Firstly you need to go to join mastodon where you will be presented with the following:-

Clicking on Get Started actually takes further down the page to:-

Where you can select from one of the many instances available, your choice may be influenced by:-

• Geographical location
• Interests
• Number of users on a particular instance

Or some other reason.

I decided to go for quto.org as this is a STEM related instance. So clicking on the signup link.

Filled in the credentials. After which I am asked to confirm. You will be asked to agree to some terms and conditions too.

Once confirmed you are taken to a set of 3 intro pages:

Then you are presented with

Where you can now set up your profile etc.

— Finding people to follow.

Enter their fediverse id in to the search box.

Usually this takes the form of

@username@instancename

You can follow me on the above qoto.org server by clicking this link.

In order for you to see items from my blog in your feed you need to take the following step in your profile settings.

Which is pretty easy to do, clearly this gives you a lot of control over what is then fed in to your feed.

Conclusion

Very easy sign up process, which is great, it looks like this instance also supports inline $\LaTeX$ which is cool too. I have now subscribed to this blog from mastodon.

Not quite ready to #deletetwitter yet, I have some contacts. Compared to the sign-up process on more old fashioned social media this is a breeze.

tags

#social,#network,#fediverse,#mastodon,#freedom,#privacy,#federation,#deletefacebook,#deletetwitter

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Mastodon	ShellLabs	Join Mastodon

AI statement : Consent is NOT granted to use the content of this blog for the purposes of AI training or similar activity. Consent CANNOT be assumed, it has to be granted.

Over the past few months, the social network Mastodon, has seen a big increase in the number of new users joining.

Mostly people from networks Twitter, unhappy, mostly with censorship. In late 2019 there was a big migration from users in India.

Unlike with current mainstream (or should we just say old fashioned) social media. Mastodon is decentralised, so what does this mean?

In essence, there is no central control, just a development model. Mastodon is a network made up on independently owned server instances. These can all communicate with each other, thanks to a protocol called Activity Pub.

Mastodon, forms part of what is called the Fediverse. This numerous other social media instances such as Friendica ( which I am on), that also communicate with each other. The clever part is that the different social networks can communicate with each other.

With the Fediverse, privacy is important, you won't find:

• User tracking
• Tracking of Likes and shares
• Data collection
• Data sale, abuse and misuse of personal information
• Suggestions of friends based on interest
• Advertising

The fediverse, is what the community make it. Users post content, others, who find it interesting will comment, and contribute to the conversation.

During the UK general election campaign, the mainstream news media was taken over by election news. Social media played a big part in campaigning as politicians tried to convince the electorate they were the people to vote for.

Politics has not caught up yet. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

You can find topics of interest by searching for tags, which accompany posts.

If you think it is time to #DeleteFacebook or #DeleteTwitter then feel free to come over to a better way of doing things. There are alternatives to other services too, such as Google, Youtube, Instagram. All these alternatives federated so content can be shared on the Fediverse too.

References

• Join Mastodon
• Fediverse Party

#mastodon, #social, #network, #migration, #exodus, #decentralised, #privacy,

You can find me on Friendica at zleap@social.isurf.ca

Licenced under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Mastodon	ShellLabs	Join Mastodon

AI statement : Consent is NOT granted to use the content of this blog for the purposes of AI training or similar activity. Consent CANNOT be assumed, it has to be granted.