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Hello new followers! We're at 1.9k on Mastodon now, and when we get to 2k we'll post a music video for you.

Since a lot of you are from Twitter and new to the Fediverse, and we've been here a bit longer (not long enough to count as experts or old-timers, though) here are some friendly tips:

1) There is no quote tweet function. If you really want to talk about a post without interacting with the poster, you will need to do a screenshot. There are pros and cons to the lack of quotability: it tends to focus conversation and force people into dialog with each other more, like a message board.

2) There is no strong DM function, just semiprivate messaging. Server admins can read your DMs. This doesn't bother us, because we have always held to the principle that for anything really sensitive, you should be using methods with end to end encryption. We're fine with non-sensitive private messages, but If you ever went to contact us very securely, say with a tip about Nazi activity, please send an email instead.

3) There is no full text searchability. Some instances have text search, but most don't, by default. The only way to discover posts across the Fediverse is by using the hashtag feature. This is our biggest technical problem with Mastodon and is also going to be a big problem for other antifascist researchers sharing information with each other. We are looking into a presence on a secondary instance that does run full text search, but for now, we're trying to be very careful about adding hashtags (mixed-case hashtags in particular) to every post that needs to be searchable. If you want people to find your posts, you need to do the same.

4) The established culture here is more European, more techie, and more white than Twitter. Not saying every established Mastodonian fits that profile. But a lot of them do. Posting about racial issues on Mastodon will often lead to randos popping up to tone police along the lines of, "You're making up issues, I don't see race, there goes the digital neighborhood, purple people, we're all human beans, not a racist bone in my body, blah blah blah etc." We have seen a lot of this personally and tried to push back against it. We will have zero tolerance for racist tone policing in the comments of anything we post and have already blocked a fair number of accounts for tone policing.

5) There are no ads and no algorithms. Nothing much else to say about that, it's just fantastic.

6) Instances/servers have hosting costs and moderation labor. With this new influx of people, they will need to pass the hat. If you like your instance, donate. We like ours (Kolektiva) a lot! Try to read the About page from your instance to figure out its rules before you join one.

7) Please don't use an automator to crosspost to Mastodon from Twitter. These Twitter crossposts are a pain to read here, and they just drive people back to Musk-land anyway. However, we do the opposite: we crosspost to Twitter from Mastodon original posts. Even though Musk has blocked all Mastodon links, we get it around it by using Zapier to append anonymz (dot) com/? in front of every kolektiva (dot) social link, which gets past the filter (for now). Hopefully this will encourage more and more people to migrate.

Let us know if you have any questions or tips for us.