clear: There is a function that allows “retweets”, just not one that allows retweets in combination with a comment or a quote.
retweet = boost
commented retweet / quote = N/A
The idea being: a good post is good on its own, simply boost it to share it with others. And if you want to praise/criticize something do it by directly addresssing the person and start a conversation.
Also keep in mind: since Mastodon has a chronological timeline and no sorting algorithm behind it, favorits only show the creator that you liked the post but won’t make it more visible to others. If you want to draw attention to a toot, boost it!
Thank you
I’m really curious about this social media platform now.
I’ll join up and see if I can get a handle on how it all works 😀