Mastodon Quick Start Guide for Humanities Scholars

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a federated microblogging platform, and if that made sense to you then you probably wouldn’t be reading this guide.  Mastodon is the name of a piece of software that lets you write and post “toots” of up to 500 characters (that’s what “microblogging platform” means, and you could probably already figure that part out).  That software lives on a server. You are probably used to websites like Facebook and Twitter, where the software and the server are maintained by the same company, and are basically the same thing. Mastodon is open-source software that can be installed on any server; those servers are called “instances”. And they can talk to each other, so that the thing you post on your home instance can be read by your friend on another instance. That’s what “federated” means.' This is important for three reasons. First, not every instance HAS to federate with every other instance; administrators can choose to mute or block servers where there are a lot of users who engage in abusive behaviour and/or there are poor or no safety policies. This means that there is much less risk of a bunch of random strangers screaming at you while you’re trying to have a conversation. Second, very often what people experience as a problem with “Mastodon” is actually a problem with their particular instance—especially right now, when there is a huge increase in the volume of users, there’s a lot of lag on the most popular servers, because the system isn’t designed to be used that way. It’s like having a bridge that’s designed to take the load of 10 cars driving across it at any given time; if instead of spreading them out, you stack them all on top of each other right in the middle, there’s a good chance the bridge will collapse because it wasn’t designed to accommodate that much weight at a single point. For that reason, this guide is going to try to steer you towards smaller, less crowded instances, where your experience should be a bit better. Finally, Mastodon is only one type of software that can run on a federated server—although it is right now the one with the most users. But you can also follow and be followed by people doing longer form blogging, photo sharing, video sharing, music, etc., WITHOUT having to make a separate account. You can see the full range of federated platforms at fediverse.party 

Getting Started with Mastodon

Picking an instance:

Because Mastodon is federated, you have to sign up to a specific instance. I recommend trying to sign up to a smaller, more focussed one; you will have a better experience. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of instances that are likely to be of interest to Humanities scholars: religion.masto.host is for scholars of religion, working on any tradition, methodology, or period. Full disclosure: I am the instance administrator for this one. c18.masto.host is specifically for scholars of 18th century global culture, history, literature, philosophy, and ideas. sciences.social is for scholars of social science. writing.exchange is for writers; it seems to tilt a bit towards creative writing, but doesn’t exclude nonfiction writers. Digipres.club is for digital preservation enthusiasts. Glammr.us focuses on libraries, archives, museums, public memory, etc. AusGLAM.space is like Glammr but for Australians. Scholar.social is the largest academic-focussed instance in the Fediverse.  It is currently closed, which means you can’t just sign up for an account; you will need to email the server administrator and ask to be invited. They are generally happy to issue invitations, they just want to make sure you’re a real person who isn’t going to behave destructively. Fediscience.org is I think the next largest instance for general academic chatter; like a lot of Mastodon at the moment it skews more STEM-science but I have been told that social sciences and humanities are still welcome. Vis.social is focused on data visualisation and other aspects of SciComm. mastodon.oeru.org is focussed on Open Educational Resources. There is a lot to be said for just picking an instance, making an account, and then figuring it out as you go along, BUT you should also check the house rules and make sure that they are rules you are comfortable being governed by (and happy to have governing the way that other people interact with you). You can find the server rules by clicking on the “About” link at the very bottom of the page.   Some servers—and scholar.social is one, as is religion.masto.host—have fairly long lists of rules, which can be a bit off-putting. The rules are not there to make life difficult for well-intentioned people who are just learning how things work; they’re there to make life easier for everyone. Remember that Mastodon instances are run on a volunteer basis, and the clearer the rules are the less time the administrator has to spend arguing with people who make life difficult for everyone by pretending that rules don’t apply to them. This is 2022. We’re all tired. If for any reason you decide you want to change your mind about the instance you signed up for, you can move your account elsewhere, using the instructions here.

Getting set up:

Mastodon works best through the web interface, rather than through an app. That doesn’t mean that you cannot use an app for normal, everyday posting and reading, but for the initial setup (and for making major changes like migrating your account to another server) you should use the web interface.  After you have created an account on the server of your choice, the very first thing you should do is fill out your profile. Again, this is 2022, everyone is tired of bots, don’t go out there looking like this is your first day on the internet and you don’t know any better. Stick up a picture. Put in some hashtags.  A really cool thing about Mastodon is that you can self-verify by putting the verification code on a website that you link in your profile metadata—for example, I’ve done this with my Humanities Commons page.   Adding that code turns that link green when someone views your profile; it confirms that the person who runs your Mastodon account is also the person who has control over the content of the linked website—that you are who you say you are.    A useful first account to follow is  @feditips@mstdn.social; you will find all sorts of helpful tips there. You probably also want to go to Preferences > Other > Opt out of search engine indexing--although be aware that a search engine can choose to ignore this and index your public posts anyways. Another useful thing to do right away on the web client is to go to settings/preferences/appearance and check “Enable advanced web interface”. This will let you set up a column that will display all the chatter on specific hashtags (more on that below).

