Everything I know about Mastodon

What is Mastodon? What is the fediverse?

If you’re entirely new to this, your mental model of mastodon is probably something like “mastodon is an open source twitter clone”. To a first approximation that’s right, but if you want to really feel at home there you’re going to want to refine that mental model in a few ways. Mastodon is very similar to twitter in design, but there are some important differences

First off, mastodon is not a single application: it’s a distributed network of servers that all talk to each other using a shared protocol. If two servers talk to each other they are said to be “federated” with one another, and the network as a whole is referred to as the “fediverse”.

There are many different servers out there that are independently running mastodon: these are called mastodon instances. You can sign up for an account at one or more of these servers. The most popular instance is mastodon.social, but for reasons I’ll talk about in a moment this might not be the best choice for you! For example, my primary account is on fosstodon.org and my art-only account is on an instance for generative artists, genart.social.

Fortunately, it usually doesn’t matter too much which instance you pick: the servers all communicate with each other so you can follow people on different servers, talk with them, etc, and it’s entirely possible to migrate your account from one server to another (I’ll talk about that later in the post). It’s only when you get into the details that it starts to matter!

Terminology: Toots and boosts

Posts on twitter are called “tweets” and have a 280 character limit. Posts on mastodon are called “toots” and have a 500 character limit. If you’re thinking of making a joke about “haha it’s called tooting” well fine, but there’s a pretty good chance that everyone has already heard it. Very few of us are actually that original :-)

Sharing someone else’s post on twitter is called a “retweet”. The mastodon equivalent is called “boosting”. One deliberate design choice on mastodon is that there is no analog of “quote retweeting”: you can either boost someone else’s toot and you can post your own. You can’t share someone else’s post to your own followers with your commentary added. This is a deliberate design choice to prevent people from “dunking” on each other.

Which server should I sign up on?

There’s a nicely server list at fediscience.org that has some commentaries. Here’s a few possibilities you might consider:

• mastodon.social: The largest instance. It’s general interest, so you get a reasonably diverse audience. However it’s also the focal point so any time there’s a wave of migrations from twitter it will probably be the first one to show performance hits.

• fosstodon.org: An instance with a focus on open source software. There are a lot of tech people on this one, which means you can watch the local timeline scroll by (more on that coming!) and see lots of random techy posts.

• fediscience.org: A science focused instance, including natural and social sciences.

• vis.social: Lots of cool data visualisation folks here.

• tech.lgbt: An instance for folks who work in tech, science, academia, etc who are LGBTIQ or allies.

For any server, you should look carefully at the server rules that will be posted on the “About” page. Each server has different policies that will affect moderation. Don’t sign up for vis.social if you want to post about NFTs (I’ll talk about NFTs later actually), and don’t join fosstodon.org if you want to post in languages other than English. Don’t join any of these servers if you want to post anti-trans content.

Take a little time to look around but don’t worry about the choice too much. You can move your account across servers without too much difficulty if you need to, and I’ll show you how later in the post.

Can you tell me about the web interface?

Okay so you’ve decided on a server, signed up for an account, and are ready to get started. Let’s take a look at the interface!

For the purposes of this post I’ll assume you’re looking to get started by using the web interface. There are, unsurprisingly, apps you can download onto your phone (e.g., I’m using the standard mastodon app on iOS), but I’m trying not to complicate things in this post so let’s assume you’re using your laptop and are browsing through the web interface!

My main account is djnavarro@fosstodon.org. In my browser I’m logged in already, so when I navigate to fosstodon.org I’m automatically shown the logged in view. There are two versions you can choose between, the “standard view” and the “advanced view”.

The “standard view” interface looks pretty similar to what you’d expect from twitter. On the left you can write posts, in the middle there’s a column where your feed is shown (I’ve edited these screenshots to remove the actual posts, just so we can focus on interface), and on the right sidebar there’s a menu with various options you can click on:

In a lot of cases this view will work well for you, but if you want to track hashtags – more on that later because hashtags are important! – you might find it useful to switch to the “advanced view”. To switch, click on the “Preferences” option on the right hand side, which brings up a preferences screen that looks like this:

Click on the “Enable advanced web interface” option, like I’ve done here, and click save changes. When you then go back to mastodon, the interface will have changed to one that looks very similar to the Tweetdeck interface that a lot of folks on Twitter use:

There are more columns. As before, the left column shows an area where you can compose posts, and on the right column a menu with options is shown. Posts will appear in the “Home” column. Mentions, favourites (similar to Twitter “likes”), and boosts (similar to Twitter retweets), will be shown in the “Notifications” column.

