For those who are not familiar with it, Mastodon is an open-source alternative to Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Threads. There are Mastodon “instances” all over the Intranet, and they all talk to one another. In fact, they also can federate with Bluesky and Threads accounts, so you can follow them directly from Mastodon (assuming they, and you, have set your accounts up properly).
The key is to get started by selecting an instance – I’d recommend one of the larger ones such as mastodon.social or mstdn.social – and creating an account there. Then start exploring: You can look at the “local” timeline (the one that corresponds to your instance), the “federated” timeline (the feed from all the other instances that yours knows about), and search for various #hashtags to find others with similar interests as yours.
Unlike other social media platforms, on Mastodon there is no algorithm; what you follow is what you see. Explore the feeds and hashtags, follow people or topics that seem interesting, and build your “home feed” from there. Mute or block content, or even entire instances, that you don’t want to see.
PRO TIP: There can be some undesirable content on some of these feeds, so I’d recommend the first thing you do – even before you start browsing – is to set up some filters to block unwanted content. I’d recommend blocking #nsfw (“Not Safe For Work” content) as a start, and maybe #USPol or #Politics in general if you don’t want to see that. You can block individual accounts if they’re annoying you, or even entire servers if you think the content is not what you’re interested in.
To get started, set up your profile so people know who you are. Then, as you see posts you like you can “boost” (share) them, or “favorite” (like) them. Boosting a post makes it so that others can find it more easily. If you favorite a post, it’s basically just telling the original poster “thanks!” but doesn’t expose the post more broadly.
If over time you find that there’s another instance that looks more like “your people”, it’s easy to migrate your profile to that instance. (After a week or two, I moved mine to deacon.social, and have since set up a self-hosted instance at social.txcolliers.net.) If you want to explore an instance without creating an account, most of them have a “front page” that gives you a preview of their feeds. Just type in the instance name in your browser. For example: http://mastodon.social.
Because Mastodon is based on the ActivityPub protocol, it interfaces with LOTS of other stuff on the web. I can even embed my Mastodon account feed in a WordPress page (see below).
If you decide to give it a try, don’t hesitate to follow me. Just type “@tartan@social.txcolliers.net” in the search box of whatever instance you’re on. See you on Mastodon!