 So, I don't make posts about social media very often on this channel, mostly because the vast majority of my audience just doesn't care. The vast majority of you who subscribe to this just either don't use social media or don't want to watch videos about it and I understand basically everything you hear or at least everything you've probably heard over the last two weeks has been about social media. And Twitter that and Facebook's firing everybody and it's all over the news. You don't want to hear anymore about Twitter, especially from some place where you go to get away from that kind of stuff and you want to, you know, hear about Linux and stuff. So I don't normally make this videos, but I wanted to make a video today about Mastodon because I think it is truly important to do so and it is so good. So I'm not going to go through a whole tutorial over how you could, you know, install Mastodon instance or, you know, even join one or any of that stuff. If you want to find a tutorial on Mastodon itself and federated social media, Nick at the Linux experiment has a really good video on that. I'll link that in the video description below. But for me today, what I want to talk about is why you should join Mastodon. Now really, this is only going to apply to people who are interested in social media. So if you're not interested in social media and you have no interest in ever joining a social media site, then you can just pass the rest of this by. Thanks for clicking. I appreciate it. See you tomorrow. But for the rest of you who are interested in this type of thing, why should you consider leaving Twitter or even just joining Mastodon if you've never even been on Twitter? Why should you consider joining Mastodon? And the answer to that question is that Mastodon is unlike any other social media network out there. It is not Twitter. I know that in the wider press, it has been said that Mastodon is a Twitter replacement, and that is, I suppose, kind of true for some people. But for the most part, the way I look at Mastodon, it's not Twitter. Now, if you were to compare it to Twitter, say from like 2007 or 2008 or 2009, back when it had a much more personal feel, then the comparison might be a little bit more apt. But comparing Mastodon and Twitter nowadays is just they're not comparable. And what I mean by that is that Mastodon, even though it has grown by leaps and bounds over the last two weeks since Elon has done his thing, it still feels very, very personal. And that was the promise of social media way back when there was a brand new social media network every day, it seemed like, back in the, you know, mid 2000s or so. It's why something like Facebook got really popular because you joined Facebook to friend people that you actually knew in real life and you could share pictures and stuff like that. That's how Facebook started. Granted, it was just on college campuses, but you really get the idea. You friended people who you actually knew. And then later on, it became friends and family. And then it became what it is today, which is, you know, accessible. Mastodon kind of keeps that same feeling from back in that era where everything just feels very, very personal. It feels like you're a part of a small group of people that you can just chat with about pretty much anything and Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all of those networks really lost that feel when they became so big and so pushy when it comes to trying to have people compete for position inside the feed. So when they started having algorithms and stuff like that on Twitter, it became less about interacting with people and making friends and stuff like that than it was about trying to get the most retweets and stuff like that. So your your content would float to the top of the feet. You know what I mean? With Mastodon, there is no algorithm. So everyone sees everyone's tweets if you follow them, right? If you follow someone, you're going to see all their tweets. You don't have to worry about an algorithm at all. And that leads to this sensation of feeling very, very intimate. It feels like you can follow a few people and just have conversations with them based on whatever topic you want to or whatever whatever things in common you happen to have. So this is especially useful because a lot of people join instances of Mastodon that are focused on one particular areas. So for example, I'm a member of Faustodon, which is a instance based on people who enjoy free and open source software. Now, the one common misconception that I've seen a lot in the mainstream press is that if you join an instance, all you're able to do is follow people from that instance. That is not anywhere near true. You can follow anyone on any instance, no matter what instance you're a part of. And that's what makes Mastodon great in this way, because you can follow a whole bunch of people from your instance and be perfectly happy just talking about free and open source software all day. But you can also add in people from other instances who tweet about other things that you're interested in. So if you're interested in art or photography or music, whatever, you can find people through like hashtags and then follow them just like you would on Twitter or something like that. But because of the way Mastodon is structured and the small community nature of it, when you follow someone, it feels like you're truly interacting with those people. And you can reply to them and retweet them and all this stuff. And it just feels like you are a member of a community. Whereas with Twitter, Facebook, all those things, it feels more like you're just a part of the herd, I suppose is the best way to put it. So I've been using Mastodon since DistraTube had his own instance and then I moved to Fosodon. So it's been maybe a year or so. I really didn't get active until about April of this year. So in that time, I've truly enjoyed my time there. And I've made several friends. I've had tons of excellent conversations. And it's just been so, so good. And it just doesn't feel toxic like Twitter does or like Twitter has become. You know what I mean? And some of that's not even Elon's fault, right? Some of Twitter's problems