How to sign up on Mastodon

Quick guide

1. If you are using a computer, click here: https://joinmastodon.org/
2. If you are using a smartphone, download the app called “mastodon” (android and apple).
3. If you don’t have time to browse through servers, just “join mastodon.social”, which is the current largest server. You can read what difference it makes in the longer version below, and you can switch servers later if you ever start to care.
4. Read the rules. If you do not like the rules, you can choose a different server.
5. Enter your e-mail address and choose a password.
6. If you never read privacy policies, you can for sure trust this one [in short: they don’t collect anything], so just click that you did. You didn’t even give them your name 🙂
7. Verify your e-mail address by clicking on the link in the e-mail you have been sent.
8. Voilà you are in! If you have signed up on other social media platforms before, you are likely to figure out everything from here by clicking around, reading the little pop-up notes and looking stuff up that you don’t understand 😉 When you first signed up on facebook, instagram, twitter, there was also a little learning curve. You’ll manage!
9. If you are missing a certain feature that you are used to, you will likely find answers to people who had the exact same question as you, so just use a civilisation-friendly search engine.

Longer guide and tips

1. Edit your profile with your avatar, banner, display name and short bio. When you follow people, they will see your short bio directly in their notification. Unlike in billionaire social media platforms, you can enter as many links as you want to your different websites. Save and continue!
2. You will now see a list of proposed profiles to follow, ranked by amount of followers. You can browse there…
3. …or use the “search” at the top left in a browser, or at the bottom in the app, and find us! If you signed up at mastodon.social, just enter @activersity. If you signed up via a different server, enter @activersity@mastodon.social. You can remember this: the first part is the username, the second part is the user’s server, like with e-mail (@yahoo.com, @gmail.com, etc.). Therefore, if you are on the same server, you do not need to enter the name of the server. You can connect with people from all servers though! Hit follow 🙂
4. You might want to search for hashtags. For example, try #europe. You can see results, and you can hit the “follow #europe” button. This way, all posts posted in your server with this hashtag will be delivered to your feed. Try some hashtags reflecting your interests.
5. Let’s do a little tour. Click “explore” – here you’ll find trending posts from across the fediverse (including from other servers) that are gaining traction today. Newer posts with more boosts and favorites are ranked higher.
6. Click on “Live feeds” – These are the most recent public posts from people whose accounts are hosted by your server. This is important if you have chosen, say a small local server that focuses on a specific topic, for example gardening. You will see posts from people that you are not following, but who share your interests and might decide to follow. In your first days on mastodon, you might want to check here and in “explore” to see who interests you.
7. “Home” will take you to your personal feed that will fill up once you start following people or hashtags. You can favorite a post by clicking on the star button. You can boost a post by clicking on the circular arrow button. This will re-post it to your followers, thereby “boosting” the post. Your posts and boosts will appear in the “Live feeds” of your server, too, which also boosts the post.
8. Notifications will show you when people favorited or boosted your post, or when they started following you.
9. Your first post could be an #introduction – on mastodon it’s part of the nettiquette to introduce yourself, so you may use this hashtag. You can choose the level of privacy by hitting on “public”, this will open more options.

Servers

Mastodon is not centralized. Nobody “owns” it. Instead, many people or organizations around the world host a “server” that you can join. (You could also host a server and contribute to the network!) The servers communicate with each other, making it possible to follow anybody from any server. Therefore, you are asked to choose one. If you feel overwhelmed, you can just join mastodon.social or mastodon.online and voilà. Don’t worry, you can move servers later without losing followers if you ever become a nerd!

Why it could matter

If you do click on the browse servers option, you will see that the list of servers is sorted by topics and by regions. If you join a big server like mastodon.social that doesn’t cater to a specific region or topic, the topics that appear in the “live feed” will be more varied – and you will have a broader initial reach because whatever you post will be seen by all of the people who regularly check the live feed, who are maybe browsing for new people to follow.

If you would rather discover more like-minded people or projects in your live feed, for example, activists, LGBTQ+ people, travelers, musicians or simply locals, you may want to choose a smaller, specialized server. It is also possible that an NGO hosts a server for their members only – in that case, in their live feed, they would see up to date posts related to their own community, like a local messaging board, while each of the members are still able to follow people from all of the other servers and vice versa.

Each server has different rules, for example, for some, you have to request to be signed up by introducing yourself, and others offer immediate sign-up (like mastodon.social). Some accept only locals, some accept only certain languages or even certain topics (because they want to keep their “live feed” reserved to a certain topic), others are very open to everything (like mastodon.social and many others). The hosts will moderate content according to their own set of rules.