Ok, I have been on Mastodon for awhile and love it. But, I think I need to dive a little deeper.

Are there any #mastodon experts willing to help?

I am starting to realize there are a bunch of servers and I am a bit confused about how each server interacts and how account access different servers and so on.

What I would really like to have is a sort of Mastodon manual. Does this exist?

If not, I would appreciate a hand with some of the details so I can get more out of this experience.

@matsumuri hi!

In simplest terms, it's like email. You can be on Mastodon, while others might be on Misskey, Pleroma, Akkoma, or any other number of Fediverse software.

However, instead of there only being one mastodon to rule them all, there's MANY sites hosted by MANY people that use the mastodon software, mastodon.social is just one of them and it's run by Mastodon Gmbh.

I am on my own instance of mastodon, https://social.beaware.live and it's just me here, but I can talk to anyone on other instances that doesn't have me blocked.

I hope this makes sense, even a little bit. If you have any specific questions, please let me know.

@BeAware

Thank you that helps.

A couple quick questions.
Should I join a different server than Mastodon.social? (maybe one more specialized to my interests?)
Can I join more than one server at a time?
Is managing message from multiple servers (if possible) easy to do?

Thanks again for the help!

@matsumuri most people DO recommend moving off of .social as soon as you're comfortable doing research and finding the right specialized instance that's good for you.

However, since there's over 20,000 instances, it's not the easiest thing to do. I think the easiest way, would be to just make a post asking for specific instances based on your interests and hashtag them with those interests and things like Fedi, Fediverse, AskFedi, FediHelp, and maybe even Mastodon so others can chime in for advice.

About having multiple accounts, you can have as many as you'd like. However, they will all be seperate. So managing them a depends on how much you use them and how much other people interact with each one. Though, because of its interoperability, I prefer to have just one.

You CAN migrate from one to another, once you have signed up on both, which allows you to move your followers and following from one account to another, but it's limited to once every 30 days and your posts don't move with it.

@BeAware

Hmm... Ok I think I understand.

Each Mastodon server requires a different account. So my account currently lives on mastodon.social.

Lets say I find mastodon.[perfectForMe] and sign up there.

I get there all is great but I still want to see posts from follows I found while on mastodon.social...

I guess a shorter way to ask this is can I read more than one server at a time with one account.

This all started because I saw a message at the bottom of a thread More messages on...

@matsumuri yes! The only thing stopping you from following the same accounts from other instances, would be each instance can block communication with any other instance for any reason. But as long as you don't sign up to an instance that has a reason to be blocked, for example, hate speech or free speech instances, instances that host illegal content, etc, then you should mostly be fine.

You can even export your following list (people that you follow) and import it into another account without having to migrate.

To do that, you'd have to go to https://mastodon.social/settings/export and then do the same thing on the other instance, but import instead of export.

@matsumuri PS. The "more messages on..." Message will happen everywhere. That's because Fediverse works by follow relationships on an instance basis.

For example, if someone makes a new account on mastodon.social, but nobody follows them from other instances, their posts would stay on mastodon.social and their replies would only federate to the person's instance that they're replying to.

Once one person on another instance follows that person, then all posts and replies would get sent to that seperate instance and that's for every single person on Fedi.

This doesn't take boosts into account and other things that only admins can do, that also help with federation.

So basically, no server sees EVERYTHING all the time. Hope that makes sense

@BeAware

Ok I think that makes sense...
Thank you so much for investing the time to explain that to me.

@matsumuri no problem! I've been here on my own instance for almost 2 years now so I have had plenty of time to muck around with all the little nuances.

It can be VERY confusing and overwhelming at first, but thankfully there's many people like myself that are very passionate about Fedi and want to try to help as many people as possible.

I do wish things were more seamless and straight forward though!

@BeAware

I have met some really nice people here.
I enjoy not seeing random stuff I didn't ask for.
I enjoy there being an end of what is new from my follows.
No algorithm, no Ads, no fomo...
I will happily deal with a little complexity.