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Social Media Principles: Beginner’s Guide to the Fediverse

VonKlaudia

This blog post is a translation of the original German post: Social-Media Grundsätze: Einstieg ins Fediverse.

What’s the fediverse?

„Fediverse“ is a combination of „federated“ and „universe“. All those thinking about Star Trek now, you’re basically right. Because it’s about doing things together without technical barriers and all people can talk to each other.

Many people have already heard of Pixelfed or Mastodon. After Musk bought Twitter, lots of people joined Mastodon. And we’ve seen a similar mass migration in January 2025 when Zuckerberg stopped the moderation on his platforms. Lots of Instagram users joined Pixelfed then.

You can have an account on Pixelfed or on Mastodon and you’re already part of the fediverse. The platform you choose defines how the fediverse looks and feels for you. The different platforms are just user interfaces for the fediverse with distinct possibilities.

IMPORTANT: It does not matter where you make your account. It can be on a totally different server than your friends or family and you can still talk to all of them. The fediverse is designed to empower human-to-human conversations without all of them having to have their accounts on the same server. E.g. my account is on literatur.social and wherever you sign up in the fediverse, we’ll be able to communicate with one another. That’s because all the servers „speak the same language“ (the ActivityPub protocol). And this was already nearly the most technical thing you’ll have read in this article.

It All Starts With the Community

There are three good starting points:

Go where you already know people

If you already know people who are active in the fediverse, ask them where they have their accounts and sign up there.

You can also browse the starter packs. These are lists of interesting accounts in the fediverse (currently supporting only Mastodon accounts) curated by humans. Maybe you’ll find some interesting people and accounts there and realise that a lot of them have the same name ending? That is the community, with which they have their account – just like your email address …@yourwork[.co.uk] or …@somemailprovider[.com]. I also curate two starter packs: Bookstodon DE und Bookstodon DE & International.

Go to a local community close to you

If you have a small bakery or bookshop, you might want to consider a local community like wien.rocks.

Go to a community that matches your interest

If you’re a lawyer, you could like legal.social. For journalists flipboard.social could be interesting (or maybe also a local community). If you’re a ham radio operator, you might like to have a look at fediverse.radio. For the more techy people, you could like social.tchncs.de. (techncs.de also has several other fediverse platforms like Pixelfed, Lemmy, Sharkey, Mobilizon and PeerTube. You’ll read more about these later in this post.) If you’re an artist or craftsperson, have a look at mastodon.art. And book people are very welcome to join literatur.social, which is mostly German speaking, but English is also welcome with us.

How to Search For a Community?

If you don’t know anyone in the fediverse yet, you get an overview on different Mastodon servers on joinmastodon.org/servers. I explain the basics using Mastodon because it’s the platvorm I know best, since we’re hosting our own Mastodon server (litertur.social).

Okay, four our example I assume you chose Mastodon, a platform with a feature-set comparable to old Twitter. On joinmastodon.org/servers you see a couple of different communities (they call them „instances“ or „servers“). On the left you can choose by interests or regions.

Communities differ mainly by the people on them, the location of the server (and the legal implications of that) and the community rules, which have implications on the moderation, what is allowed and what is not.

But what, if I choose the wrong community and my account ends up on the wrong server??!!?? It doesn’t matter where you sign up, since the whole fediverse is designed so you can talk to each other between all the different servers! You don’t have to be on the same server to talk to your friends and family! This means you can’t do anything wrong. Maybe except you end up in one of the far-right hate-speech communities, which are blocked by most of the other servers. But you’d have to actively search for those and would recognise them by svastica symbols and so on. Signing up there by accident would be kind of an achievement.

The only restriction you’ll find are the different functionalities of the platform you choose: Mastodon can show all posts including videos, pictures, audio and text. But for pictures it’s restricted to four pictures per post. Pixelfed, on the other hand, will only show posts that include at least one picture and no text-only posts, since it’s meant to be a highly visual medium. So you can follow Mastodon accounts from your Pixelfed account, but will only see the posts that include picture.

