Mastodon: the how and the why. A basic guide to get you started
Some of us have been around long enough to remember the birth, the rise and the fall of Yahoo Groups. And how can we forget what happened after Napster died? Not to mention the golden age of Live Journals. That’s to say, when one platform falls from grace, another one is created and mass migrations are really nothing new.
Now, the Musk-bomb has shifted the general attention to an alternative that actually started existing in 2016: the already almost-famous Mastodon.
Mastodon currently has “only” 6 million users, but the numbers are growing fast, thanks to the shenanigans of yet another eccentric billionaire. So now we have an elephant instead of a bird, but and elephant that deserves attention for several reasons. And yes, at least in some cases, it also saves people 8 bucks.
I tried to understand how it works, starting from the basics, and it’s really not difficult. Believe me, if I can, you can too.
What is Mastodon and why it’s less problematic
Mastodon is not a social network, it’s an open source microblogging platform founded by Eugen Rochko, a German programmer, but it’s not owned by a single person/company like Twitter or Facebook. This means, for example, no advertising, no algorithms that control what we see on the timeline, no governments shutting it down, no collection and sale of personal data.
Is it even possible? Yes, because Mastodon is a like a box with something like 14,000 independent servers inside, spread all over the world. These servers host hundreds of communities that follow their own rules. As someone has already said, it’s as if Mastodon was a network of 14,000 small, independent Twitters.
A new terminology: Instances and Fediverse
The first thing you’ve got to do is to learn a small bunch of new words that will help you navigate Mastodon. This is probably the only difficult step.
The Instances
The first term to familiarize yourself with, which is actually not too user friendly, is this: Instance.
An Instance is simply a community hosted on Mastodon. Each Instance, being basically a mico-Twitter in its own right, has admins and rules to be respected. These rules usually refer to a general code of conduct valid for all Mastodon users: no violent, racist, pedophile content, etc.
When you join and Instance, your data and whatever you post end up on the Instance’s server. Only admins can access that data. Oh, and if you misbehave they can kick you out.
If you don’t find anything to your liking, you could choose to found your own Instance but you need the technical and economic capacity to manage/purchase a server and a domain. The software to manage everything is also open source and therefore free.
The Fediverse
The name comes from Federation + Universe. Nothing to worry about, but it’s another word you need to know if you don’t want to feel too lost.
All Instances taken together form the Fediverse. Think of classrooms within a school, or planets within a galaxy.
Inside the Fediverse there is complete freedom of movement and communication. Users who subscribed to different Instances can always interact and follow each others.
Alright, so how do we actually use Mastodon?
First you need to register an account. Where, exactly? On an Instance. You can go on Mastodon official web site and choose an Instance that seems interesting to you. Here’s a LIST of the most active all over the world.
You simply register with your email address, wait for the confirmation email and then find yourself on an interface that is not very different from Twitter’s one.
Also, now you have an account that looks like an email address. Something like @yourname@instancename and you can customize your profile like on any other social network.
Once you sign up, what you’ll see is this. In my case there is the cosmic void because I just signed up. It’s also in Italian because I joined an Italian server (well no, an Instance, I joined an Instance).
The left column is where tweets are sent from, except that we call them TOOTs, here. The limit is 500 characters and it’s possible to attach images, videos or surveys. If you look closely, below the Toots field you‘ll also see a CW command. It is a “Content Warning” cut and is used to hide potentially problematic content. If your followers removes this filter, they do it at their own risk.
The right column is a list of commands/options/shortcuts that are quite intuitive except in a couple of cases, which we will better explore in the next paragraph.
The central column is the actual timeline. Here you will see all the Toots posted by others or by yourself, in chronological order. This is thanx to the no-algorithms rule.
Let’s explore the right column
So, what can you do from here?
Home: d’ho! Quite self explenatory, I’d say; it’s the homepage. Here you’ll see your Toots and those of the people you follow. If it looks a bit quiet at the beginning it’s because you don’t follow many people.
Notifications: basically the same as on Twitter.
Explore: by clicking here, 4 submenus will appear on the timeline.
1. Posts: whatever you published in your Instance.
2. Hashtags: the trending topics.
3. News: Here you will find the most popular news, with external links to blogs or newspapers.
4. For you: is the page that suggests topics, instances or profiles to follow to start using Mastodon
Local: it’s the timeline showing messages from users who are part of your Instance.
Federation: is the timeline where you see public posts from users that people in your Instance follow. It updates in real time and sometimes it’s so fast it becomes a bit difficult to follow. You can solve the issue going to Preferences –> Appearance → Slow Mode.
The other tabs accessible from the right column are really all very intuitive and seen on other socials. There are direct messages, the stars that are just like the heart on twitter or the likes on Facebook, and of course you can check your own followers and who you follow.
How to go to Mastodon from smartphone (or desktop)
Via desktop, the easiest way to access your Instance is simply to go to the home page of the Instance itself, using the URL as you would go to any other site.
As far as smartphones are concerned, let’s remember that Mastodon is not a social network, it’s a container. And that it belongs to everyone and no one. There are many Mastodon app, although an official one has been created for iOS.
You can find it HERE
The one for Android is HERE
Tusky is popular too among Android users. Find it on F-Droid as well.
Privacy
In addition to the issue of personal data that I mentioned above, it should be noted that each Toot has various privacy options. You can choose whether the post should be public or private to beging with. Public Toots go to the federate timeline, while private Toots are shared only on our followers’ timelines. You may also chose to have a totally private account and you can make your profile invisible to search engines.
In short you can publish Toots:
visible only to your followers
not visible on public timelines
visible only to specific people mentioned in the toot itself. By the way, to mention somebody you need to write the user’s full name in this form → @name@instance
Things to know if you plan to use Mastodon for work
Mastodon offers a whole series of useful options to make life easier especially for those who use social networks for work. But beware! If you intend to base your business on Mastodon, remember that whoever manages the server (the Instance) on which you registered your account could decide to suddenly shut it down. In this case you lose your whole account, meaning your toots, followers etc. Server managers are generally asked to give people 3 months notice before going offline but the truth is that no law requires it. If, on the other hand, notice is given to you, you could migrate to another instance and keep your followers but you’d still loose your Toots. Also, you should re-follow people you followed before.
On the plus side:
No one is saying you need to leave Twitter immediately and permanently. Indeed, you can synchronize Mastodon with Twitter. It means that your Toots can be automatically published on Twitter thanks to Moa Party that offers the fastest synchronization process in history.
You can create events like you’d do on Facebook thanks to Mobilizon.
You can share videos like on Youtube. In order to do this without overloading your Instance’s server you can use Peertube.
Last but not least, for sharing images there is Pixelfed the open source Isntagram-like tool.
