I migrated from Twitter to Mastodon when Elon Musk took over. It’s been really nice, and I I wish I’d have known about the Fediverse before then. I may have found an instance that is too comfy and perfect for me, though… I’ve been tempted to migrate my account over to a Calckey instance, but there’s no way that I’m not staying put. Other Fedi services that I’m interested in trying are PeerTube and Owncast.
I’ve been on Mastodon for several years, most of it on a singular instance (well before the Twitter migration). You definitely have to go looking for your own list of interesting people to follow, and the hashtags are quieter than I’d like, but I enjoy it as a chill place to just hang out and read fun stuff and occasionally have low stakes conversations.
I’ve tried a few other fediverse services but none have really stuck with me except for probably now Lemmy and Kbin.
Any recommendations on how to start finding those communities of interest on Mastodon?
I suggest following FediFollows: @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services , if you haven’t already. They also have a directory listing interesting accounts by topic here.
What I did in 2018 was
I feel like casting a wide net and filtering down to match your own taste and the kind of people you want to meet is a good way to start curating the Mastodon you personally want to see, since an algorithm isn’t going to do it for you. It takes time but is rewarding in the end. With Masto in specific, most instances by now have upgraded software to the point where migration tools are available, so if you end up not even liking your local timeline you can take all your followers, follows, blocks etc and just try someplace else.
You could probably also use lists to help with this process somehow but I never really understood them either here or on Twitter lol.
This was super helpful, thanks!