Tracking hashtags

Speaking of which, perhaps you want to monitor a hashtag. Maybe you even want to follow the hashtag, so that every post that has that hashtag will appear in your mastodon feed. Good news, you can!

From what I can tell, this is something where your options might be a little different on each server. For instance, on mastodon.social you can follow a hashtag directly in the standard view: when you search for a hashtag there will be a little “follow” icon that appears that you can click on (see this comment on fedi.tips). When you do that, posts with that hashtag will appear in your feed. However, not every server implements this: fosstodon.org doesn’t do that right now.

So let’s go with a method that seems to work everywhere I’ve looked. This post by David Hood summarises it in a single image, but I’ll go through it more slowly here…

First off, you’ll need to be in “advanced view” to do this. That’s the one with lots of columns that I showed earlier in the post. You can customise this view by adding columns that correspond to the hashtags you want to follow. For example, let’s say I want to follow the #rstats hashtag. The first thing I’d do is type #rstats into the search bar (in the top left corner). The results will be shown directly below the search bar, like this:

These are clickable links. When I click on the #rstats hashtag in the results, a new column appears… containing a chronological feed that consists of posts tagged with #rstats:

Again, in real life this won’t be empty: you’ll actually see the posts! You are now tracking #rstats on mastodon, albeit temporarily.

Suppose you want to make sure the column sticks around every time you open mastodon. We can “pin” the column in place. To do that, I click on the little “settings” icon at the top right of the #rstats column. It’s the one on the far right here:

When you do that, you will see a small menu that gives you the option to pin! Easy.

We can make our #rstats column more useful. For example, there are several hashtags I want to bundle together when following R content: #TidyTuesday, #TidyModels, and #ggplot2. I don’t want a separate column for each one, I want to group them into a single feed. Click on that little settings button again. Now you’ll see a richer menu:

One of the options there is “include additional tags”. When I click on that, I can type in the other hashtags to track:

And now we are done! I have a feed that tracks R related content on mastodon.

Why are content warnings everywhere?

One huge – and hugely important – difference between twitter and mastodon is that mastodon has a system that allows users to mask their posts behind content warnings. Now… if you’re coming from twitter you might be thinking “oh that doesn’t apply to me I don’t post offensive content”.

If that’s what you’re thinking, allow me to disabuse you of that notion quickly. Content warnings are not about “hiding offensive content”, they are about being kind to your audience. This thread by Mike McHargue is a very good summary. The whole thread is good, but I’ll quote the first part here:

If you’re part of the #twittermigration, it may seem strange the people use CWs so much here. But, CWs are really helpful. So much of our world is overwhelming, and feed presentation can bombard our nervous systems with triggers. CWs give people time and space to engage with that they have the resources to engage with. It gives them agency. I follow news and politics AND it’s helpful for my PTSD to have the chance to take a deep breath before I see a post.

If you’re posting about politics, that should be hidden behind a content warning. If you’re posting about sexual assault, definitely use a content warning. If you’re posting about trans rights, again put it behind a content warning.

You should use the content warning even – or perhaps especially – when you think your post is this is an important social justice issue that other people need to see, because there is a really good chance that people whose lives are affected by it will be part of the audience… and yes, some of us have PTSD.

So if you’re thinking about posting about these topics, the question of “should I attach a content warning?” isn’t a matter of “is this important?” it’s a matter of “could I be causing distress to people?” When you answer that question, don’t think about the typical case, think about that 1% of people who might be most severely affected and the reasons why.

Please, please, please… take content warnings seriously. Even if you’re “just posting about politics” or “venting some feelings”. It’s a kindness and courtesy to your audience.

Mastodon isn’t twitter.

How can I make threads?