were there long before Elon ever joined up and bought the company. So I don't want to just blame the Elon guy. But Twitter truly did feel toxic unless you really seriously focused on just following and paying attention to people who only tweeted about a certain thing. If you expanded, if you ever expanded your reach out on Twitter to follow other people that didn't tweet about the stuff that you wanted to follow, you would quickly find that they're just way too many, you know, assholes on Twitter. Now, all that being said, that doesn't mean that Mastodon is perfect. It is not perfect. And you'll find just as many assholes on Mastodon as you would on Twitter. Probably not just as many, but you're still going to find a certain percentage of the community that are trolls and horrible people. But it's so easy just to either block that instance that they come from because chances are, if they're a member of an instance where they can be an asshole, that there are other assholes on the instance. So you can block that whole instance and never see anything from that server ever again, which is awesome. But you can also report people who are being inappropriate and maybe unlawful or whatever. And usually the bigger instances have moderators. So they will see that report and then go investigate. And these are actual people, like physical real life people and not like some server that is just, oh, this thing has been reported. I'm just going to ignore it because whatever, right? So I really think that if you are a Twitter user of any kind or a social media user of any kind, you should give Mastodon a try. It may not be for you. It may not end up being something that you stick with. But giving it a try, you might be surprised at how really nice it is. Now, a few of the complaints that I've heard over the last few weeks since Mastodon has gotten way much bigger since Elon bought Twitter. I've heard people say, well, it's really hard to find people to follow. It's really hard to find topics to follow. The one thing that you have to understand about Mastodon is that the way that they do search is a little bit different. So you can't just search for something and then expect to find it. You have to search for a hashtag. Every search is done through hashtags. So in the search box up at the top of the screen on Mastodon, you would search for something and then it's going to find those toots that have that hashtag. So if you don't use hashtags in your toots, you're not going to be able to have that thing be found. So one thing that you should focus on is finding people who use certain hashtags. And then you can either follow those hashtags as long as the Mastodon server you're on is using the latest version of a Mastodon, or you can just follow that person, right? You can do either of those things. And then all of that stuff will show up in your home timeline. Another thing that you can do beyond just searching is there are tools out there that allow you to compare your Twitter followers and your Mastodon followers and then kind of sync them together. So anybody who is on Mastodon and Twitter, you can follow the people on Mastodon as well. So I'll try to link one of those tools in the video description as well. I don't know if I'll be able to find them because I did not use them. So that's one complaint that I've heard over the last couple weeks is that it's hard to find topics to follow. But in terms of actually finding people to follow, what you will want to do is once you've joined an instance, especially if you've joined a bigger instance, mess around and so you can see the local timeline. So with Mastodon, there are two different timelines. There's the local timeline, which is a timeline of just people who are on your instance. So for example, I'm on Faustodon. So my local timeline is only of people who are on the Faustodon instance. Then there's another timeline called the Federated Timeline. This is the big timeline that has every toot that is being tooted all across all of Mastodon. And if you were to follow my advice, you would you would completely ignore the Federated Timeline. It is not as bad as it used to be because a lot of instances now are very well moderated. But there are still occasional things on there that you don't want to pay attention to. So if you were on a very unmoderated instance of Mastodon, you're going to see everything in that Federated Timeline. And some of the stuff there is not all that great. So you just want to avoid the Federated Timeline unless you're on a very moderated instance. But the local timeline is where you're going to be able to find a lot of people to follow. And once you followed some people, it's really easy to find people that they follow and follow them. And then it just kind of snowballs into the point where you've built a very good list of people that you followed. So that is the way that I've built up, you know, 50 or 60 people that I follow and I will continue to do that. And then as you interact with people and, you know, talk with them and stuff like that, you'll actually find that you follow more people and it just will kind of snowball. So that's probably the biggest complaint that I've heard. But I've also heard that they don't really understand the whole instances thing or what instances that they should choose or whatever, or should they be a part of multiple instances? So the answer to those questions is a little bit harder to answer because what instance you choose is really going to depend on what you're looking for. So there are some instances out there that are very lacking in rules and moderation. If that's your type of thing, join that kind of instance. It doesn't mean that you can't still interact with some other instances, but the less moderated your instance is that you're a part of, the more likely it is that other instances are going to block that instance. So I would highly recommend joining a mainstream instance, something like Mastodon.social, something like Faustodon, maybe Faust.social. There's several of them that you could possibly join. And by joining one of the mainstream ones, you're going to be less likely to be on a server that will get blocked by other instances, if