{"id":27395,"date":"2022-12-10T07:13:22","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T15:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=27395"},"modified":"2022-12-11T17:37:56","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T01:37:56","slug":"mastodon-is-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/mastodon-is-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Come Join the Fun in Mastodon \u2014 I Promise, It’s Easy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you remember when you first heard about Twitter? Do you remember thinking it sounded silly and you didn\u2019t think it had any legs? Remember thinking the word \u201ctweet\u201d sounded idiotic? Do you remember finally joining Twitter, but then being baffled by it, wondering why everyone was so excited? And remember wondering, \u201cWho do I follow and how do I find people?\u201d<\/p>\n

I bet you’re having all of those same questions about Mastodon. If \u201ctweet\u201d sounded silly, how about \u201ctoot\u201d? That\u2019s what it\u2019s called when you post on Mastodon. My goal in this article is to make Mastodon a bit less baffling, to offer a bit of advice on how to proceed on a few parts of it, and how to have some fun.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m having a really good time on Mastodon. It\u2019s fresh and new and people are especially interactive. I encourage you to go in and kick the tires a bit and see if it\u2019s a service that might make you happy. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to unseat Twitter in the end, but for right now, it\u2019s a very pleasant place to hang out and have some fun while we wait for the dust to settle.<\/p>\n

Mastodon Confusion<\/h3>\n

As hard as it was to wrap our collective brains around Twitter, Mastodon adds a nice extra layer of complexity. Before you can join Mastodon, you have to decide which instance you\u2019re going to join, where an instance is just a fancy name for a server. But get this: it doesn\u2019t matter which instance you join.<\/p>\n

I say that for a couple of reasons, the most important of which is, if you decide at any time you don\u2019t like the instance you\u2019re on, you can move. When you move, you don\u2019t lose any followers and you don\u2019t lose the people you\u2019ve chosen to follow. I accidentally created two accounts on different server instances, and I was able to freeze one of them and make it an alias for the other, which combined my followers and the people I was following on the two accounts. No one was the wiser.<\/p>\n

On Twitter, you follow specific people, and you can look at things like trending, or follow a hashtag. You can do the exact same thing from all Mastodon servers, because they’re federated. That means that while different people are managing all of these different servers, you can still find people and trending topics on all servers.<\/p>\n

If you want to chat with a small group of people with a specialized interest, then choosing a server that specializes in that topic might make sense, but for most people I’d suggest choosing a server with wide interests rather than specialized.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why I give the one caveat about not choosing a server that\u2019s too<\/em> specialized.
\nWhen I suggested to Steve that he might want to join Mastodon, we talked about what instance he should join. He\u2019s super into astronomy so I suggested the instance astrodon.social. It\u2019s been great, but it\u2019s actually put him into an odd position. While he really likes astronomy, he doesn\u2019t just<\/em> like astronomy. If he wants to post about physics, that\u2019s probably still of interest to that community, but what if he wants to post a picture of our restained back fence, or of our dog Tesla looking goofy? Seems out of place.<\/p>\n

Some servers have had to cut off adding people because the influx has been so massive, but don’t be discouraged by that. You could try mstdn.social<\/a> that Bart chose, or the geek-oriented one hachyderm.io<\/a> Or you could go to joinmastodon.org<\/a> to pick one. But remember it doesn’t matter if you change your mind later.<\/p>\n

But what does it actually mean<\/em> to be part of an instance and what does that have to do with who you follow? Steven Goetz asked this very question and I think I came up with a good analogy to explain it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you and your cousin go to different high schools. You can talk to your cousin and find out what\u2019s going on in their lives, and they can tell you what their high school friends are doing, but you can\u2019t see everything<\/em> going on in their high school. You can, however, see everything that\u2019s going on in your own high school.<\/p>\n

In Mastodon, someone you\u2019re following is like your cousin in the other high school. It doesn\u2019t matter if you and I are on different instances, we can follow each other and we miss nothing. The people you follow can expose you to things going on in their server (therehigh school), and you can see everything going on in your own server (your high school).<\/p>\n

Hopefully that analogy helped explain how you can be on different servers and still see toots by other people. Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve closed your eyes and blindly chosen an instance to join. Just like when you joined Twitter, your first question is how to find people to follow and especially how to find the people you were already following on Twitter.<\/p>\n

Because so many people are either abandoning Twitter altogether or at least hedging their bets by testing out Mastodon, something wonderful has happened. People started putting their Mastodon accounts into their Twitter profiles. A full Mastodon name is @YourHandle@YourInstance, or it can be written as YourInstance.extension\/@YourHandle, e.g. chaos.social\/@podfeet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s great that people are putting their Mastodon handles into their profiles on Twitter, imagine how tedious it would be to comb through all of the people you follow on Twitter to find them. Let\u2019s say you even have the patience to do that once, what if the next day someone on your list adds their Mastodon info? Are you going to comb through all of the people you follow every day?<\/p>\n

Of course not. And that\u2019s where the Internet comes in to help yet again. There\u2019s a fabulous tool at movetodon.org<\/a> that solves this pesky problem. When you go to movetodon, you\u2019ll be asked to give authorization to the tool to access both your Twitter and Mastodon accounts. This is exactly the step you go through when you install a Twitter app – it has to have the authority to allow it to pull the info from your accounts.<\/p>\n

\"Log
Log Into Twitter at movetodon.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Log
Log into Mastodon at movetodon.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Authorize
Authorize movetodon to Use Your Mastodon account<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once you\u2019ve authorized the tool, it will show you a very nicely formatted list of the people it has found. You can see their avatar, their name, their Twitter account, and their full Mastodon account. If you hover over this area, you\u2019ll get a popup with their full bio. This will help you remember who they are and whether they\u2019re still interesting.<\/p>\n