Making your first post:

OK, it doesn’t have to be your FIRST post, but you should post an introduction. You should probably post it as public so that people can see it (more on post visibility below, but the screenshot shows how to select public visibility).    You should also tag it #introduction. Tags are really important on Mastodon; there is no full-text search (this is deliberate, and if you’re wondering why, think about the sort of person who name searches on Twitter and how great it is when they insert themselves into a conversation). Use tags liberally if you are seeking conversations with people who are also interested in those sorts of things. After you have made your #introduction post, click on the ellipsis at the bottom of the screen and select “Pin on profile”. This will do exactly what it says: pin the post to the top of your profile so that people who have found your profile (either because you sent them a follow request, or they saw another post of yours) can see it.   

Finding your people:

Nobody is on social media for the platform, they’re there for the conversation; your experience of a platform is going to be determined by the quality of conversation it lets you have, and the people it lets you have that conversation with. So the next thing you need to do is find the people you want to talk to.

Adding people you already know:

If you already know someone’s user name, you can just put it into the search box, and it should pull up their profile and then you click the follow button and that’s that.   If this doesn’t work, there are a few possibilities:

• If the person you are trying to reach is on another instance, it’s really important that you include both parts of their username.
• It is possible that the instance they are on has been blocked by your own instance; you can check this by searching on the “About” page for your own instance. If this happens, you can always contact them and let them know about the issue (usually instances get blocked for good reasons, and usually people who have inadvertently signed up for a problematic server would rather know that than not) or you can move yourself to an account on another instance that does let you see them. 
• The server could just be really, really busy and starting to buckle a bit under the strain. A good way of telling if this is the issue is to check whether search autocomplete is working. If it is, then probably the server is doing just fine; if it’s not, then you should probably try again in a few hours.

NOTE: you do need to be on your own instance and use the search to add people; if you go directly to the profile of someone on another instance using your browser, you will be prompted to make an account on that instance, because the servers are different websites that don’t pass your login data between them.

Meeting new people:

You will eventually meet people organically, by having their posts boosted into your timeline and discovering that they're interesting people you want to talk to. But to get you past the initial quiet spell, there's a page which has collected lists of academic accounts arranged by discipline that you can use to get started. Note that these lists are all opt-in: people have chosen to add themselves. Collecting public lists of people without their consent is generally frowned upon on Mastodon. So if you want yourself to be found, add yourself to the appropriate list (or lists); nobody will do it for you. You can also discover new people through interest-specific hashtags. Hashtags work pretty much exactly the same way on Mastodon as they do on any other site, with one exception: you can choose to pin specific hashtags so that you see all the posts (that are visible from your instance) with a hashtag. Just search for the hashtag, click on the result, and then click on the little slider bar button and select "Pin". This will put a column with posts just from that hashtag on the main webpage.   Some Mastodon-specific hashtags that you might want to pay attention to are: #Religidons (study of religion) #Victodon (Victorian studies) #Histodon (history) #Litodons (Literature) This list is non-exhaustive and I will add to it as I find and remember more.

Keeping track of your people:

Because Mastodon is decentralised, every post isn't stored on every server; if you want to make sure your server gets copies of what someone on another server posts, you need to follow them. And because of that, you can end up with a pretty large list of people you follow. There are a couple good ways of dealing with this. First, lists. You can make visible-only-to-you lists of people you follow by going to their profile, clicking on the three dots, and selecting "Add or Remove from Lists".   I can't demonstrate these functions using my own account, so let's take a moment to appreciate my spouse for letting me screenshot theirs about 5 minutes after they set it up. You can access your lists either through the "Getting Started" column on the advanced web interface, or by clicking the 3 dots on your own profile. And you can pin a list just like you can pin a hashtag. Another useful feature that future you will be thankful if you start using sooner rather than later is profile notes. When you are viewing someone’s profile, you will see a field that says “Click to add note”. This lets you put a note, which only you can see, to remind you who this person is, and why you followed them (or, in some cases, why you unfollowed them!)  

Posting

Controlling Post Visibility

Editing Posts

Content Warnings

Image Descriptions