that makes sense. So choosing an instance is very important. And there are lists of instances out there that you can choose. I'll try to get one of those in the video description. And I would just say that choose one and try to get a, you know, sense of the things that go on there with the local timeline. If you don't really care for the things that are being talked about there in the local timeline, you can either, you know, stick around and just follow people from other instances or Mastodon has a way where you can actually transfer your account from one instance to another. So you can go about doing that. So if you end up finding another instance that you'd rather be a part of, or if someday you decide to host your own instance, you can transfer your account from one instance to another, which is really nice. The vast majority of instances that are more than just a few people will have their moderation policies posted somewhere along the line. So just pay attention to their moderation policies because you'll want to know what you can and cannot post, but also what other people can and cannot post because there is some really bad stuff out there on people's instances that have no moderation whatsoever. And you want to avoid that stuff as much as possible. Those are really the only complaints that I've heard from people who have tried to find Mastodon and use it. Mostly the complaint is that it just feels too confusing, right? It feels like they don't understand what Federation means. And personally, I don't think you need to understand what Federation means. Federation is a very complex thing to explain. And it's not something that even I could do very well. Really, what you need to understand is that the instance that you join is important. But just because you join an instance doesn't mean you are only allowed to follow people within that instance. You can follow people from anywhere on any instance. And that's the important thing to understand. Find the instance that you want to join and then follow anybody you want. That's basically how it works. And that's really all you need to know. There are also several tools out there that have made lists of notable people to follow. I will again try to link one of those in the video description so you can check them out. And that's another good way of finding people to follow. Now, if you were a part of Twitter way back in the day when it first launched, 2006, 2007, 2008, something like that, you know, in those early years, you'll remember something like follow Friday, right? Every Friday, people would basically just list out all their followers in a series of tweets so that you could, you know, follow them back or whatever. That stuff kind of happens on Mastodon as well. But also back in the day on Twitter, Twitter lists was a thing. So not like the lists that you would, you know, like assign people and then just follow those people. You know, that stuff exists on Mastodon, too. But I mean that people would on their website list a whole bunch of people to follow based on certain topics. That doesn't really happen anymore because Twitter's gotten so big. But on Mastodon, because it's still relatively small, a lot of people have put together lists of people that they think you should follow. And if you search for one of those lists, you'll probably find some people that you can follow. So Mastodon is amazing. I really, really have enjoyed my time there. And it has been an experience that has really contrasted with how Twitter has been. Now, I've always been someone who is very picky on who I follow on Twitter. So I only follow people who I've either had conversations within real life or somewhere else on the internet or people who tweet about things that I care about or developers or projects that I care about, whatever. I'm very picky on who I follow. And that meant that I was able to avoid the vast majority of the nastiness that is on Twitter. But even then, I was still, you know, like on the periphery aware of all the stuff that goes on on Twitter. And my experience on Mastodon has just contrasted with that so much. It just feels like a completely different community. It feels like a community. And that is awesome. It just has a complex. It just has completely different feeling to it. And it makes it just a joy to use. Now, going all the way back to the beginning of this rambly video, I will say and or I should say again that Mastodon is not going to be for everybody. It is a little bit confusing. So and I doubt actually that I've cleared any of that stuff up here in this video. But again, I'll point you towards next video because he does a better job of explaining it than I ever could. So Mastodon may be too confusing for some people. Also, as I said at the beginning, social media is not something that my audience really cares about. So, you know, it may or this may or may not intrigue you. And if it doesn't, you know, thank you for watching this far, I suppose, for something that you don't really care about. If it does intrigue you a little bit, sign up to an instance. You know, I don't know a faucet on is still taking members or not. May or may not. A lot of instances that are more highly moderated are on a waiting list of some kind. If you find one instance that you can't join because it's full, you know, find another instance. A lot of them have no limits whatsoever. So what you know, just keep searching if you don't happen to find the instance that you particularly want. There are others out there. So that is it for this video. If you have thoughts on Mastodon or any of the Twitter nonsense that you'd like to discuss, you can do those things in the comment section below. I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me on Mastodon and on Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast, just like all these fine people. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube. You guys are all absolutely amazing. Without you, the challenges would not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very much for your support. I can't even begin to say how grateful that I am for your support. So thank you so much. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.