Welcome new people!
If you want help using this place feel free to ask, I'm trying to provide some unofficial tech support on here (and yes I am a human being). Ask in the replies or mentions or DMs or whatever🙂
You can also find lots of help for new people at https://fedi.tips, especially in the section marked "Quick Start" at the top of the page.
How to discover people to follow:
https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friends
How to make your own account more discoverable:
https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-get-more-followers-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse
p.s. I know Mastodon and the wider Fediverse can be a bit trickier to use, but it does get easier once you've spent time here. There are many really good reasons why this place is structured the way it is: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers
Servers on here are fully independent in every sense, usually owned by ordinary grassroots people like you and me. There is no central authority or corporation controlling things, it's up to each server to decide on how it's run and what it allows.
p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services I am currently setting up a new account on mastodon.social and that's for all the things that post ignores, which is all the things that work worse on federated networks. For example, following hashtags does not show all posts with that hashtag on all instances, just those that your instance knows of, which counteracts the benefit of instances for certain topics. The smaller your topic, the more you are limited to the people on your instance and might be better off with a big instance.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
If I recall correctly, the official mobile Mastodon app have users sign up on the default instance which is... as you guessed it, mastodon.social
This, doesn't help either because a lot of newcomers are most likely mobile users.
I know that this is to make it easier for newcomers, but I think it just buries the onboarding problem rather than solve it.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
I appreciate your take, and your help when I was starting out here.
And you make good points, I just feel like it will be lost to the masses.
And here is my hot take (Which may or may not be good. LOL) I actually have a MS account I setup in 2018, but didn't start using it till maybe 3 to 6 months ago. I use it for general posts, leaving this instance for ham radio stuff.
If I would have seen this post then I might have made a different choice. But I moved from a small .... <more>
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services I’m gonna tag along here and point out there are also many good servers that don’t get listed for one reason or another. Coops and invite-only spaces are often excluded when new users can’t do drive- by signups but are sometimes more stable and welcoming than wide open ones.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
But the trouble is, that the time they read this, they've already signed up on it! Probably?
@NovemDecimal@im-in.space
Yup. It's fine to suggest one good server to new people, but they need to regularly change which good server they suggest so that the growth is spread out more.
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Fedi.garden does not require instant signups. If you have a server that is compatible with the seven points at https://fedi.garden/about-this-site let me know and I'll list it 🙂
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Fedi.garden does not require instant signups. If you have a server that is compatible with the seven points at https://fedi.garden/about-this-site let me know and I'll list it 🙂
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services thank you!
I am aware, but in the case of your listing, neither of my instances has fully defederated from threads. We opted to move to limit after some debate, but as one instance in particular supports working authors who have fan communities captured on Meta properties, we did elect to leave the “follow/follower option if you specifically request it” avenue open. Our teams felt it was the best way to limit exposure but not cut user-to-user access.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services thank you!
I am aware, but in the case of your listing, neither of my instances has fully defederated from threads. We opted to move to limit after some debate, but as one instance in particular supports working authors who have fan communities captured on Meta properties, we did elect to leave the “follow/follower option if you specifically request it” avenue open. Our teams felt it was the best way to limit exposure but not cut user-to-user access.
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Ah, okay, fair enough! 👍
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
Incidentally, if I may still share with the preface that I do respect the position of Fedipact instances - this proved a great balance for us. Meta gets no discoverability on Wandering.shop, but some of the higher-profile users have brought fans and a couple other authors over. The connection being available follow-to-follower but without “reach” from Instagram nudged some to check it out. And let me close MY threads & Insta accounts completely.
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Ah, okay, fair enough! 👍
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Each admin uses their own judgement on whatever piece of the Fediverse they own. That's the strength of the Fedi 🙂
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services and I do not argue that at all! I truly intend we can collaborate on crosspromoting each other, for example understanding the concept of blocklists, the Fedipact, Mastodon covenant, etc, to best advise all new users how to find their comfortable space.
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services
Incidentally, if I may still share with the preface that I do respect the position of Fedipact instances - this proved a great balance for us. Meta gets no discoverability on Wandering.shop, but some of the higher-profile users have brought fans and a couple other authors over. The connection being available follow-to-follower but without “reach” from Instagram nudged some to check it out. And let me close MY threads & Insta accounts completely.
@johannab@cosocial.ca
Each admin uses their own judgement on whatever piece of the Fediverse they own. That's the strength of the Fedi 🙂
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services and I do not argue that at all! I truly intend we can collaborate on crosspromoting each other, for example understanding the concept of blocklists, the Fedipact, Mastodon covenant, etc, to best advise all new users how to find their comfortable space.
Fedi.Tips
