Mastodon is such a revelation. It is the internet I want to be in.
In the first Mastodon wave I thought about setting my own server with my domain and it sounded awesome, but of course, I never did. In this second one, I just went the mainstream way and was done.
What impact does it have if you change your mind later?
I have personally never looked, but the people talking here about actual conversations with a small number of people make it sound interesting.
I just picked one from my geographic region, all good!
(I am on doll.social and mastodon.social, and found that it's impossible for users from the former to follow users on the latter.)
Go to https://joinmastodon.org/servers or https://instances.social/ and find one or more instances you want to join. Use the same account name (but not password, obviously) for all of them. Think of instances as subreddits, but each subreddit is on its own separate server.
You can manage those identities though a third party app or just a folder of browser bookmarks.
If you're already on Twitter, you can find anyone on your follow list who is also on Mastodon and follow them. You'll wind up with a json file you'll need to upload for each account. It's easy to join or leave instances so there's nothing to worry about.
The better way would be to manage your own identity server but i'm not there yet.
2. start following people
3. if you notice that a lot of people you are following are on a particular server, consider getting an account there and using the account migration tools to move all your current followers over there
4. alternatively, set up your own server, maybe just for you, maybe for some of your friends and/or family, with your own set of rules and a manifesto that is perfectly sensible and not weird at all because it is yours.
The content is also structured in a twitter microblog + replies style. So I'm seeing basically private forums of old, but twitter format and some weird soft discovery thing.
Overall I like the idea of federation, but mastadon seems half baked. I signed up and I'll get it a try for a week or so though.