Welcome new people!
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@ClintonAnderson @FediTips
Got it. I guess it's just been revealed then?@ClintonAnderson @FediTips
Looking into it, (which I haven't before) it's been described as a left-wing social media site...
https://revolver.news/2025/09/calls-to-haul-bluesky-ceo-before-congress-grow-louder/ -
@FediTips
Welcome indeed.
Did I read there are people coming from threads or is it bluesky? What's prompted that?This might explain things:
https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/115311583160164447
TL:DR - The CEO of Bluesky started trolling trans people and allies of trans people, making fun of their concerns about prominent transphobes, then she doubled down on it knowing it would anger people. She's also welcomed JD Vance to Bluesky.
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@ClintonAnderson @FediTips
Looking into it, (which I haven't before) it's been described as a left-wing social media site...
https://revolver.news/2025/09/calls-to-haul-bluesky-ceo-before-congress-grow-louder/The people who use Bluesky tend to be more progressive, but the corporate owners of Bluesky are the usual silicon valley types.
So when the owners of Bluesky started showing their not-so-nice politics, a lot of Bluesky users looked for alternatives.
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Welcome new people!
If you want help using this place feel free to ask, I'm trying to provide some unofficial tech support on here (and yes I am a human being). Ask in the replies or mentions or DMs or whatever
You can also find lots of help for new people at https://fedi.tips, especially in the section marked "Quick Start" at the top of the page.
How to discover people to follow:
https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-find-accounts-to-follow-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-how-do-i-find-my-friendsHow to make your own account more discoverable:
https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-get-more-followers-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse@FediTips do you have like a cheatsheet of all the different stuff that can be done with posts? Like hashtags, preventing an @ from notifying a person, etc. Something as a quick reference. If not I'll start compiling my own, that's cool too.
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@FediTips do you have like a cheatsheet of all the different stuff that can be done with posts? Like hashtags, preventing an @ from notifying a person, etc. Something as a quick reference. If not I'll start compiling my own, that's cool too.
There's a guide to hashtags at https://fedi.tips/what-are-hashtags-how-do-i-use-them-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse
There's a guide to post visibilities at https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon
Was this the kind of thing you had in mind?
"preventing an @ from notifying a person"
There is no way to do this, you have to remove the @ symbols from their mention to prevent it triggering a notification.
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There's a guide to hashtags at https://fedi.tips/what-are-hashtags-how-do-i-use-them-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse
There's a guide to post visibilities at https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon
Was this the kind of thing you had in mind?
"preventing an @ from notifying a person"
There is no way to do this, you have to remove the @ symbols from their mention to prevent it triggering a notification.
@FediTips i could've sworn i read something the other day about when you reply to something with multiple @s that you could make it so only the one you're replying to is replied to, other than removing all the extras. but that could've easily been for somewhere else or imagined on my part lmao
i'm going to dig through your site and the official documentation and see if i can put together something like a quick ref though. thanks for the help!
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@FediTips i could've sworn i read something the other day about when you reply to something with multiple @s that you could make it so only the one you're replying to is replied to, other than removing all the extras. but that could've easily been for somewhere else or imagined on my part lmao
i'm going to dig through your site and the official documentation and see if i can put together something like a quick ref though. thanks for the help!
The only way to do that is to remove the other mentions.
Having said that, if you're mentioning an account from the server fedigroups.social you can prevent the mention working by adding a ! before it. But this is special custom code that only works for addresses on that server, it's so people can discuss the server's groups without spamming the group members.
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The only way to do that is to remove the other mentions.
Having said that, if you're mentioning an account from the server fedigroups.social you can prevent the mention working by adding a ! before it. But this is special custom code that only works for addresses on that server, it's so people can discuss the server's groups without spamming the group members.
@FediTips that might be what i was thinking of. it sure sounds like it
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@FediTips that might be what i was thinking of. it sure sounds like it
Fedigroups.social got a lot of attention recently when another group server shut down and groups migrated there.
A lot of people discussed Fedigroups and included the !, and perhaps some people got the wrong end of the stick and started trying to use it on other servers' addresses? (It doesn't do anything for other server addresses.)
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p.s. I know Mastodon and the wider Fediverse can be a bit trickier to use, but it does get easier once you've spent time here. There are many really good reasons why this place is structured the way it is: https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers
Servers on here are fully independent in every sense, usually owned by ordinary grassroots people like you and me. There is no central authority or corporation controlling things, it's up to each server to decide on how it's run and what it allows.
p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
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p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
@FediTips
But the trouble is, that the time they read this, they've already signed up on it! Probably? -
p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
@FediTips who are you and why are you spamming me?
