Brutkey

Manda
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social

@wil@beige.party

Could you explore it before you created an account? If so, that should be a landing page for us new guys.

I felt like I had to sign up somewhere before I knew how anything worked.

Not sure what you mean about "often." You only sign up at the beginning.

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

wil
@wil@beige.party

@lucyruthe@mastodon.social Absolutely. When I go to a instance's website, I can see their feed as well as read their various policies.

This is what I see when I go to your instance, and then what I see if I click on "live feeds." And I can scroll down and see more.

I'm a mod at another instance and I often go look at instances when there's been a report, to see if the place overall is shady.

@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

Screenshot of mastodon.social page, which shows trending posts. Mastodon.social home page, showing the live feed of most recent messages from members.
Manda
@lucyruthe@mastodon.social

@wil@beige.party @FediTips@social.growyourown.services

Okay you guys, but this is what I found a year ago when I first joined up:
https://joinmastodon.org/

And this is what the pick a server button led to:
https://joinmastodon.org/servers

If I was supposed to know how to dig deeper to find the information you are now talking about, I didn't even know where to look.

For real, it feels like you need to sign up before you know how to research the options.

Fedi.Tips
@FediTips@social.growyourown.services

@wil@beige.party @lucyruthe@mastodon.social

Yeah, you can browse the public contents of any server that has its public timeline open (which most of them do, because it only shows public posts so there isn't any privacy compromise).