What I wish I knew before joining Mastodon

Where I attempt to explain Mastodon through Harry Potter gifs

Mastodon’s been around for six months, but chances are, you’re just joining now because you’ve seen the articles about “anti-Twitter” in Verge, Vice, Mashable, Quartz or some other tech publication — not to mention the quality Twitter trolling from Mastodon the heavy metal band.

Plus the fact that Mastodon’s flagship account, Mastodon.social (more on this later), has temporarily stopped adding new users as its 24-year-old German developer Eugen Rochko attempts some quality control makes this club feel more exclusive.

As of April 9, 2017, more than 130,000 Mastodon accounts have been made. More than 42,000 of those accounts are registered on Mastodon.social.

But while Mastodon feels familiar as Twitter, it’s different enough that it initially feels like an episode of “Black Mirror.”

Here’s what I learned in the past 48 hours of joining Mastodon and what I wish I knew before joining:

What are instances and which one should I join:

Since signing up for Mastodon.social is closed until future notice, you might have noticed a message that says “Choose one of the various public instances to sign up!”

Even though Mastodon.social has been limiting the amount of new users temporarily, you can still sign up for Mastodon by joining any instance.

Instances are sort of like subreddits in that each are moderated by a dedicated team of volunteers and each may have their own specific rules, interests, themes or cultures. But unlike Reddit, each Mastodon instance is hosted on different servers by an independent team of administrators and developers who enforce the Mastodon instance’s rules.

Here’s a good list of some of the available instances, whether registration is open and how to find them.

But you can learn more about any Mastodon instance before joining by visiting the instances’ about me page.

The instance that you join matters since this might determine who you initially meet.

If you’re looking for a site to suggest a randomized instance that’s accepting new users, try this:

Instances with more members might be more connected to other instances and you will see completely different local and federated timelines depending on which instance you join (more on this later).

You can still contact and connect with people who’ve joined Mastodon from other instances, but like an email address, the instance you join follows you around.

For example, if you want to message me on Mastodon, you have to type @qinaliu@mastodon.social in a toot (more on this later).

Since each user is tied to an instance, people can also steal your username and identity on another instance (it’s sort of like how email addresses at @gmail.com and @yahoo.com and @aol.com are all different). And since you can join and log into as many Mastodon instances as you’d like, you can technically be in multiple places at the same time.

How Mastodon compares to Twitter:

Mastodon, while prehistoric in some regards (the timeline is thankfully still chronological and you “Favourite” rather than “Like” posts here), feels intuitive since it resembles Twitter so much.

The interface looks like TweetDeck — except the columns aren’t customizable, you can’t schedule posts, you can’t build lists, trends are harder to track or search, and well, Mastodon isn’t Twitter.