Mastodon - Guide, Tips & Resources
Last Updated: Dec 17, 2022
Author(s) - Robert Guerra (@robert@mstdn.ca)
Copyright - Can this document be shared - YES!
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Say you entered nonprofit2022 as a username above, then your Mastodon ID would be: @nonprofit2022@mstdn.social
A message with a confirmation link will be sent to the email address you specified above. Please follow the link to activate your account. Please check your spam folder if you didn't receive the email.
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Creating your list of friends and followers on Twitter
Background Articles
Several background articles have been written that explain Mastodon, it’s origin, history and why it’s emerging as the alternative to Twitter. Below is a list of recommended articles:
· A Twitter User’s Guide to Mastodon
· Fedi.Tips - An informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse.
· ZDNET - Ditching Twitter? How to get started with Mastodon
· The Guardian - What is Mastodon, the social network users are leaving Twitter for? Everything you need to know
· PC Magazine – How to Get Started on Mastodon and leave Twitter Behind
· Stuff - What is Mastodon? All you need to know to switch from Twitter
· CBC - What is Mastodon, and why is it surging amid all the chaos at Twitter?
Frequently Asked Questions
Adapted from “An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon” and there other background documents listed above.
What is Mastodon?
Mastodon is a social networking software platform. It allows someone to run their own social media site (and let other people use it too, if they want), and each Mastodon site is capable of talking to all of the other Mastodon social media sites (as well as many others). It's like a cross between Twitter and email, but it's not exactly like either of those.
You post relatively short status updates, and you can see a streaming list of your friends' status updates. You can keep notifications (replies, boosts, favorites, and DMs) in a separate column.
Mastodon's statuses are called "toots", like Twitter's are called "tweets". A toot can be up to 500 characters long.
Mastodon also supports hashtags, which are words prefixed by #, like "#gaming" or "#pineapple". You can click on a hashtag to search for other posts containing that tag.
The Local timeline is every post with a public status posted by users on your instance, with the exception of replies. (A reply is any toot posted in response to another toot - NOT any toot that simply mentions another user!)
The Federated timeline is every post with a public status posted by any user that your instance knows about, even from other instances. Your instance knows about a remote user if at least one user on your instance has EVER followed them.
What is the Fediverse?
The Fediverse is the vast array of servers that communicate via the ActivityPub or OStatus protocols. There are lots of different kinds of server software on the fediverse, like Pixelfed, Pleroma, Misskey, or WriteFreely. Mastodon is one of the most popular of these.
How do I get verified on Mastodon?
Unlike Twitter, Mastodon has no built-in verification. We assume you are who you say you are. If you see someone with a checkmark by their name (like ✅), they've just typed that emoji into their display name.
Mastodon instances will allow you to add metadata to your profile - up to four items displayed in a table on your profile page that don't count against the length of your profile text. If you use these fields to link to your other websites, some instances will allow you to verify that you own those websites by providing a link on those websites back to your Mastodon account. For instance, if you have a personal website, you can include the link to your website in your Mastodon metadata, and then include a link to your Mastodon account in the header of your website, and Mastodon will verify that you're the person who owns your website.
A Mastodon instance that allows this will have instructions on your Edit Profile page telling you how to add the verification link.
I've found another instance I like better. Can I move my account?
There are two ways to accomplish this: you can redirect your account or migrate your account.
· If you redirect your account, your old account will have a redirection notice added to it, and you won't be able to fully use it (I believe this mostly means you won't be able to post from it anymore). You'll still be able to export your account's data, and you can reactivate your account at any time. Users who go to your old account's profile will be told that they can find you at your new account. Nothing else will be transferred automatically
· If you migrate your account, all the same things will happen as redirecting your account. In addition, all of your followers will be moved to your new account (so nobody has to find and re-follow you).
In neither case will your posts move over. You'll be starting with an empty post history on your new account.
How much does it cost to run a Mastodon Instance ?
According to Andreas Wittig's, 17 Nov 2022 blog post titled "Mastodon on AWS: Host your own instance" the estimated cost for hosting 1-50 users is $60 USD per month. A less scalable and resilient setup can be done for a small # of users using an instance on a small VPS. Another option is to use this step by step guide to install Mastodon on a Raspberry Pi 4 with at least 2GB of memory.
How can I change my username?
The short version: you can't. Once you choose a username for your account, it's immutable, so choose wisely.
The long version: The only way to kind of change your username is to migrate your account (see above), but again, you won't take your post history with you no matter what you do.
How do I mention someone who's not on my instance?
Mastodon usernames take the form @username@instance. If you're mentioning someone on a different instance, you have to type the whole thing (although the toot input box will help you auto complete the username if it's a name the instance knows already).
What are the rules?
The rules depend on which instance you're on. Each instance has a page at https://instance/about/more that usually contains more information about the instance and often describes the community guidelines. For example, mstdn.social has its community guidelines posted at https://mstdn.social/about/more .
Keep in mind that these are usually guidelines and not hard-and-fast rules. Since each instance is run by a separate team of moderators - often just one person! - they have the final say over what's allowed and not allowed on their instance. Your instance admins might even go so far as to block an entire other instance if their users turn out to be incompatible with your instance's values and the other instance's moderators won't help.
What if I see someone breaking the rules?
If you see someone breaking the rules, you can send a report. Click on the ... under the offending post, and select Report @user (which is usually at the very bottom of that menu). This will bring up a window where you can select additional recent posts from that user, if you need to, and also type out a reason for the report, so that the moderator who receives the report will understand why you sent it.
