Hello Hachydermians! Some of you are new to Mastodon, so here are some notes to help you get started. Since a fair few of you are coming from Twitter, there will be comparisons to the Twitter model for social media.
If you're looking to sign up with us here at Hachyderm, you can sign up on hachyderm.io. The only criteria for signing up is abiding by our Hachyderm Terms of Service. If you're looking at other Mastodon instances, then the sign up process is likely similar but with their own domain and Terms of Service.
There are a few different ways:
- The web browser, so in our case hachyderm.io
- A client app, usually for mobile devices:
For a complete comparison of 8 iOS apps: Fedi, Mast, Mastodon (official), Mercury, Metatext, tooot, Toot!, and Tootle, please take a look at Transpondering's Blog on the topic. (A Google Sheets of the same data, made by GameDev Mastodon user runevision.) The deep dive is very deep, going into various UI features, commenting about how intuitive the different apps are or aren't, which are more or less compatible with screenreaders and VoiceOver, and so on.
This diagram has been making rounds on Twitter, Mastodon, et al. It is from a GitHub issue on the Mastodon project:
This is the case of public posts only. When you are a private account, the people you allow to follow you are the people who can see your posts.
Direct messages allow you to communicate with one or more other users. This is similar to what you've likely seen on other platforms like Slack/Discord and Twitter with a notable exception:
⚠️ When you bring someone into a DM conversation they are able to see the whole DM history.
On the one hand this solves the problem of Slack and similar where when you add someone to a conversation you need to summarize everything relevant to that point to bring the new person / people up to speed. That said, if you aren't expecting it, it can expose conversations to third parties that needed to be private.
The other person / people who can see DMs are mods.
- Yes, mods can see your DMs.
Similar to the above, this is a double edged sword. On the one hand it makes it easy for mods to read DMs when they receive a report of harassing behavior. On the other hand it might also make private conversations visible that you wished were kept private even in those circumstances.
As a transparent statement: Hachyderm mods and instance operators agree to never read direct messages under any circumstances. Ever. A violation of this agreement will result in a permanent ban from moderator and operator privileges.
Proactively:
The UI experience of DMs is not as clearly separated as other apps like Twitter, Slack/Discord, et al. In the web UI, for example, DMs do not look significantly different than a private account posting in your feed. Some of the mobile apps, like Toot!, have a better visual separation. Basically: depending on where you prefer to post, you'll have vastly different experiences (for now).
Hachyderm does not have a firm rule on content warnings. Use them as you please. However we do offer some best practices for you to consider.
Content Warnings are implemented differently in Mastodon than Twitter. CW'ed posts look like this:
In this case the post has both text and associated graphic. You would need to click to display each separately in each case. When a post has a CW, all posts in the conversation carry that same CW.
Content Warnings have a few uses:
- If discussing topics that can cause distress or trigger PTSD, like a great many political situations
- Discussing topics that will spoil a book / movie / show
Because of how well CWs are implemented on the platform, we recommend that people make use of them.
It is far easier on the mental health of other users to opt into a discussion about Whatever than to skim past it.
Also! Make sure that your CWs are specific so users know whether they want to opt in or not. e.g. are you hiding a post / image that depicts violence or hints at it? Are you hiding the season finale to a show? How users socialize their use of CWs is what makes them useful. Making heavy, unclear, use of CWs adds confusion.
If you've tried to use the search function you've likely noticed that you cannot use it quite the same way as Twitter. You cannot search for a term and find everyone writing about that word on your own or federated servers. What does show up are people and hashtags. You can take this information and do with it what you will :) We do not recommend adding so many hashtags to your posts that they are unreadable though.
Accessibility Awareness: when you camel case your hashtags (CamelCase) then screenreaders can successfully read the text, but when you use all same case (likethis or LIKETHIS) then they cannot. So if you're going to use hashtags, please remember to #UseCamelCase.
Although you can upload videos to post, we recommend linking to a third party service like Vimeo, TikTok, et al.
Ok, so different instances have different emoji. Which emoji can you and others see? Which can you use?
The emoji that are provided via your instance of Mastodon are the emoji set you can use. You can use the Emojos app to see what emoji are available for you to use. For example, the Hachyderm set is visible via emojos.in/hachyderm.io.
Mastodon will render emojis in use on other instances in your feed correctly. Likewise users on other instances will see the special emoji you use here on Hachyderm correctly, even if they do not have them on their own, separate, instance.
Let's say you formerly interacted with only a few people but found yourself recently, ah, interacting with let's say many. Sometimes people's usernames reflect the names you know them as and sometimes they do not. Sometimes you follow new colleagues or people you've meet on or off line. If you would like, you can add notes that only you see to a users profile. For example:
Not all mobile apps support editing this field at this time, so that is something to check if that interests you.
So now that you've learned all of that, what do you post? Well, you might want to start by making an #introduction post (tag intentional), as it is very common to do across instances. The tag helps your post be discoverable by others who are also new and looking for those who are introducing themselves. Make sure to include anything you might want to discuss with others as an interest, job, etc. You might want to avoid including any non-discoverable PII (personally identifying information) / use your normal internet security posture for responsible disclosure 😊
After you've introduced yourself, we definitely recommend interacting with other users and posting your own thoughts, opinions, opines, and more.
If you are making your own content / etc. you might want to promote that too. If you are a corporate account or influencer account, please make sure to read our information on those account types as well. The goal here is to give people a space to promote original ideas, collaborate, and more but to avoid repetitive content. We spell out what that means for those account types.
On the Twitter model everyone you followed / were followed by were Twitter users. As some have migrated over to Mastodon, they may all choose different instances. So how do you try and find people? There are a few web apps that try and find people from Twitter in the Fediverse. Note that for most (if not all) you need to auth with your Twitter as it is trying to find your follows specifically. A common tool is:
There are other tools beyond this and we will add more as we find them.
There is always the Mastodon documentation, as well as the Fedi.Tips account that posts updated tips on the regular.