Your Mastodon Guide: What Is It and How Does It Differ From Twitter?

Twitter has been pretty chaotic since Elon Musk took over as CEO. half of the staff laid off New features like the end of October and gray checkmarks for trusted sources only I removed the site later the same day. Musk has it too Argued with founder Jack Dorsey and companies that pull ads from Twitter”thermonuclear name and shame“

Since Musk’s official purchase Twitter shut down in October. For 28.44 billion dollars, many users decided to leave the site. sentry boatAn organization that monitors Twitter account behavior estimates that around 900,000 Twitter accounts were disabled between October. 27 and per November 1, MIT Technology Review.

Some of those leaving Twitter are switching to it Mastodonis a decentralized social network built on open source software. Mastodon’s “federated network” saw a notable increase in November. 6, Eugen Rochko, creator of Mastodon, said the service has gained 489,003 new users since October. 27 and now it has over a million active users. However, that’s still only a tiny fraction of Twitter’s 238 million.

Read on to see how Mastodon works, how to sign up, and how it compares to Twitter. For more, see how to delete twitter accountand get the latest news Twitter’s verification badge plans.

What is Mastodon and how is it different from Twitter?

Mastodon It is a free social media service very similar to Twitter. You can send “tweets” (instead of tweets), follow other people and organizations, and favorite (like) and boost (retweet) other people’s posts.

Mastodon was created and first launched in October 2016 by Eugen Rochko, CEO and sole employee of the non-profit organization Mastodon gGmbH. In May, Rochko revealed that the service was named oddly instead of “tweet.” He says the original button was called “publish”, but a committed backer has promised lifetime support if Mastodon changes his Patreon account to “toot”. (in iOS and Android apps “Publish.”)

a Interview with Time MagazineRochko said he started developing Mastodon when he “realized to my friends that being able to express myself online via text messages was actually very important to me, important to the world, and that maybe it shouldn’t be in someone else’s hands.” It’s the only company that can do whatever it wants with it.”

Read more: Mastodon Doesn’t Replace Twitter

However, instead of a town square for everyone, Mastodon is made up of thousands of social networks, all running on different servers or “instances”. Federation. Fediverse also includes other social networks such as: PeerTube for videos, mushroom whale for music PixelFed for photos and NextCloud for files.

Mastodon servers do not need to be connected to the Fediverse, Actually the most famous Mastodon example Real Socialsocial network of former US president Donald Trump.

How do I join Mastodon?

The hardest part of Mastodon is getting started. Since there is no common Mastodon domain for everyone – as with Twitter – you have to register with a specific Mastodon server.

Servers can be based on a geographic location, interest, professional background, or literally anything a manager can think of. For example, folks dolphin.town has Only allowed to post the letter “E” while literary enthusiasts olipo.social has banned From using the letter “E” (in honor of the lipogram of OuLiPo author Georges Perec)La Disparition“).

Two of the largest Mastodon servers, also known as examples mastodon.social — The official host of the Mastodon project — and mstdn.social, although both have temporarily paused recordings. Another great public server I recently joined you understand. Other popular Mastodon specimens include: masthead.social for journalists and fosstodon.org for open source software.

Don’t worry too much about which server to choose – you can join as many servers as you want and leave or switch between servers whenever you want. And you can follow people between servers, so choosing one won’t stop you from communicating with other instances.

A good place to find a server to join is the official Mastodon website at Joinmastodon.org. The site currently lists 106 committed servers. Mastodon Server Agreementan agreement to moderate, take backups of the site, and give at least three months’ notice before shutting down an instance.

Each server’s “about” page will provide some information about the Mastodon instance and list the server’s rules. If you can’t find a server you like on Joinmastodon.org, you can try other Mastodon directories like below. examples.socialoffers a wizard as well as choosing a server. sortable list 3,910 samples.

Most Mastodon servers with open registration will only ask for your email address and a password to get started. You’re ready to use Mastodon when you respond to a confirmation email. Other, more private Mastodon servers may ask you to make a request to join and then wait for an invite.

How do I use Mastodon?

Like Twitter, Mastodon lets you send text messages to the world or select people, but instead of tweets, Mastodon posts are called “toots”. Many other features of Mastodon are also very similar to those of Twitter with minor differences. Each post is limited to 500 characters (instead of 280), and you can add links, images (JPG, GIF or PNG, up to 8MB), audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC, OPUS, AAC, M4A and 3GP). up to 40MB) and videos (MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM up to 40MB).

Your posts on Mastodon can be set to public, for your followers only, or completely unlisted from all timelines. You can create polls for your followers and use all your favorite regular emojis as well as custom emojis created for specific servers.

Any post can be marked with a descriptive “content alert” that requires a click before viewing, and Mastodon users often take advantage of this feature.

You can even edit posts on Mastodon. Each version of your Toot remains available for review, and people who reblog your post will be notified once it’s been edited.

Just like Twitter, Mastodon uses hashtags that start with the “#” symbol, such as #Gaming, #Anthropology or #Veganism. Using hashtags to categorize your posts for people who might be interested is even more important than Twitter, as there is no algorithm to recommend your posts to non-followers.

You can follow any account on Mastodon whether it is on your own server moment or not, and the account’s posts will be added to your Home feed in chronological order. Know that for some accounts you need to ask permission to follow them.

free web apps like Remove Birds, Fedfinder and excitement It can help you find accounts you follow on Twitter that have been migrated to Mastodon.

If you don’t want a particular account to follow you, you can either block them or choose to block an entire server, just like Twitter.

Mastodon lets you add posts to your “favorites”, but the number of favorites doesn’t appear on their timeline – if you want to promote someone else’s posts, you’ll have to “up” or reblog them. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon does not have “quotes”; this is a deliberate choice to discourage others from “dunking” on their posts. A separate “bookmark” feature allows you to save information to Mastodon without notifying the account that sent the messages.

Mastodon has a feature called Direct Messages, but the name is a bit misleading. Mastodon’s feature sets a post’s visibility only to the people specified in it, rather than providing person-to-person messages. In other words, they are tools that only certain people can see, rather than actual direct messages.

How do Mastodon timelines work?

While Twitter has only one timeline (ordered chronologically or by “top stories”), Mastodon has three: Your Home timeline shows all the posts and reblogs of everyone you follow, Your local timeline, your own it shows everything in your server instance and your Federation timeline. shows all posts from all Mastodon servers, one of which you follow.

Using a web browser, you can set Mastodon to look like Twitter, view one feed at a time, or view multiple feeds and notifications at once (just like tweet deck) Selecting “Advanced view” from your preferences.

Are there any mobile apps for Mastodon?

Be sure. Due to the open source nature of Mastodon, you have many options for apps on both iPhone and Android.

Your first and easiest option is the official app of Mastodon gGmbH (for iOS horse Android), but there are other solid third-party apps as well. Currently the two most popular alternative Mastodon apps are Metatext for iPhone and Tusky for Android.

Mastodon apps for iPhone:

Mastodon apps for Android:

If you start using Mastodon don’t forget to follow me. @peterbutler@mas.to. (And say hello!)

For more information on social media and Twitter Timeline of Elon Musk acquisition and read about Big changes that could be in store for Twitter.

Correction, November 7: An earlier version of this story misidentified Mastodon’s characteristics. Mastodon added the ability to edit posts in March 2022.