If the user is from a different instance, then underneath the report reason, you will also see a switch next to "Forward to their instance". This not only reports the user to the moderators on your instance, it sends the report to the other user's instance as well. Before you do this, check the rules of the instance they're on. They may not be breaking their local rules.
The moderators and administrators of your instance will be able to see that it was you who sent the report. If you forward the report to a remote user's instance, the moderators and administrators of that instance will not be able to see who sent the report — only that it came from your instance.
By default, you will not get any notification about actions that any moderators or administrators take in response to your reports. You can ask them, but be prepared to hear something like "we don't comment on how we resolve reports".
What are the different kinds of posts?
Mastodon posts can be chained together in different ways. Below is a list different kinds of posts:
I've included a diagram here (it's a link because it's big). Notice how as soon as someone else's post enters the chain, your replies stop being self-replies. This is important, because self-replies and replies work differently in your followers' timelines.
How do privacy settings work?
Under each post, you'll see three icons: a camera, a globe or a padlock, and the letters "CW". Click on the globe or padlock to choose the privacy settings for your post. You can set the default privacy level for your posts under Preferences > Other > Posting Privacy.
Keep in mind that some servers, which run software that's compatible with but not the same as Mastodon, will ignore these privacy settings if you send a message to their users, so be careful!
What happens when someone follows me?
If someone follows you, they will see your posts on their Home timeline and they will be able to see your followers-only posts. If you want, you can limit the people who can follow you by clicking on Edit profile and selecting Lock account, which will allow you to manually approve and reject people who want to follow you.
What if someone's following or interacting with me and I don't want them to?
You have a couple options.
All three of these options are available by clicking the ... under one of the user's toots or on their profile inside the Mastodon web interface.
What are hashtags?
To make a hashtag, type "#" and then any number of letters or numbers. Hashtags should be #CamelCased to make it easier for screen readers to parse for folks using accessibility tools.Accents count; punctuation, spaces, symbols, and emoji don't. #HowIsMyDayoing is a valid hashtag; #höwísmydàygôíng is valid; #how-is-my-day-going isn't (it'll just catch #how).
A hashtag is metadata about your toot: it provides additional information that doesn't necessarily belong in the body of the toot, but is useful for understanding. If you're a programmer, it's sort of like a code comment.
As a bonus†, hashtags are tracked by each instance. Clicking on a hashtag takes you to a list of public posts with that hashtag. You can use them to track #politics, check out the users people are recommending on #FollowFriday, or see people's artwork using #mastoart. With Mastodon release 4.0.0 you can follow individual hashtags so that toots containing a followed hashtag show up in your timeline.
Don't go overboard with hashtags. As a guideline, your hashtags probably shouldn't be more than 10% of the total length of your toot. If you find yourself going over that, you might be spreading things a bit too thin.
What does "CW" mean?
CW stands for Content Warning. It hides your post behind text (which you get to choose); it's like a Read More link.
You might use CWs for:
Some common abbreviations you'll find in CWs are:
In general, just use your best judgment; think "is there a reason someone might not want to see this?". You have the opportunity to take an extra moment and make the fediverse a nicer place for people to be.
What should I include in my First Mastodon post?
I just attached a picture to my toot. How can I add a caption to it?
When you attach an image, you'll see "Edit" (plus a pencil icon) at the top right of the image. Clicking this will pop up a dialog box that lets you determine what part of the image should show in the preview; it also allows you to set alt-text for the image, which people can read if they mouse over the text, and which screen-readers (such as for the visually impaired) can read instead of just saying "embedded image".
For images that are largely text (for example, a screenshot of a Tumblr post), Mastodon has built-in optical character recognition (OCR) and can often transcribe the image for you, although you should probably double-check the transcription to make sure it's accurate.
Why should I add a caption to my picture?
In a word: Accessibility.
Some people who use Mastodon are visually impaired and use screen readers. Some people who use Mastodon have images turned off to conserve their data usage. Sometimes disk errors or server errors happen, or your admin decides to prune old files, and your image just doesn't load anymore. Captioning an image allows people in these conditions to participate in your toots with full context.
You can also use image captions to insert additional jokes (like webcomics often do) or additional commentary on the image. Take advantage of the fact that image descriptions have their own separate character limit and put whatever you like in there. The sky's the limit.
Why can't I quote someone's toot, like a quote-tweet?
Like search, it's an anti-harassment feature. If you want to reply to someone's toot, you have to actually reply to it; you can't just broadcast it to your followers with a snarky comment.
What's the generally accepted Mastodon etiquette?
There are no hard-and-fast rules for everybody, and (as noted above) different instances have different guidelines. That said, many people follow some simple guidelines meant to make Mastodon a friendlier place for everybody.
I’m not sure I want to leave Twitter. Can I cross-post from Twitter to Mastodon?
Yes, this is possible by way of third-party tools. These require you to authorize your account with Twitter and Mastodon and set up parameters.
Can I find my Twitter friends on Mastodon?
Yes, this is also possible with third-party tools such as Fedifinder, Twitodon and Debirdify
I like Mastodon but I want to use it on my computer.
The usual way to access to your Instance from your desktop computer is by going to the homepage trough your browser. But there are also Desktop Applications for Mastodon like
I like Mastodon but I want to use it on my phone.
Mastodon has a responsive design, so you can use it in your phone's browser. Alternatively, there are many apps available for Mastodon, including an official "Mastodon for iPhone" app released in August 2021.
Is there a directory or list where I can find people on Mastodon?
Members of the Mastodon community have created several directories where you can finder lists of people working in a specific area and/or field of work
