How to Mastodon

 Mastodon! I dig it! It may be the future of the internet. But it's kind of intimidating. 

Step One: Find a Server / Instance

Don't do the obvious thing and go to mastodon.social! It's over-crowded and under-moderated. 

Check the directory at Fedi.Garden or Join Mastodon and find one that feels like it has people that you can relate to. I am on dice.camp, a server for fans of table top role playing games. Read the server rules, and make sure there's nothing there you can't live with. 

Some servers have open sign up, others may have a waiting list, and some are only open with an invite. If your first choice isn't open, it's good to have a second choice. This is pretty normal for non-corporate internet. Running a server is a lot of work, and it doesn't make any money. 

Step Two: Follow Some People

So how do you follow someone who isn't on your server? 

Say you want to follow the Hourly Cat Bot. Since you aren't on the botsin.space server, you can't just use the subscribe button. Instead you have to go your server, and click on the # Explore tab. Then copy and paste the cat bot's URL into the search bar. 

Not difficult, but a single button press would be better. Fortunately, we can fix that. 

Step Three: Set up Your Browser

Various Mastodon servers are easier to navigate with a few bookmarklets. A bookmarklet is a short Javascript program squeezed into a bookmark. Each of these pages has all the instructions you need. 

Here's a one-click subscribe button. Here's an instant post button. 

EDIT: And here's an instance swap tool that's useful.