Amber's Digital Garden

What is Mastodon

An overview of mastodon, what it is, and how to join.

Contents:

So, you got banned from twitter for saying "cis". Aside from this perhaps being the best possible outcome for your mental health, it did also get you thinking about this "Mastodon" thing your linux-loving computer nerd friend won't shut up about. How does it work? Is it worth joining? Is everyone on it also linux-loving computer nerds like your friend?

Recently a couple friends of mine were discussing Mastodon, and expressing some confusion about how these things are set up. As their resident linux-loving computer nerd, here I am to info-dump about it!

"I ain't reading all that"

Pasted image 20260314135226.png

You can skip to #How does it work?, but I recommend you read this whole article. There is a particular mindset that is worthwhile to have when approaching Mastodon, and without it, you may end up having a lot of the same confusion I had when I originally joined Mastodon.

Why I originally quit mastodon

When I originally joined Mastodon, it was the week Elon Musk purchased Twitter. I has previously been on Twitter for work reasons - posting clips from the videogame I was working on, and connecting with other developers. Myself and many of the developers I followed suspected that Twitter would become even worse and more bot-infested than it already was. Bluesky was still invite-only, so I joined Mastodon.

I was immediately very confused. You see, unlike Twitter, which only has twitter.com as its website, Mastodon has many, many websites. I had initially signed up for one of these websites - called tech.lgbt - but upon downloading a mastodon app, I had been prompted to sign up for a different Mastodon website called mastodon.social. Because of this, I had ended up making two different Mastodon accounts, and didn't know why I had signed up twice (In fact, I did not need to sign up twice - I just had to wait for tech.lgbt's moderators to approve my application).

None of this was my fault - it is a product of Mastodon's greatest weakness, but also its strength. Mastodon is structured in a fundamentally different way from other social media, but it can be daunting to get a grasp on if you are coming from the world of corporate social media.

Eventually, I put together what had happened - but it had been several months. It took me quite a long time of opening Mastodon, getting bored because there was no algorithm feeding me the stuff I was used to, and then switching back to Instagram or Tumblr.

However, Instagram and Tumblr continued to steadily enshittify themselves, prompting me to periodically re-open Mastodon and try again at getting into a groove with it. Eventually, I reached a point where I was happy with my feed, and had a lot of neat new stuff showing up often. Turns out - Mastodon is really cool! But it works more like a garden than a steady stream of junk food.

How you can avoid my confusion

I am going on this tangent this because I think a lot of people approach Mastodon in the same way I originally did - expecting it to be as easy and smooth as any corporate social media they are familiar with. I worry that, like me, when they discover that it is not, they will lose interest. In this section, I am trying to get you to shift your mindset away from corporate convenience and towards community.

Because Mastodon has so many websites instead of just one, it can be daunting to join - "Why cant I just go to mastodon.com and join, just like Twitter? Why are there so many different websites? What website do I use? Is this website better than this other one? How can I tell?". If you want to join and actually stay on it, I would recommend you try to re-evaluate what you're looking for. If you're reading this article, it's probably because you have realized that corporate social media is bad for you. It's bad for you mental health, it sucks up hours of your day providing nothing in return, it serves you predatory ads, it spies on you... the list could go on.

Eventually, I came to realize that corporate social media had gotten me used to the convenience and expectation that human connection should be commodified and fed up to me with algorithms. It took me a while to detox my brain to this, and get used to the slower pace of Mastodon.

When I left Twitter, I thought I hated the algorithm. But after the first few weeks on Mastodon, I found myself missing it. Mastodon did not give me the instant gratification of learning what I like by spying on me and serving it up. I actually had to learn what I like, and then go looking for it.

What I had to internalize was:

Twitter is about the things you hate. Mastodon is about the things you love.

How does it work?

Twitter has one website - twitter.com. Everyone who uses Twitter also uses twitter.com. Mastodon does not have one website. In fact, Mastodon has so many websites that it's actually hard to know how many truly exist.

A lot of people use Email as a touchstone when describing federated platforms. No matter what email provider you sign up for - Gmail, Yahoo, Proton, Hotmail - you can talk to people who signed up for any other one. amber@gmail.com can talk to john@hotmail.com.

Mastodon works the same way! Amberrrrrrr@tech.lgbt can talk to someotherperson@mas.to.

This cross-website connection is called "Federation". To keep things simple up till now, I have been pretending that Mastodon is the only thing that works like this, but that's not true! There are a whole host of platforms that use federation!

How to Join

Step 1: Choose your new digital home <3

Mastodon is all about choice. First, you need to choose a place to sign up! Explore these options listed below, choose one you like the vibe of, and register! Don't stress this too much - you can always move your account later. Because of the confusion I discussed above where an app chose a website for me, I recommend doing this part in a web browser.

Some of these may require an application to join. This is a good thing! Servers that require this wall have basically zero bots, and pretty chill people. Don't stress it - just say how you heard about them, tell them a little bit about yourself, and wait. You'll get an email approving you after the admins have a chance to look at it. Remember - you're here to make connections with other people! The admins of your server are a great place to start.

General-Purpose

https://ohai.social/about

Special Interests

https://vt.social/about

https://bark.lgbt/about

Art Servers

https://mastodon.art/about

Queer Servers

https://mastodon.catgirl.cloud/about

https://tech.lgbt/about

If none of these meet your fancy, you can browse more here!

Step 2: Let's Get Mobile

Once you have chosen a website, signed up (and been approved, if you chose a server that requires an application), you can choose an app! I will continue to repeat - Mastodon is all about choice. Just like there is more than one Mastodon website, there is also more than one Mastodon app.

I personally use Moshidon. This is the one that all proceeding images will use. Lots of people also like Tusky.

Once you download and install your app of choice, you will be prompted with something like below - "Choose your instance's domain name." This is the website you chose above! So if you chose mas.to, you put mas.to here!

Screenshot_20260314_144157_Moshidon.jpg

I'm going to put tech.lgbt here, since that's the website I made my account on:

Screenshot_20260314_144214_Moshidon.jpg

Hit "Next", and from here on out it should be just like any other app signup! In my case, I was already signed in on my phone's web browser so all I had to do was "authorize" it. But you will probably need to enter your username and password.

Step 3: Know thyself

Time to find cool people to follow! This is a long game, and it's what can ultimately make or break you time on Mastodon.

You will notice you have three different timelines: Home, Local, and Federated.

Home is where people you follow will show up. Local is the feed of everyone on the same website as you, and Federated is the combined feed of other Mastodon websites your website's admins have allowed to be visible from their website. If that last one is confusing to you, think of it like this:

Home is like hanging with your friends - you all probably get along and share similar interests. Local is for going to your friend's house party - you may not know everyone there, but they're probably chill. Federated is like going to the club your friend likes - there may be lots of cool people there, but it's ultimately open to the public. Proceed with caution.

Start by browsing your Local feed and following people posting stuff you like. Avoid sensational drama posters. Mastodon is all about discovering friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends.

Some starter follows

One quirk of federation is searching a person doesn't always show you everyone with a given name. In order to follow the accounts below, copy the links and paste them into your app's search box! They should appear and be follow-able this way.

Step 4: When in Rome...

Mastodon has a strong culture of applying content warning generously to applicable items, and adding alt-text to images. It's common courtesy to mark political items with an applicable content warning like "uspol" (US politics) / "depol" (German politics), etc.

When adding an image, your app should prompt you to add alt text! This is useful for people who rely upon screen readers, and is highly recommended.

Conclusion

That's about it! Have fun, post about the stuff you love, share your art, and do so free of corporate interest <3

See you on fedi!

by amber