Part 2 of 3 (theoretically)
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Setting Up and Managing Stuff
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Some things are just easier to accomplish on the web interface than on any of the apps.
General account setup and managing lists are two of those functions.
More on apps later.
Privacy
============
My first recommendation is to set your account to:
1. Require follow requests (Manually control who can follow you by approving follow requests)
2. Hide your social graph (Who you follow and who follows you will be hidden on your profile)
Additionally, if you set Posting privacy to "unlisted" you need to remember to choose which posts turn up in searches, even for hashtag searches, so be aware of this.
IMPORTANT
Check the settings of each post and if there's no globe, it's not searchable. (If you aren't getting responses, even though you added hashtags, this may be why.)
Lists
====
My second recommendation is to set up a Friends list early, and add to it as you follow people who want to make sure you see their posts.
Messages from less-frequent posters will get lost quickly as you follow high-volume accounts.
If you want to know what your favourite people are up to, lists are your best way.
Unlike Twitter, you can only add people you follow to lists, so none of that being added to "People who are insufficiently obsequious to white people" nonsense.
Getting an app
===========
I can fully attest to the suckitude of the default Mastodon app. I used it for a whole day and it's missing so much functionality.
If you are an app person, Tusky or Fedilab for android or Metatext or Toot! for iphone seem to be the preferred choices.
Getting reach
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For whatever reason [and please resist the urge to mansplain, I don't fucking care that deeply] most old-school residents of the platform hate everything they associate with BirdChan, including some actually useful features like: search and quote-toots.
For the former, you may as well accept that you need to use hashtags, even just to find your own content. Make up your own hashtags, as long as it helps you find shit later.
Also, you can follow hashtags, so public content that is tagged with your interests will automatically appear in your feed.
As for the lack of quote-toots:
You can go to the trouble of screenshotting an interesting toot, and posting it with your commentary and a link to the original toot.
As for me, I'm going to protest by retooting @lowqualityfacts without any warning that they are not, in fact, facts.
That is what you get for not letting me prepend things with: "Hilarious, though untrue."
#SaveForLater #GigiTips #Feditips