Mastodon 101 (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Tusk)

Now that Elon has turned Twitter into fascist Disneyland, you’ve likely been reading more and more about Mastodon as an alternative. While it’s been around for quite a while (some co-workers and I lightly poked at it years ago), all of the recent shenanigans have pushed it back into the spotlight in a major way.

Unlike other emerging new options like Post and Hive Social ( yikes and double yikes) which are centralized services prone to the exact same “could eventually be hijacked by a red-pilled billionaire” issue, Mastodon is part of the “ Fediverse “ and is decentralized, which means that it’s made up of separate, independently-run servers that can all talk to each other through a common language.

This decentralization has given Mastodon a reputation for being a bit hard to set up, and while the overall user experience certainly has some room to improve, if you’ve ever signed up for a web-based email account, then sent someone a message, I have complete faith that you’ve got this.

Here’s how to get started…

Step 1: Choose a Server

Since Mastodon is decentralized, you’ll first choose a server to join, from which you can then communicate with users on the same or other servers. This great PC Magazine article sums it up nicely: