#Welcome new users I'm so glad you're here that's great! If you joined mastodon.social like, that's fine and stuff BUT you should know that that's just ONE server running Mastodon. You could also join one of thousands of other options. A server with lots of people with shared interests creates a stronger sense of community and public timelines that self-curates to stuff people you like also like; on your server or others
A list of servers can be found at instances.social
@shel That's awesome! I always loved Diaspora's philosophy, and it's a shame that it never completely got off the ground.
Also, I have a question: Is it possible to change instances? Mastodon.social is nice and all, but it's a bit overwhelming. (But maybe I'll get used to it...? I just signed up like four hours ago.)
@fidgety yes! That's the whole point is that you can change instances! You're free as a bird!
You can go to settings and export your following, block, and mute lists; and then on your new account import those lists and you'll be following and blocking all the same people. right now there's no way to bring your followers with you so you just have to wicked tell all your followers to go follow your new account
@shel
Hooray! I'll have to dig through that giant list of instances. There's a lot!
Anyway, thank you for all your help!
@fidgety no problem! Yeah the instance picker on instances.social and the list on joinmastodon.org aren't the most curated haha you just gotta browse i guess. most of them are japanese or french. the whole infrastructure was made when we only had like 50 instances now 1000+. good luck!!
I know a lot of the new people are from Comics Twitter so if you want suggestions on instances for you lot:
mastodon.art: a community of artists, illustrators seem to be most prominent
wandering.shop: a community of scifi/fantasy fans, a lot of writers and book lovers
writing.exchange: community of writers
octodon.social: general purpose instance with a good community
instance.business: instance by and for people of color, and also parody brands
cybre.space: a lot of creative queer furries
@shel are there really that many furries here? jw
@theZacAttacks our admin is a scalie-furry but yeah there's a fuck ton of furries on mastodon in general i dont usually pay attention to if they're on my instance or not
@shel yeah you have a good point haha
I just wasn't aware of a lot of them on ours :P
kɜ:ʳ 
@shel @theZacAttacks hmmmm i wasn't aware that my furriness was biasing this instance particularly towards furries but i mean if it is then cool
@theZacAttacks @shel it's just kinda all over the network really
(it's ok we can be normie together)
@impiaaa @theZacAttacks excuse you the term for non-furries is Fleshies
@shel Hey also I have a comics fan instance over here too! We could use members.
@shel From what I'm gathering, joining a new instance requires creating a new acct for that specific instance, is that right?
@curlyqueued precisely. You can export your lists of who you're following, blocking, and muting under the settings menu; and then import it on the new account. Right now there's no way to import follows though you just have to aggressively tell all your followers to go follow the new account
@shel Alright, thank you! It does seem a little time consuming to make a new acct for every instance, but I can see why. More of a closed community that way+what happens in the instance stays in the instance.
Anyways, thanks for making the list! Time to make like 30 different accounts l o l
@curlyqueued oh! no! I think there is a misunderstanding
*every instance is connected.* It's like email. gmail emails still communicate with yahoo emails.
I'm on cybre.space, you're on mastodon.social. I have a different moderator, theme, and local community; but we can still connect and see all of each other's posts.
You only need to join ONE instance; and then you can talk to Everyone (who isn't banned by your instance admin for violation your local TOS)
@curlyqueued the main reason to join an instance you like is to have an admin who you trust and whose policies you agree with; and local users (who appear on the "local timeline") who have common interests and values. The "federated timeline" is every user your community knows about, so if i know that people on cybre.space are my kinda people then anyone on the federated timeline; from my instance; is more likely to also be someone i would like,
@curlyqueued but like i said there's nothing Wrong with staying on mastodon.social it's just very busy and generic and a lot of people have a better experience when they find their home.
hope that whatever you choose works out for you and regardless it's wonderful to have you here in the network
@shel Oh i definitely want to find an instance that's more catered to artists and the like. mastodon.social is suuuper busy. And thank you, it's good to be in a community of such nice, helpful ppl like yourself :)
@curlyqueued mastodon.art is very good for artists. it's super vibrant and i love it
@shel Just got on it and I really like it so far! So many ppl that ART :D
@shel Oh I kinda see what you mean? When I was searching for new instances on instances.social I clicked on one and it directed me to make a new acct for that instance so I got rly confused. But yeah I get that they're all interconnected now :)
@shel thank you! this was super helpful ✨
@scrambledmegs no problem!
@shel I think I'm going to set up a donation and join cybre.space. It seems awesome and I'm a creative queer furry.
If it helps to understand, you, reading this, are seeing a post from me. I'm on the server "cybre.space" (which we call an "instance"). it's run and owned by an entirely different person from mastodon.social. We have our own community norms, moderators, and communities. But our posts still travel to your server and so you can read our posts too. We call this process "federation." Likewise, I can see your posts even if you're on a different server from me. This way, we can all have mods we like and trust