The article provides a detailed guide explaining how Mastodon, a unique social media platform, works, noting that it can be confusing for new users because it does not function like other mainstream social media sites.

1. Basic Interaction and Posting (Toots)

• Toots: The equivalent of a "Tweet" is called a "Toot", which has a default limit of 500 characters.

• Privacy Settings: Toots can be set to various privacy levels: public (default), unlisted, follower only, or direct.

• Engagement Tools: Users can @mention other accounts and add media, links, and hashtags. Below every Toot, there are icons to reply, boost, or favourite.

• Boosting (Re-sharing): Boosting re-shares a Toot to a user's followers. Crucially, users cannot add their own commentary to a boosted Toot, a design choice intended to prevent trolling.

• Favouriting: Favouriting a Toot signifies support or agreement, similar to a "Like" or "heart" on other platforms.

2. Federation and Instances (The Fediverse)

• Unique Concept: The Fediverse (Federation) is a unique concept to Mastodon compared to other mainstream social networks.

• Instances (Servers): The Mastodon network is made up of individual, completely separate servers called Instances. The concept is likened to email providers (e.g., Gmail, Hotmail), which are run by different companies but can all send emails to one another.

• Cross-Instance Communication: Users on one instance (e.g., Fosstodon) can "Toot" with thousands of other Mastodon servers globally.

• Mentioning Users: To mention a user on the same instance, you use the standard @mention format; to mention someone on a different instance, you must use the format @user@instance.name (e.g., @basil@sarcasm.stream). The system includes an auto-complete feature to help populate these handles.

• Connecting Instances: Instances become connected (federated) when a user on one instance follows a user on another instance. This creates a snowball effect leading to the exponential growth of the Fediverse.

3. The Three Timelines

Unlike Twitter's single timeline, Mastodon features three distinct timelines:

• The Home Timeline: Contains Toots from all the people you follow across the entire Fediverse.

• The Local Timeline: Displays all public Toots from your specific instance (server). This is useful for discovering new people to follow locally.

• The Federated Timeline: Contains all Toots from all instances that your server is federated with. This timeline contains posts from thousands of people but may include posts some users find offensive.

4. Moderation and Control

• Reporting: Users can Report egregious Toots to the instance staff, who review the report and can take appropriate action, ranging from no action to a warning or banning the user from the Instance.

• Personal Moderation: Options available include Mute (stops seeing Toots from an account) and Block (prevents the account from interacting with you and mutes their Toots).

• Filters: Users can set up filters to globally exclude certain keywords (e.g., swear words or specific topics like COVID-19 or hashtags) from their feeds.

5. Key Advantages of Mastodon

The article outlines several reasons to use Mastodon over mainstream networks:

• Open Source: Being open source allows anyone to view the source code, providing reassurance that user data is not being harvested or spied on. It also ensures the project can be forked if the main developer leaves.

• Chronological Timeline: All three timelines are always chronologically displayed. This avoids the use of "clever" algorithms designed by sites like Facebook and Twitter to artificially increase engagement by changing content order.

• No Adverts or Tracking: Mastodon has NO ADVERTS, NO SPONSORED POSTS, and NO TRACKING. It is designed to bring people together, not to make money.

• No Single Owner: Due to the collection of instances, users are not subject to a single site owner. If a user dislikes an instance's direction, they can use a migration tool to move their account to a new instance.

• Interest-Specific Niches: While many instances are aligned to specific interests (e.g., FOSS-focused instances like Fosstodon), they still encourage discussion on varied topics, and users can follow diverse people on other instances.