It doesn’t Have to be Mastodon

Even if I’m writing a lot about Mastodon, you don’t have to choose or even like it. Because of its possibility to show all sorts of posts, I often call it the „Swiss army knife of the fediverse“ (and some people scold me for it), but in my opinion it is a good starting point to orientate yourself in the fediverse. You don’t have to follow this and other recommendations are at least as good. Because there are now lots of different fediverse communities. The most commonly used platforms are probably the following. All of them have something like „start“-pages which are mostly called something with „join“.

On the site fediverse.observer there is a current overview of the different platforms and the entire network.

App or Browser?

For the most of the fediverse platforms both is possible. I use the browser on my laptop and an app on my mobile devices. I personally like Toot! for Mastodon on iOS. Many Android users like Tusky or Fedilab. There are many apps that do work with several different platforms. So you can use one app and access all your accounts on e.g. Mastodon and Pixelfed with that one app. There is an overview of apps for all operating systems at joinmastodon.org/apps and nearly all of them are better and more flexible than the original Mastodon-App. The biggest problem with that one is that they don’t show the community-selection on signup and you’ll most certainly end up of on the big general server mastodon.social if you don’t actively search for anything else. Pixelfed also now has an original („native“) app for iOS and Android, which both are okay. But you’ll also be fine with Fedilab. And I can use my Pixelfed account also with Toot!.

Tipp: If you’re having problems with the app you chose, try a different app first before you give up on the fediverse. The design and structure of the app and which features it allows changes most of the look and feel of your fediverse experience. Icecubes or Ivory are two popular apps and give a totally different (I’d say, more modern or „hip“) experience than e.g. Metatext.

The Anatomy of the Username

When choosing a community, their domain becomes part of your username, just like it is with an email account. This can actually be a criteria to choose a certain server.

A fediverse username is made of two parts: the username itself, e.g. my username @viennawriter, and behind that there is the domain of the community, e.g. literatur.social. Both start with an @, which we also know from our email address. As with email, the domain has an important function: it allocates the account on the technical side to a certain server. So the account can be found within the entire federation made of several thousands of servers – Geordy on Enterprise, not Geordy on Voyager. If your colleague tells you her username janet.smith but without the domain, you can either guess the domain or better just ask her.

Let’s take my username as an example: @viennawriter@literatur.social – username in front followed by the domain.

There is a second view of the usernames that maybe looks confusing in the beginning. But it’s only the direct link to the profile which you can open with any browser: https://literatur.social/@viennawriter Here the domain is in front and the username is in the back. Please don’t be confused. That’s only because of the established form of internet links, where we have the domain in front and the actual content we want to access comes after that, basically mimicking a directory path on a computer.

But enough now with the technical stuff.

Okay, You’ve Signed Up. What’s Next?

After signup you make yourself at home.

A Warm Welcome

Since the fediverse is made for human-to-human communication, it’s good to make your profile likeable for humans. We don’t have to care about algorithms in the fediverse; they don’t matter to us. Fill in your profile and upload a profile picture. After that (!) it is common to introduce yourself using the hashtag #introduction; that’s often the very first post. Lots of people follow the hashtag #introduction to find new people in the fediverse, welcome them and start discussions. That’s why you should fill in your profile before posting your introduction, so people know who they are talking to. Okay, so:

Step 1: fill in the bio / profile
Step 2: upload a profile picture
Step 3: make your #introduction post

Pixelfed: Import your content from Instagram

Tipp: If you’re signing up for a Pixelfed account and your Instagram account is still accessible, you can import your content from Instagram to Pixelfed.

How to Find Other People?

After an #introduction post, you’ll likely have several welcome greetings and maybe some first discussions. If someone follows you, you can follow back with just one click.

Pro-Tipp: Follow the admin account of the community you chose. That’s because they’ll post info on maintenance, polls on new features for the community and other important information regarding the server you’re on using that account.

To fill your timeline, you can search for further accounts. Because unlike the algorithm-steered networks you are probably used to, in the fediverse you decide who you want to follow and thus, what you see in your timeline. So you don’t just get a lot of stuff pushed on you, but you can decide what you want to see. Some apps make suggestions, but not all of them.

