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Why it's important, and super annoying, to find a server

(For more general info on WTF is the deal with Mastodon, see the bottom of this post)

A lot of folks when trying out Mastodon/The Fediverse end up on mastodon.social or mastodon.online, instances operated by Gargron, who is also the main dev. There are a couple of problems with this:

  • Big flagship instances tend to provide a worse user experience, in genral. They're hard to moderate, and the local timeline (which shows all posts on your instance) becomes useless
  • Gargron specifically is widely criticized by other admins for issues with his moderation and his treatments of moderators working for him. This has led to many instances with more strict moderation to silence or defederate/block these instances. This unfortunately means that those who are on those instances will not be able to interact with those of us who are on instances that defederate them.
  • Stringent/aggressive moderation is important in the Fediverse in order to keep vulnerable and marginalized folks safe from bad actors such as Nazis, TERFs, etc.

Unfortunately nobody has a list of instances that have known good moderation and are also taking new users. (I asked.) There are lots of places you can go to just get big, unfiltered lists of servers (I've listed some below) but then you have to figure out which ones aren't hot garbage and are also taking new users. In some cases you have to apply to be let in. It is annoyingly like finding a job or a therapist.

To assist friends who are currently stuck on mastodon.social, I'll try to find servers that are either general-purpose or may be of interest to friendos and list them here.

If anybody who happens to read this is on a server that they consider to have good moderation, and that server is taking new users, please comment below!

Open servers amongst my follows:

These are instances where some of the folks I actually follow hang out. I've skimmed enough to confirm they do have codes of conduct that don't look obviously garbo as well, but obviously you should check the CoC in detail before signing up.

Arts/Crafts/general creative folks servers suggested by Mastodon.art:

Mastodon.art is probably the highest profile instance to silence mastodon.social. They're currently not open to new users, but they recommend these instances:

Open instances that users have reported positive moderation experiences with

Threads

General Instance-Finding Resources:

How to Change Instances

You can sign up on as many instances as you want and have those accounts be separate alts. But if you prefer to move from one to another, there is a relatively painless process for doing so, details here.

There are two steps to pay attention to:

  • Export your follows, blocks, etc. as CSV from your old account and import them to your new account
  • "Forward" your followers from the old account to the new account

It'll take a little while for updates to process, so give it up to a day or so.


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