Hi,
As people are looking into moving to this Social Media platform, but it’s possible a little bit confusing, here’s a dedicated chat thread to discuss it and keep these posts out of the Twitter/Elon Musk bonfire chat.
So, who’s setup on Mastodon already?
No, it’s a website for superusers. Not the average joe.
Also, Twitter is getting better, not worse.
Erhm, how exactly is it getting better?
Hi Elon - haven’t you got a new business to run?
Me 
Running my own instance and enjoying it so far 
I joined this week! It’s been really lovely so far. It seemed daunting at first but it seems actually really straightforward. Like Twitter but without the need to drive rage engagement.
Looks like I’m wearing the same hoodie as you 
Has anybody found a good iPhone/iPad app? I’m currently using the official one but it seems a bit limited, though fine for a relative newbie.
I’m an Android user, I can recommend Tusky for it but no idea on iOS apps.
I’ll stick that on my Pixel 4a and have a play
I’m testing Metatext at the moment as it came highly recommended. When my server was under high load it seemed to throw the odd error code but the functionality is better than the official app.
Same hoody AND phone it seems. 
I set up my own server (instance?) in about half an hour, and I’m far from tech-y. And I’ve already had a message from a certain Stephen Fry Esq. so Mastodon feels very friendly; just like Twitter in the very early days.
Anyway, HMU…
Managed to recover access to my Mastodon account. Was having trouble at first, but turned out that was because I was trying to use the wrong server. Tricksy, this defederated thing. Next step, check all my settings and make the profile not-blank.
Thanks for the Tusky recommendation, as that what I used to help me get this far in the first place.
I just have but I don’t get the distributed nature of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m ex-IT and I understand what that structure is, it’s just that using it feels clunky and I can’t even do simple things like LIKE a post on another server without signing in to it which, as far as I can tell, means creating a new account.
I think this is one of the small, but subtle and actually fairly major differences between Twitter and Mastodon.
With Twitter, you ‘like’ posts and then retweet things you really like or agree with, with Mastodon you ‘retoot’ posts you like, and ‘favourite’ posts you want to keep.
I think what’s catching a lot of people out is that it’s ‘almost like’ twitter - but it’s not and when there’s a difference, people get confused.
Also the whole ‘pick a server’ thing is a bit daunting to start with - especially as you don’t have any indication before you sign up how that server is technically working (the server I’m on really struggled the first week before the admin upgraded it).
I’m still struggling with Mastodon. When I go to the search function, I see a list of toots from people in a seemingly random order. It’s not chronological, and it’s not based on popularity as I’m told that’s not a concept on Mastodon. So who are those people and how do they get there?
Then when I go to “Community” I get all toots from my instance without any filtering, in chronological order. With tens of thousands of people on my instance, it’s really not useful.
So I end up either stuck in my bubble of people I follow or having to wade through unlimited irrelevant posts or bots posting several photos a minute.
The other search tabs don’t work and have never worked. I struggle to see Mastodon’s benefits still
So, on this note, things should improve this week with the release of v4 of Mastodon which should mean you can search for specific hashtags now. However, you do have to wait until your admin upgrades the server you’re on (my server was updated over lunchtime today).
Also, if you’re on a phone, apparently the ‘official’ Mastodon app is pretty bad - so most people use Metatext instead.
Lots of people I know on Mastodon have had to change instances due to defederation. But defederation is a design feature, not a bug. So doesn’t mean the Fediverse is doomed.
[Moved reply over here because this is Mastodon, not Twitter, chat. I realise maybe not everyone remembers this topic exists yet.]