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@FediTips
But the trouble is, that the time they read this, they've already signed up on it! Probably?If they've only just signed up and haven't done much yet, they can forget about their mastodon.social account and sign up again on mas.to or elsewhere. It just takes a few minutes. (Also they can recommend to friends to go on mas.to or wherever.)
If they've been on mastodon.social for a while, they can move their account elsewhere (transfer guide is at https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/).
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@FediTips who are you and why are you spamming me?
You are following me?
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p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
this kind of post...
It's better to join a small server compared to a big server.
And it's better to join a big server compared to a network run by cryptocryptofascists.
"It's a really bad idea" kind of rhetoric, and "is NOT a good place to sign up" kind of rhetoric, is actively toxic, actually.
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this kind of post...
It's better to join a small server compared to a big server.
And it's better to join a big server compared to a network run by cryptocryptofascists.
"It's a really bad idea" kind of rhetoric, and "is NOT a good place to sign up" kind of rhetoric, is actively toxic, actually.
The reason networks become run by bad people is precisely because they are centralised and easy to take over.
The Fediverse is hard to take over when it's spread out on many servers, but easy to take over if it is on one huge server.
Mastodon.social is by far the largest server, already on 20% and rising. The more mastodon.social grows, the more the Fediverse is in danger.
If we don't think about the dangers now, it will become really difficult to deal with them in the future.
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p.p.s. The server mastodon.social is NOT a good place to sign up, for many different reasons (more info here: https://fedi.tips/its-a-really-bad-idea-to-join-a-big-server).
If you just want one alternative, https://mas.to is a much better option. It's reliable and has been online since 2019, and doesn't suffer from the problems of mastodon.social.
If you want to choose from a wide selection of servers, there are human curated lists of well-run reliable servers at https://fedi.garden and https://joinmastodon.org/servers
@FediTips I’m gonna tag along here and point out there are also many good servers that don’t get listed for one reason or another. Coops and vote-only spaces are often excluded when new users can’t do drive- by signups but are sometimes more stable and welcoming than wide open ones.
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@FediTips I’m gonna tag along here and point out there are also many good servers that don’t get listed for one reason or another. Coops and vote-only spaces are often excluded when new users can’t do drive- by signups but are sometimes more stable and welcoming than wide open ones.
Fedi.garden does not require instant signups. If you have a server that is compatible with the seven points at https://fedi.garden/about-this-site let me know and I'll list it
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The reason networks become run by bad people is precisely because they are centralised and easy to take over.
The Fediverse is hard to take over when it's spread out on many servers, but easy to take over if it is on one huge server.
Mastodon.social is by far the largest server, already on 20% and rising. The more mastodon.social grows, the more the Fediverse is in danger.
If we don't think about the dangers now, it will become really difficult to deal with them in the future.
I get all of that.
But also, my first Fedi account was on mastodon dot online. My next one was on counter dot social. That didn't work, so I went to mastodon.sdf dot org. They were having capacity problems, so I went to tech dot lgbt and infosec dot exchange. And then I found out it wasn't all that hard to host your own, and now I run a copy of Cortex Implant's fork.
There's a lot to be said about all of this, but we need to be real: onboarding to Fedi is atrocious, and the doom and gloom about big servers and everything just makes this seem overwhelming.
"Welcome to Fedi! Your first server doesn't matter, pick one you like, you can migrate! Make some friends! Be kind!"
That's more the vibe I wish I'd first encountered.
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I get all of that.
But also, my first Fedi account was on mastodon dot online. My next one was on counter dot social. That didn't work, so I went to mastodon.sdf dot org. They were having capacity problems, so I went to tech dot lgbt and infosec dot exchange. And then I found out it wasn't all that hard to host your own, and now I run a copy of Cortex Implant's fork.
There's a lot to be said about all of this, but we need to be real: onboarding to Fedi is atrocious, and the doom and gloom about big servers and everything just makes this seem overwhelming.
"Welcome to Fedi! Your first server doesn't matter, pick one you like, you can migrate! Make some friends! Be kind!"
That's more the vibe I wish I'd first encountered.
"Welcome to Fedi! Your first server doesn't matter, pick one you like, you can migrate! Make some friends! Be kind!"
That isn't what new people are told any more. They are told to sign up on mastodon.social on both the official app and the official website.
The result is people think they have to sign up on mastodon.social and it is taking up an ever-larger chunk of the Fediverse.
If it grows to over 50%, anyone with enough money will be able to take over most of the network.