You can see when they joined Mastodon and how long they\u2019ve been active on the service. To the far right of each name it found, you\u2019ll see a big, purple Follow button to follow the person on Mastodon, and if you\u2019ve already followed them, the button will say \u201cFollowing”. This makes it super easy to follow people and you can just go back to the page once in a while to find more folks.<\/p>\n

\"Movetodon
Movetodon Showing People I Can Follow and Those I Have Already Followed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They also provide a \u201cFollow All\u201d button, but I recommend against this. Consider this a nuke and pave opportunity. You\u2019re really starting fresh, so I suggest looking at each person and questioning whether they actually give you joy. If they don\u2019t, just skip them and look for those who do. Bart said on Let’s Talk Apple that he has really culled his Mastodon list down from what he had on Twitter and I’ve done the same. No angry people, no people who don’t give me joy. I think that’s one of the reason I think I’m enjoying Mastodon so much.<\/p>\n

Some Basics of Mastodon<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s talk about some basics of Mastodon. Instead of “tweeting”, you “toot” on Mastodon. Some people are trying to change it to “post”, but that’s boring. I think tooting is fun.<\/p>\n

When you retweet on Twitter, it means that you\u2019re exposing the clever tweet you saw to the people who follow you. On Mastodon they call this same action “boosting”. Right now when so many new folks are looking for accounts to follow, boosting is super important on Mastodon. I follow April Menendez on Mastodon @aprilm@mstdn.social<\/a> and she follows a lot of great photographers. When she sees an image she likes, she boosts it, so now I see them in my feed and I find photographers I might want to follow. It\u2019s a chain of happiness.<\/p>\n

Now here\u2019s the interesting thing. On Twitter, you can quote-tweet (e.g. retweeting while commenting) but on Mastodon, you can only boost, or comment, not both at the same time. This was an intentional choice by the founder of Mastodon, Eugene Rochko<\/a>. He felt that quote-tweeting encouraged toxicity because your comment is to your audience, not to the person who created the original tweet. With comments you have to talk directly to the person who wrote the toot, which he hopes will encourage more civilized behavior.<\/p>\n

I see his point, but I do find so many times I really want to tell people why I\u2019m boosting a toot \u2014 why I think it\u2019s interesting or funny or what memory it surfaced. I can boost a toot (which is just fun to say) and I can make a comment, so I suppose my followers might still see the comment.<\/p>\n

There don\u2019t appear to be any great clients out there for Mastodon just yet, but Tapbots, the makers of Tweetbot are hard at work on a Mastodon client called Ivory. It\u2019s not quite in public beta yet but those on the private beta say it\u2019s pretty awesome. For now, I’m using Metatext on iOS<\/a> and Mastonaut on the Ma<\/a>c. They’re passable but seem to be missing some features.<\/p>\n

But before worrying about getting a dedicated client, just log into your instance via the web and you\u2019ll get a full-featured experience. I was originally confused by a few terms, so let me explain them. In all clients and the web interface, you\u2019ll see Home, Local, and Public\/Federated.<\/p>\n

Home<\/strong> is where you see can read toots and boosts by people you have followed. It\u2019s essentially what you would see if you were using a third-party Twitter client like Tweetbot.<\/p>\n

Local<\/strong> is everyone talking on your server instance. For Steve with Astrodon.social, that\u2019s awesome because it\u2019s all astronomy talk. For me on chaos.social, it\u2019s completely random and a fair percentage of it is in languages I don\u2019t speak. Local is like your high school. You may or may not have anything in common with all of those people. If it’s a large server, the feed might be scrolling past pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

\"Local
Local Timeline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Federated\/Public<\/strong> is where you can see everyone on every instance talking. It\u2019s a rapidly flowing river of the conversation of the world.<\/p>\n

\"Federated
Federated Timeline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Once I found enough people to follow using movetodon, I have chosen to limit myself to just reading Home. It\u2019s chatty enough but not too chatty. In fact, it’s pretty similar to my Twitter experience, except with less anger.<\/p>\n

There is also a notification tab and it tells you when people follow you, star something you tooted, or boost a toot of yours. If you\u2019re super popular it can get a bit noisy but if you\u2019re a regular person it can be a happy place.<\/p>\n

\"Follow
Follow #Astronomy Using the Web Interface<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Through the web interface, if you search for hashtags, you can follow them just as though they were people. I recommend #astronomy for the pretty pictures and maybe some science!<\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/h3>\n

The bottom line is that there\u2019s a lot I still need to and want to learn about Mastodon but I\u2019m really enjoying myself. As I said to Bodie Grimm, get on over to Mastodon, it\u2019s like Twitter but way less cranky pants. I hope you\u2019ll come over and join us. You can find me at @podfeet@mastodon.social<\/a> and @spsheridan@astrondon.social<\/a> and don’t forget to put your<\/em> Mastodon address in your Twitter profile so I can find you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you remember when you first heard about Twitter? Do you remember thinking it sounded silly and you didn\u2019t think it had any legs? Remember thinking the word \u201ctweet\u201d sounded idiotic? Do you remember finally joining Twitter, but then being baffled by it, wondering why everyone was so excited? And remember wondering, \u201cWho do I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[5614,639,5615,2805,3192,5613,73],"class_list":["post-27395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-followers","tag-following-selector","tag-hashtags","tag-instance","tag-mastodon","tag-server-instance","tag-twitter","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Mastodon-Logo.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27395"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27417,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27395\/revisions\/27417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}