so as some people are moving to/creating accounts on Mastodon recently to get away from the Situation™ here i'd like to offer some tips
one: please please choose a different instance than mastodon.social
mastodon.social is the big one, but only because it was the first. the whole point of mastodon is that it's decentralized (i.e. a bunch of little servers that all talk to each other, so it's not all controlled/managed by one entity). pick a different one! there are literally so many, pick any of these
note that you can actually transfer between servers (migrate) at any time, and keep your account, posts, followers, and activity if you want!
two: mastodon works kinda similarly to tumblr but also not
there's no algorithm on mastodon: you just get shown the posts from people you follow (or who they repost) in order. if you want to discover more content, switch over to the Local feed, which shows you posts from everyone on your server (again, in order), or Federated, which does the same but for everyone in the fediverse that your server knows about.
likes are favourites, reblogs are reposts, you get the idea. note that you can't add content to a repost - it just posts it exactly as is. if you want to add your thoughts, hit 'reply' (the speech bubble icon) and write something there.
three: check your server rules
apart from the server code of conduct, which servers must follow to federate (communicate) with most other servers, there's no central rules or community guidelines. instead, each server has their own rules that they enforce - so make sure to check them before signing up! some allow NSFW, some don't, some allow politics, some don't. remember to be nice to your admins, most of them are doing this as a hobby, and in many cases, paying for the server out of their own pocket too.
if i think of anything else i'll put it in another post. but for now, thanks for reading and don't forget to follow me on mastodon @[email protected]!
