More About Mastodon

I've been using Mastodon for more than a month and while it hasn't completely replaced Twitter for me, I am using it more frequently. In this post, I look at some of the Mastodon clients I've been testing, provide some tips based on my experience, and include some links to useful resources. 

Mastodon clients

First, I started out using Mastodon with the advanced web interface, which has a columnar layout similar to Tweetdeck for Twitter. It's reasonably usable but lacks some features that I thought would be useful (mainly the ability to hide accounts in lists from the home view). If you're just using Mastodon on a computer, you are probably stuck with it.

However, there are many Mastodon clients for Android and IOS. I first started to use Mastodon on my Pixel 4a and Samsung tablet using a browser. This is barely OK on the tablet but is not very workable on the phone. So I started looking for Android clients. First was Tusky, which is better than the web interface but still somewhat limiting. 

Eventually, I switched to the Fedilab client, which is much better. The one feature I was desperate for, as mentioned above, was available in the beta, so I signed up for it. So far, I've had no problems, and being able to keep from seeing duplicate posts in my home view and lists has made using Mastodon much more pleasant. Unlike Tusky, Fedilab is not free, but the $3.99 price is very reasonable considering the many extra features, most of which I haven't explored yet. 

Tips

Here are a few things that work for me or that other people have suggested to make Mastodon work better for you. As always, YMMV. 

• If you are using the web interface, switch to the Advanced view. 
• Use lists to categorize the people you are following. 
• In the Home view, turn off the display of boosts and possibly replies. You can always view replies by clicking on a post. As for boosts, see the next tip. 
• If your client permits it, mute people from your lists in your Home feed. (The beta of Fedilab permits this and it's the main reason I use that client).
• Don't bother with the Federated feed (the World icon). It scrolls by too fast to be useful. That may also be true for your Local feed if your instance has a large number of members.  
• Use hashtags. They are a good way of getting information about a topic without having to directly follow a bunch of people. 
• If you follow someone who is a power user, see who they are following and look at them.
• If there are topics you are not interested in or that bother you and you do not want to see in your feed, use filters to hide them. 

Resources

Here are some articles and posts that I've found worthwhile.

• Some Tricks To Making Mastodon Way More Useful. This long article by Mike Masnick of TechDirt has much detail on how to work around some of Mastodon's limitations, especially with the use of lists and hashtags. 
• Fedi.Tips. "An unofficial guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse." This is probably the best source of information I've found so far about Mastodon. 
  
• Mastodon 101. "An Introduction to Mastodon with Newmark J-School Professor Jeff Jarvis." Jarvis is also one of the hosts of the long-running podcast, This Week in Google. He knows his stuff and how to communicate it effectively. 
• Retiring Pinafore. A long article by the developer of the Pinafore interface to Mastodon. This one will probably be of most interest to developers or Mastodon power users.