In brief:

• Mastodon is safer than almost all other social media.
• Most servers are well-moderated, and it’s easy to find one that suits you.
• It’s decentralized, so it can’t be bought out by anyone. 
• There is a thriving, supportive trans community.

I haven’t posted in a while. A lot has been happening in my life, and in the world overall. A job transition has joined my existing transition, and an upcoming move to another town. A lot of my mental energy has gone to the situation in the Divided States right now (I refuse to call them united), where trans people are in significant danger, and will face significant isolation. 

It’s easy to tell people they’re not alone, but it’s more important to help people find others to reduce their isolation. Big social media platforms are subject to the whims of billionaires, and LGBTQIA2S+ communities on those platforms are at risk of being shut down. 

There are various Discord servers where trans people hang out in relative privacy, but perhaps the best social media alternative is Mastodon. Technically, it’s the fediverse, but Mastodon is the software most servers use.

What are the advantages of Mastodon?

The biggest advantage is that it’s decentralized. There are a few big instances¹ (see below for definitions), but there are thousands of small instances run by small organizations or individuals. No one can own the fediverse. No one can swoop in, buy it, and run it into the ground. 

For the most part, if you sign up on one particular instance, you can connect with users on most other instances. It’s not completely universal because of how the system moderates itself. If an administrator doesn’t moderate their instance well, other administrators will defederate² their instance—that is, they’ll block connections from it. 

Administrators share block lists, so the most problematic instances are unable to connect to almost every well-moderated instance. Thus it’s easy to avoid hateful people. It’s fairly easy to find a well-moderated instance. Most people start on one of the big instances like mastodon.online, but many move to smaller, privately-run servers. Many of those servers don’t automatically accept new users. You might have to answer a few questions to be approved. This limits bots and trolls. 

On the technical side, the fact that Mastodon is open source is a huge advantage. “John Mastodon”³ can’t suddenly pivot to the dark side and put spyware in the code. The source code is freely available. Code-savvy users can examine it, find potential problems, submit improvements, or even develop and use their own improved version. It’s released under the GNU Affero General Public License, which means that the core code will always be freely available. If someone were to run an instance using a private version, and not publish their modified code, most administrators would probably not trust their instance, and defederate it. 

I’ve heard that no one uses Mastodon

As I’m writing this, FediDB counts 7.8 million users, including 671,000 monthly active users, across 10,276 active servers. That’s just instances using the official Mastodon software. There are more than 50 other software platforms that occupy the fediverse. Mastodon is best suited for written social networking (although you can upload pictures with your posts). Other platforms are configured to share images, video, long-form writing, and other content. If you have a WordPress blog, you can share your posts directly to the fediverse—like this post, which will be visible to my fedi-followers as soon as I publish it. 

Is Mastodon hard to use?

No! Far from it. As far as I can tell, this claim was spread by a few people who expect every social media platform to function exactly like corporate social media. 

The main thing to get used to on the fediverse is that there is no algorithm. You see posts from people you follow, newest posts first. Before you start following anyone, your home feed will be empty, but it’s easy to follow the Local and Federated timelines to see recent posts from your instance and the entire fediverse, respectively. You can also search for hashtags. Find people to follow on those timelines. When you reach a critical mass (maybe two dozen follows), you’ll see enough posts shared on your home feed from other people followed by the people you follow that you’ll continue expand your circle without the other timelines. 

The trans community

There is a thriving, welcoming trans community on Mastodon. In fact, that’s where my egg cracked! There are many instances run by trans and other LGBTQIA2S+ administrators, who keep their servers safe and inclusive. Out of the 350 people I follow, at least half are trans!

How do I sign up?

Most people go to joinmastodon.org and sign up on mastodon.social to start, but there are many instances listed on that site, along with descriptions that will help you find one that suits your needs. If you’re on the rainbow, I recommend going straight to lgbtqia.space, the instance I’ve been on since my re-birthday. It’s well-moderated, and the administrator is very responsive if you have questions or concerns. 

If you want to recommend another instance, let me know in the comments. There’s a whole galaxy of servers out there!

Definitions

1. Instance – An instance is a server, or set of servers, run by one person or organization, under one domain name. There are 10,276 active instances as I write this, from Mastodon.online, with 2.5 million user accounts, to tiny private instances with one user. ↩︎
2. Defederation – Basically, blocking another instance. An admin can suspend or limit another instance to protect their users. If you’re interested in the details, fedi.tips has this article. ↩︎
3. John Mastodon – The fictitious “owner” of Mastodon. The official web page for the Mastodon project is https://joinmastodon.org. Several years ago, someone mis-read the domain as “johnmastodon,” and it has been a running joke ever since.  ↩︎