If you’re using Pixelfed or Mastodon, you have a „local timeline“ (or „local feed“), on which you see all the public posts of the accounts of your community. It is always worthwhile to scroll through your local timeline to find interesting topics and people.

As soon as you follow an account, the posts of that account will be shown in your personal timeline, which is (a bit unfortunately) called „start page“ or „homepage“. That sounds very unpretentious for both Pixelfed and Mastodon, but is actually the collection of all posts from all accounts you follow – no matter where they are located. So if you follow accounts from another community, their posts will also appear in your personal timeline or „homepage“.

Last but not least, there is also the „federated“ or „global“ timeline. This is the view of all public posts of all accounts from all communities that the server of your community already knows. This one can be overwhelming, but it’s worth taking a look every now and then.

How do you find accounts from other communities? For example, by local accounts sharing („boosting“) them. Or in the global timeline. Or via starter packs. Or: Just ask. Make a post in which you say what you are looking for and ask for account recommendations. Experience has shown that this works very well.

Starter-Packs

To find accounts from other communities, there are starter packs available now at https://fedidevs.com/starter-packs/. You can search for your interests or neighbourhood and there is a good chance that someone has already created a collection of interesting accounts. Just have a look there and search for topics you are interested in. Currently, the starter packs only support Mastodon accounts, but they want to support other fediverse platforms soon. However, that’s not a problem because your own fediverse account allows you to follow them, anyway.

Allgemein sehr interessante Accounts

Tipp: Fedi.Tips regularly posts tips and answers questions on how to use Mastodon and the Fediverse. I’m always learning something new. And FediFollows recommends interesting accounts to follow in the fediverse. I’ve made a lot of interesting discoveries there, too. Mastodon Migration always has good tips at the ready.

The German Bundesregierung is on social.bund.de. And the German public media have their own servers with ARD und ZDF. Have a look, if your government is already in the fediverse – or write to them and ask them to maintain fediverse accounts. „The Myth of Reach“ might be a good help with your argument.

Hashtags

Of course there are hashtags in the fediverse. You can search for and also follow them. This way, you will get quick access to interesting discussions you can contribute to and also find like-minded people.

How to Follow Accounts?

It’s pretty intuitive to follow accounts if you find them in your timeline. Just go to the account page by clicking on the account name and click on „Follow“.

Follow Specific Accounts

If you want to follow specific accounts that are not yet in one of your timelines, e.g. if you meet people in the physical world and they tell you their account name, think of asking for the domain, the second part of their username. Or maybe you want to follow my account and see my username in this text here, but without a direct link.

For both examples you can use the search function. Enter the username in the search field. It doesn’t matter if you enter it in the username@domain-spelling or the other way. If the people are quite active in the fediverse, you’ll probably find them by their username only (without the domain in the back), but including the domain in your search will make sure you’ll get the right people.

You should get to the specific account via the search, except the server on which the specific account is, has blocked the account search. Then you can always enter the direct link in your browser starting with https:// and the domain and the username in the back (including the @) and then you should end up on the account page.

Follow Accounts via a Starter-Pack

If you found interesting accounts in a starter pack, you can either copy the username and paste it into the search field of your community. Or you choose the easy way and authorise the starter pack website to add the follows to your profile. Don’t worry, it’s safe to do so. And you don’t give lifelong access to your account, but only until you „log out“ from the website again. This way you can either follow specific accounts from the starter pack by clicking on „Follow“ and in the background magic happens and your account will follow these accounts moments later. It works the same if you click „Follow all Accounts from the Starter-Pack“. Then you’ll have a busier timeline in one click.

If you’re missing topics here or something is still unclear to you, just write it in the comments and I’ll add it for the next post on „Fediverse – Next Steps (coming soon)“.

Social Media Principles [EN]

The Myth of Reach
Beginner’s Guide to the Fediverse
Fediverse – Next Steps (coming soon)

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