Making threads on mastodon is pretty similar to twitter. Just post each new toot as a reply to the previous one. Problem solved!

There is one subtlety to be aware of though, which is described in this thread by Quokka on scicomm.xyz. Remember earlier I mentioned that you can set the visibility of each post? The polite way to do a thread is set the first post to “public”, and then all the later ones to unlisted. The reason for that is that all public posts (including replies) will show up in various timelines. Usually, that’s not what you want. What you want is something where the first post reads “I have this important and exciting thing to to talk about: A thread…”, and only that first post shows up on people’s timelines. Then if they’re interested they can click on the first post and the rest of the thread will be revealed. That’s why people on mastodon usually set the first post to public and the later ones to unlisted.

What are the local and federated timelines?

At some point on mastodon you will find yourself discovering the local timeline and the federated timeline. There are links to these on the right hand side of the interface. The local timeline is every public-visibility post on your server, shown chronologically. This timeline has a very different feel on different servers. On fosstodon.org my local timeline has a lot of people posting about tech; on genart.social it shows a lot of generative art.

The federated timeline is slightly different: it shows all public posts from all users who are “known” to your instance. That is, it includes every user on your instance, but it also includes everyone that users on your instance follow – even if those users are on other servers. It’s not the same thing as “every user on mastodon” though. People on genart.social tend to follow other artists, so there is still a local “flavour” to the posts from outside the instance: they reflect people and topics that the users on your instance are interested in.

These timelines are useful for discovery purposes, and they’re also a reason to think carefully about the instance you’re on. It’s easier to find tech content on a tech-focused server!

Etiquette on alt-text?

On twitter, you’ve probably found that there’s some pressure and expectation to supply alt-text for your images. The norm is much stronger on mastodon: people will expect that images have alt-text, and that the alt-text be informative. Here’s a walkthrough. First I might start writing a post, and after clicking on the paperclip icon to attach an image, I have a screen that looks like this:

As usual I’d write the content of my post in the composer box, but I would also click on the “edit” link in the top-right hand corner of my image. That brings up the image editing screen that looks like this:

There are two things I usually do with this. On the right hand side I can drag and drop the focus circle around to help improve the image preview that gets shown to users. More importantly, on the left hand side I can write my alt-text. For some images it’s easy to come up with a good description, for others it is hard. For something like this one I’d usually aim to write a short paragraph that captures this information:

• this is generative art made with R
• the title of the piece is “Gods of Salt, Stone, and Storm”
• the palette is blue/green with a hint of white against a very dark background
• the image is comprised of swirling patterns throughout
• the overall impression is something akin to dark storm clouds overhead or maybe unsettled seas

It’s not a perfect description, but it does capture what I think is important about the artwork.

Etiquette on NFTs?

A lot of artists on twitter, especially generative artists, like to post NFTs. It’s understandable: for generative artists, it’s the one reliable income stream they have for their art. However, you need to be very, very careful. NFTs are not well liked on the fediverse, and a lot of servers have outright bans on any form of NFT posting. For instance, you cannot post about NFTs at all on vis.social or mastodon.art. It is written into the server rules, so you should not sign up on those servers if that’s something you’re interested in. However, even on servers that do permit NFTs, there is often a strong suggestion that you should be polite and respect the preferences that folks outside the instance will have. For example, the generative art instance I’m on genart.social does not impose an outright ban on NFTs but it is discouraged, and in the rare instance that you do post NFT content, it must be behind a content warning.

Personally I’ve stopped even trying to make money from my art, so it doesn’t affect me: I’ve given up. I’m only bothering to mention it here because I don’t want to see generative art folks run afoul of the local norms.

Etiquette on bots and automated accounts?

Bots are allowed on mastodon, but you should check the local server rules and you should make certain that the bot is marked as an automated account in the account preferences.

Direct messages and privacy

As a final point, a note on direct messages. Direct messages on mastodon are just regular posts whose visibility is set to include only those people tagged in that post. That’s all. This is important to recognise because – at present – posts are not transmitted with end-to-end encryption: they are “private” only in the sense that a postcard is private or an unencrypted email is private. They won’t be broadcast to anyone else, but they aren’t secured while in transit.

You should never send any sensitive information via mastodon.