🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“If you're following someone who posts interesting stuff but boosts way too often, you can mute just their boosts: 1. Go to the account's profile page
2. Click the ⋯ button
3. Click "Hide Boosts" Their own posts will ...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116953416997651112

🤖 via RSS feed. Your Mileage May Vary.

You can control who can see your post by choosing a visibility setting when you publish it. Here's a guide to all the visibility settings and how to use them:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon

The guide also answers lots of questions about visibility settings. Let me know if I've missed something!

If you want to restrict who can see your post, choose "Followers Only" (only your followers can see it) or "Only People I Mention" (only accounts mentioned in that post can see it).

#FediTips #Mastodon

🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“Are you following an account which you enjoy, but it overwhelms your timeline with frequent posts? You can use Mastodon's "Lists" feature to create separate themed mini-timelines, which helps to make your main timeline ...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116948593733023738

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“You don't need multiple accounts on here, because one account can interact with people on other servers. It's similar to the phone network, you can use one phone to call people on other providers. However, there are cert...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116942213508849047

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“FitPub is a new fitness tracking platform for the Fediverse, sort of an alternative to Strava. You can follow their official account for more news: ➡️ @ fitpub There are also more details on FitPub's Codeberg pag...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116936155008618696

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“If you're running a professional account which needs to crosspost to many social networks at once, there are paid services designed specifically for this purpose which include support for Mastodon: ➡️ https:// buffer...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116920067326002736

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“Do you want to write posts that are longer than 500 characters? If so you might want to consider moving your account to a server that supports longer posts. Here's a list of good, reliable servers that let you write lon...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116913589548256826

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“If there's a post in your timeline and you want to see the discussion thread that it comes from, just click on it. Clicking on a post in the timeline will take you to the thread view for that post, where you can see the...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116908301304627525

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“Are you writing a website link in your Mastodon post or profile? If so, remember to include https:// at the beginning so that people can click it! example.com is written without https:// at the beginning and is just a p...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116902162981709631

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“There are many ways to use Mastodon through a desktop or laptop computer, including the official web interfaces, third party web interfaces and desktop apps. Here's a list: ➡️ https:// fedi.tips/desktop-apps-for-mas ...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116897601141493079

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“There are really important reasons why the Fediverse (including Mastodon) is spread out on thousands of fully independent servers: ➡️ https:// fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse -on-so-many-separate-servers There are...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116890896268242353

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🔆 #FediTips for https://PrivacySafe.Social & the #fediverse

“p.s. The reason this happens is that servers only fetch posts that people on their server want to see. This keeps server running costs low enough for anyone to set up their own server. There is a fix for blank profiles ...”

https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/116885478875582206

🤖 via RSS feed. Your Mileage May Vary.

Some advice for fediverse newcomers, particularly those coming here from corporate social media:

1) Follow and boost! Following is how you find posts you like, and boosting is how you let others find posts you like.

2) Alt text! Many fediverse users are blind. They cannot see images. Hence, if you make a post with an an image, it's good to include a text description of the image. This can be an "alt text," which screenreaders can read instead of the image, or it can just be text under the image. Some people are unwilling to boost posts that contain description-free images.

3) Content warnings! When you make a post about a heavy topic, you can choose to "hide" it behind a warning which mentions the kind of content. Anyone who sees the post can decide if they are in the right headspace to open it. For example, if you are going to talk about what a transphobic politician is doing, you can use the content warning transphobia, politics. Some users will only boost posts with heavy topics if they have content warnings, so using a CW can expand the reach your posts have.

If you're talking about a heavy topic, you should not try to hide it with "algo-speak." For example, if you're talking about suicide, do not say "su*cide* or "unalive myself:" type out the actual word you mean, and use a CW. On corporate social media, "algo-speak" can help you bypass the platform-imposed word filters. On the fediverse, however, the only word filters are those that users voluntarily create and apply for themselves. Trying to bypass such filters would be rude.

This also means if you see a post with a warning like "transphobia," it does not mean it's actually a transphobic post: it's likely made by a trans person critiquing transphobia. If you see actual transphobia, you should report it immediately. Speaking of which....

4) Reports! All moderation on the fediverse is done by actual living, breathing people! There's no AI scanning all your posts to decide who to ban or whose posts to hide. If you see a post containing bigotry or spam, press the report button (usually located near the reply or boost buttons) and write a report: the real people who run your instance will read the report and respond! I talk more about reports in the quoted post.

Also, if you receive a DM claiming to be a mod bot which tells you your account has been automatically disabled, it is a scam, and you should report it.

5) Money: Your instance is run by a single person or small group of people doing it for fun, in their free time, at their own expense. There is no company running your instance. There are no investors. There is no premium memership. There are no ads. You should keep in mind that the people running your instance are doing it for fun, and not to extract profits from you.

Your instance admins might accept donations, or they might not (it's their choice). If they do, and you can afford it, then it's good to donate to support your instance, but you will not unlock any additional features by donating. And if you can't donate, you should not feel bad about it.

#FediTips #Welcome

RE: https://transfem.social/notes/adhk91r22eiv0h80

There's apparently scammer going round pretending to be a Mastodon admin, demanding people "verify their identity".

Do not click on their links, do not give them any info. It is a scam. Genuine Mastodon server admins never demand verification like this.

Here's a guide to how to recognise and avoid various kinds of scams on Mastodon and the wider Fediverse:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-to-avoid-scammers-on-mastodon-and-the-fediverse

(Thanks to @amministratore for providing warning about the latest wave of scam posts.)

#FediTips

Alt...

Screenshot of an illustration that is apparently being used by scammers to try to fool people into giving their personal details to crooks. The illustration itself says "identity verification required", features a cartoon Mastodon and has various corporate-looking text boxes full of generic phrases which all boil down to "give us your ID if you want to keep your account". These are lies, and I've overlaid the phrase "SCAM! DO NOT CLICK!" in bright red letters on top of the scam illustratoin.