How to Join Mastodon

Mastodon is a text-first way of accessing the fediverse. You can read more about what that is and why you might care here. (This used to be part of that post, but we’ve split it off to make this more manageable.)

With Mastodon, you can post images, videos and audio, but the interface emphasises text.

Where to join

There are many good places to sign up, each of which has its own moderation policy. Ideally, members and friends of JAQ want to signup somewhere friendly to both queers and Jews.

One such place is lgbt.io. That instance is specifically queer and has a few Jewish users. One of the moderators is also a mod in JAQ.

Another instance is babka.social. The specifically Jewish and about 60% queer. Like many Jewish communities, many of the users and a majority of the mods are liberal Zionists.

There are many other good instances, however, because the moderation policies vary, do get a recommendation instead of joining one at random.

How to sign up

Via phone

Let’s say you want to sign up with lgbt.io. Use your phone’s web browser to connect. Then tap the Create account button on the top centre.

You need to supply a username, your email address and a password.

And you need to say why you want an account. This is to prevent spam. You can just say that you’re queer or an ally and want to give Mastodon a try. Then click the request button.

You’ll need to verify your email address. Then a moderator will look at your request. This might take a few minutes or a day or two. The moderators are volunteers.

After you get approved, you can use Mastodon via a web browser, or you may prefer an app.

There are several apps, including an official one. Android users may prefer Tusky.

After you install any app, it will want to know what “instance” you signed up with. For people who signed up with lgbt.io, that’s their instance. Or your instance might be babka.social. Or mastodon.art. Or wherever you signed up.

After that, you’ll need your email address and password.

Via a computer

Most computer-users access Mastodon via the web interface. When you first connect to where you want to sign up, the create account button is in the right column.

After that, the steps are the same as for people signing up via phone.

If you signed up via phone, you can connect to your account via your computer and vice versa.

Going forward

Our next post will talk about how to sign up for Pixelfed, which is image-lead and will appeal to people who like Insta.

You can have both kinds of account if you want, but you don’t need both. Pixelfed users can follow posts from Mastodon users and vice versa. This is what makes it the “federated universe” (aka, the fediverse) – because everyone can follow and interact across platforms.

The multitude of instances and platforms is also what makes it immune to oligarch capture. The corporate-owned network Bluesky is (kind of) fine right now, but it could be taken over by a new fascist owner tomorrow. By contrast, the fediverse is jointly owned by hundreds of independent operators. Even if Elon Musk bought lgbt.io, he wouldn’t own babka.social or mastodon.art.

Who to follow?

Obviously, follow us: @jaq. And then see if you can find this post. Who has replied to it saying they’re friends of JAQ? Perhaps you might follow them and also leave your own reply.

Next Steps

There are a lot of how-to guides, such as this short one from Mastodon, or this longer unofficial one.