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A nice things about mastodon is it keeps this information semi-hidden, & you can run a custom instance to hides it entirely if you choose. You can also optionally hide follower counts on a per-account basis. Toots show "0, 1, +1" for reply count, but only to prevent dog piles. https://t.co/p7krt8vkKu
Another handy feature is you only see @ replies if you follow everyone who's tagged. Unlike twitter's penchant for trying to surface content from 2nd level connections for engagement purposes, your feed avoids showing you things you haven't opted into. Retooting is meanginful.
Searching works for hashtags, but otherwise only shows content you've personally tooted, retooted, or 'favourited'. This reduces people's penchant for sea-lioning. Though do to the federated nature, other instances using non-mastodon software may not respect this design decision.
Toots from other instances get shown in a 'federated timeline', local toots from everyone on your instance go in a 'local timeline'. So you're still discoverable. For small instances, it's acts as shared community space. It also has toot visibility controls to opt out of that.
Direct Messaging is acts just like any other toot, but it limits who gets to see it down to only the people @ messaged. Being able to intermix public and private conversations like that reminds me of whispering or going to a side room during a party. I leave myself notes with it.
A way to mitigate this: There's a feature where your instance only shares your tweets out to your followers/local timeline. You can turn on a 'lock' mode that prevents people from following you without authorization. And there are follower only toots.https://t.co/w41vrR50x4
Searching works for hashtags, but otherwise only shows content you've personally tooted, retooted, or 'favourited'. This reduces people's penchant for sea-lioning. Though do to the federated nature, other instances using non-mastodon software may not respect this design decision.
There is no encryption (yet?) on mastodon/the federation yet, so technically whomever is administering the server(s) of you and your followers can see all your toots.Twitter DMs are equally suspect, but I trust admins more than giant centralized entity.https://t.co/7tSX78INQq
One of the benefits of having separate instances is that you can optionally block entire swaths of potential trolls and harassment by domain, and if a server admin is doing shady things, your own admin can block them federating at a server level. It is a lot like how email works.
There's a nifty mechanism that lets you link different accounts and the server will see that & use it as a verification mechanism. You can have You[at]yourmastodonhost[dot]yourdomain[dot]com, link it to public facing ones bi-directional. This lets you run semi-private alts. https://t.co/zOFrGzgnB3
This uses the indieweb rel=me design underneith, so it is compatible with a lot of other sites. https://t.co/vkE9ut0mJAIts the same one that google was using for a while for SEO reasons, but works really well here for self-verification purposes.
I have an account on refactorcamp that is a semi-private / invite only community, but you can spin up another account anywhere on the federation and you should be able to follow me there.Migration works fairly well, so don't worry too much about where you start an account.
I got in a while ago on the main https://t.co/b77Ga4yWCL instance. Tho honestly it's too crowded. I'm looking for another place to run an account + am aiming to set up my own private instance soon. There' a lightweight alternate backend called pleroma that can run on Pis/Beagles.
You can use https://t.co/FzsaBkLavi to find an instance to check out. Once you make friends you'll have a better idea of where you might want to set up a permanent shop.Its not perfect, but I am really impressed with how it's set up. Come forage with me!https://t.co/dAEvsCVk8c
Stop letting massive corporations control your discussions.https://t.co/MDdFlcdKy6
Backup your account. Please don't delete it.https://t.co/rzU2Kv7aQr
Mastodon's creator has specifically prevented people from using "retweet-with-comment" to avoid meanness.https://t.co/h0dy7CTnA7
This is why I push people to talk about medical details onto e2e encrypted chats.[Twitter is] able to access all Twitter user data, including IP addresses and the content of direct messages. Who’s worried? https://t.co/BcVoad5VVThttps://t.co/tf6zrTfJUM
Found a tool that lets you link your mastodon account with your twitter account, then tells you everyone else who's done the same thing. https://t.co/gbCnCXnIeRIt gives you a CSV file of users that can be imported (or merged into) an existing account under Mastodon's settings.
I just saw that Wired has an article that basically says the same stuff I've written about in my thread here.Check out https://t.co/rIJsefD5z2 if you want something easier to share.Thanks @jhpot!
I'm @ultimape@mastodon.social until I find time to set up a single user instance.I asked to be hidden from the timeline once on .social instance. Now I can't seem to get it fixed (or they hid me for other reasons). Only way you can view my threads there is to follow directly. https://t.co/hv0rwGCTws
While annoying, being hidden from timeline is a neat way to allow people w/ a moody disposition to still have accounts without outright banning them.Honestly other than threads not working if you didn't follow me, I didn't even notice cuz I keep my stuff set to unlisted anyway.
I've been looking for a shorter introduction piece to help twitter people onboard, but there's a great QA document here https://t.co/ZjaN8P4x5JGoes into some depth about using mastodon.
Please @elonmusk restore @parsifaler on here. He was diligently researching covid19 in public and his web of twitter research was one of the deepest and most valuable set of tweets on the topic and it is a tragedy to have him gone. Rivaling even the late @__ice9.