The new (six years old) social media system proves it’s mettle and keeps its users happy. A resilient and friendly environment.

Since Eugen Rochko gave the world Mastodon and the underlying system (ActivityPub) that Mastodon and many other systems are built on, Mastodon has grown. The system runs on thousands (about 4000 at the moment) that share content between them. This shared (federated) system means that it cannot be incapacitated by a malicious attack. Several days ago three large servers suffered attacks (DDoS) and hardly anyone noticed.

The number of users increased very slowly for many years, to ramp up significanly with the upheavals at Twitter. There are currently about 6 million users.

What can you expect to see? Messages with optional photos or videos, some with responses or likes. Pretty much what you’d see on Twitter.

So is there any difference?

There is a big difference. There is no algorithm driving content at you and no prods as to who you should follow. If you follow lots of people who are into eels, you won’t get bombarded with eel related content. Have I mentioned no adverts yet? There are celebrities on there, but their comments do not feature any more highly than yours. Follow real people who are into things that you are.

How hard is it to join?

(this section is dedicated to Tripping the Oliphantastic who gets annoyed at tech journalists)

Depends on whether you are a technology journalist or not. In all the articles written by journalists it’s all a bit confusing and you are going to need support and do a bit of thinking. The depth of thinking is on the same scale as picking which pants you want to wear. Pants are very important and we will talk pants again.

So the “hard” bit is picking a server. What if you get it wrong? Same as if you pick the wrong pants. You try another pair – or server. While we are comparing servers to pants, what if they get soiled? As each server is managed independently, some administrators allow their servers to accumulate turds (or people talking nasty shit). It’s up to the admin to flush them. Other admins don’t want these turds floating over to their pants, so they disconnect the turd loaded server so it doesn’t spread a nasty smell.

Ready to sign up?

Easy. I could do a numbered step by step but that would be patronising.

Go to https://joinmastodon.org/

Click Create account

In the search filters recommend public organizations (legal structure), instant (sign up speed) and English language.

Getting a server in your region might make the speed slightly quicker.

If you have a particular interest there are some filtering suggestions.

You should now have a selection of servers that you can pick from to sign up with.

Make sure to put something in your profile

People are more interested in each other and people are likely to read your profile.

Say hi

New folk can post with the hashtag #introduction to be greeted.

And give us a shout at @Daily_Twerk@newsie.social

If you get it “wrong”, remember, servers are pants. Just try some different ones.