F.A.Q. - Frequently Asked Questions
 A lot of info might still be missing and the page might change at any time. |
This is the protocol of a (series of) workshop(s) held by @PaulaToThePeople for Fediverse beginners, especially those who came to Mastodon after Musk bought Twitter.
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What is Mastodon?
Mastodon is a free software mictoblogging project, so similar to Twitter, with some features that are the same and some different features.
It is decentral/federated and part of the Fediverse (see below).
When you just created an account you'll see the basic interface with an empty home timeline. You'll have to fill it by following people.
To follow someone from a different instance you'll probably need to enter their full handle (username@instance.tld) or their profile's url in the search field.
In the Settings you can change some things about Mastodon's look and feel. For example you can switch to the advanced interface where you can have many columns.
You can for example search for a hashtag and then pin that column to the screen be clicking in the top right corner.
If you have too many columns, they won't fit on the screen and you will have to zoom out.
You can create lists of people, e.g. people who's posts you don't want to miss, and also pin that list as a column.
The home timeline shows posts by accounts you follow and boosts by those accounts. It will look the same no matter if they have a Mastodon account or use a different Fediverse service.
The local timeline just shows posts by accounts on your server. No boosts.
The federated timeline shows the whole known Fediverse - known to your server that is. An account is known to your server once it is followed or was ever searched for by someone on your server.
What is the Fediverse?
Mastodon is just one part of the Fediverse.
mastodon is part of the fediverse
what you see in your home timeline, it might include people on mastodon, and people from elsehwere - eg pixelfed - see infographic - there are lots of branches of the fediverse
[can't see the infographic so can't note it I'm afraid]
all of these different servers in the fediverse can communicate with mastodon
it works similar to email, you can write to someone who has gmail from an icloud account, for example
you can follow different fediverse can
What is Pixelfed?
it's for pictures and there are lots of others for music, podcasts, books, writing etc
works similar to mastodon servers, but interface looks different
includes some special features like licence information or adding posts to a collection
if you want to actively use a certain fediverse service, you always also need to start an account there, but passively you can follow accounts throughout all the fediverse and their content will appear in your "home timeline"
Questions
Questions from the people:
How to find people on other services? A number of us particularly interested in finding people from niche communities/ with specialised interests eg multiple sclerosis/ ADHD. And also interested in finding new people not connected to on, eg twitter
You need to know their full handle or the url
but if the server is down they won't appear
can also search for hashtags, you can then click on the tag to see them
tools like https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ will crawl the infos of everyone you follow on Twitter for fediverse accounts, you can download it as a .csv file and import it into your account
How to choose the right server?
there are either themed, local or general servers
if you want to move, there is a "How to" in German: https://wiki.subversive.zone/doku.php?id=umzug_des_eigenen_accounts_auf_eine_andere_mastodon_instanz
Search-Site that gives infos about server-quality in the advanced mode: https://instances.social/list/advanced#lang=&allowed=&prohibited=&min-users=&max-users=
too big servers attract hackers
Relevant fact about "deleted posts": because servers need to crawl each other, a post you delete may still be visible on any server other than the one you are on
Will Mastodon/the Fediverse remain nieche?
it grows everytime the big commercial plattforms f**k up
but because it's not centralized, everyone can create their own nieches (which need not even be connected to the rest of fediverse)
How to best share audio, pictures and movies?
for media, especially videos with bigger file sizes, it's better to post them via peertube and then use the link to this video in your mastodon posts
if you want to share a youtube-video, you should use invidious.snopyta.org to create a tracker-free link, because a lot of users don't like sharing their data with big tech companies
Is it sensible to have several accounts, so for mastodon, pixelfed, peertube, etc.? And how to connect them?
depends on what you want to share, especially for multimedia
do mastodon servers generally have the same technical features or are there relevant differences? If so, can I check this out before joining or moving?
most servers have the same limits, some have higher limits for example characters (5.000 instead of general 500)
contentnation.net has an overview for German servers
limits for polls or number of bio-links can be adjusted by the admins, but might create problems for every update
changes on one server can possibly affect the performance of other servers
I'm actually on Friendica and not Mastodon (not sure if that was a great decision but I also didn't want to overthink things). On my server there are not as many people, I think, so if I use the search bar I often find nothing at all. People probably then tend to choose servers where there's already a lot of people to make it easier to get connected. So could we say that, while trying to decentralize social networking, fediverse still has those mechanisms that automatically lead to more centralization?
one instance/server can block users on other servers or even a whole other server
Are there specials servers for govermental accounts
in Germany there is social.bund.de which is invite only
there is also an EU-server
there is no offical verification system in the fediverse like on Twitter but there are other ways to check, if an account is legit:
certain servers are invite only, so only legit users can create an account there
every account can create a verified link-back to their own official website
Accessabilty-Feature:
Glitch-Soc has a feature where you can see red boarders around pictures or videos without alt text
there's a BOT that reminds you, if you've forgotten alternative text / description