The Fediverse, For Those Who've Never Used It

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Back on Wordpress, before I hit the nuke button, and was subsequently apparently locked out of my Digital Ocean account … just because my Github e-mail changed, I had a page dedicated to explaining the fediverse, and showing off the different ways you could interact with ActivityPub. I have put this page back via Nova Prime, but I wanted to use this post today to talk about some of the new user issues I witness as someone who posts regularly and almost entirely primarily, on Mastodon.

Maybe you’re on Threads, already interacting with the fediverse, and to that I say, kudos! I have some issues with Threads, and its over-the-top algorithm, along with Meta’s wholesale endorsement of the AI grift … but hey, anything is better than nothing. And I say this, because, a user-owned internet and social web is 100% the way of the future. A lot of people have realized that corporations with profit interests are really bad at running social places for people to connect with each other, and I have no doubt the number of people realizing this will continue to grow.

Maybe you’re on Bluesky, and maybe you’re bridged to the fediverse. Maybe you’re not. I have other issues with Bluesky, in that, they’re basically doing a Nostr, but centralized, wherein all keys report to their central server (which is very much not the decentralization they like to say ATProtocol is). Add on top of that, I just find some of the developers behind the platform really arrogant and full of themselves, and I don’t know man, that just annoys me, kinda. Bluesky is at least, an option, not really a great one, because it’s still a corporation, with corporate interests, controlling your digital social life. But, it’s whatever. Some people are comfortable with their Twitter 2.0, and that’s fine.

But the issue is, people from Twitter, people from Threads, people from Bluesky: They’ll jump onto a random Mastodon instance, and probably about 70% of the time, experience some kind of major grievance against themselves, or people they support (through slurs, hate, bigotry, etc.), and then they’ll swear off the whole entire shabang because of this, and return from whence they came. And, I thought maybe this was a failing of the user simply treating Mastodon and other fediverse software like Twitter. Wherein they’re like, “Hey, I’ll just make an account and I’m done!”

It is, unfortunately for some, not as simple as that.

I realized, though, this isn’t really the fault of the user. Every other app is setup to be quick, simple, and easy. But Mastodon requires, and I really mean it, requires that you investigate the server you’re looking into joining. It’s like we’re back in the 90s, and your avenue for social interaction online is internet forums, and you definitely don’t want to join a forum full of people with interests you don’t enjoy.

If you want to give the fediverse a shot, and you want to be rid of corporate interests, take some of these pointers in mind:

• Don’t just throw a dart at the wall and join a random Mastodon instance.
• Do take the time to check and see if the community you’re joining has rules, guidelines, and (unless they’ve made it private) a block list.
• If a server’s block list is public, look at what types of instances they’re blocking, and the why.
• And yes, these are communities you’re joining.

Mastodon is decentralized in a way that it is many little Twitters, connected to each other through different methods, different systems, and a lot of the time, entirely different budgets.

• Take the time to look at the live feed of the instance you’re considering, see what kinds of people are posting.
  • Are there nazis? Don’t join.
  • Are there weirdos sharing illegal content? Don’t join.
  • Are there normal seeming people, but the instance/server has no clear rules or guidelines against hate and bigotry? Don’t join.

At the end of the day, the fediverse is a lot like any other social place on the internet. There are bad people, there are gross people. These people can and will try to interact with you if you allow them. But if you follow the above steps, the chances of this happening become ever the lower. Yes, you will run into jerks, even on a good server/instance. I highly recommend utilizing the block and report feature as often as possible, because there are actual people behind moderation decisions, and they are reading your reports.

With all of that in mind, are you ready to give it a shot? Normally I would link to the official “join Mastodon” page, but I recently realized that they’re filtering out much of the fediverse, just because some servers don’t meet their standards of having daily backups, or three moderators at a time (which is entirely not necessary if you’re running a community of 20 people). Check out this page, instead. Instances.social lists every single instance, so that you have a fair shake at seeing everything that’s available … at least, on the Mastodon side of things (I would recommend Mastodon as a starting point before you get involved in something like Misskey or Pleroma).

That’s it, and, of course, you can definitely contact me at my own instance if you have further questions and/or would like anything else explained to you in depth.