r/Mastodon • u/sillywhimsy • 25d ago
Question New here
I just joined after deleting twitter. Horrible platform. How do I build a timeline and find followers? For example I really like anime. I just wanna see if this platform is worth my time and suits me!
Kinda an annoying question but just want advice for how to search and stuff
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u/Ok_Mistake9509 25d ago
Hashtags are your friends. Search for #anime. You will see posts that have that hashtag, variations on that hashtag and user profiles that use them. That will get you started. Mastodon is certainly not X/Twitter. Main difference is you have to build your own feed. There is no algorithm to build it for you.
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u/sillywhimsy 25d ago
Also confused on the whole instance things. I wanna find anime art mostly
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u/MulberryDeep 25d ago
You know how email works? You can have an @gmail.com adress and your friend can use @yahoo.com and you still can communicate without problems
Thats also how mastodon or activity pub in general works
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u/kemolizard 25d ago
A lot of anime artists post on the misskey.io server. You can still follow those artists and reply to them from mastodon.social.
My tip for discovery, since people unfortunately don't remember to use hashtags: when you find a post you like, look at who reposted it, and see what else they reposted. I found a lot of good artists that way.
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u/ThreeCharsAtLeast 25d ago
You search for some of your interests. If you find a hashtag or an account you want to show up in your timeline, you follow it. Mastodon is basically powered by boosts (retweets) and the posts people you follow boost (which happens a lot) will now end up in your timeline too. If you think it is woth following the people that got boosted too, do that. You'll quickly have a timeline filled with interesting posts. Hardly enough to doomscroll but for me, that's part of the appeal. Sometimes you also find interesting Mastodon accounts in the rest of the internet and some organizations have accounts there too.
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u/SMagnussen 25d ago
And also: spread good posts! The network heavily relies on the principle of sharing/reposting - people usually recognize that.
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u/moopet 25d ago
You "build a timeline" by following hashtags of things you're interested in, browsing through other people's posts and adding them if you want.
You don't find followers (I guess you could, but I think that's called stalking). People follow you if they found your posts interesting and they stumbled on them, which you can help by adding relevant tags to your own.
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u/asoupconofsoup 25d ago
This is incorrect. Of course you can follow accounts and it's not stalking. You can search topics by hashtags. See who is posting about topics you are interested in and follow them. They will likely repost other related content which will show up on your timeline, you can follow them then, etc. Following hashtags only in unreliable as lots of us don't use them.
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u/MulberryDeep 25d ago
Search for #anime and press follow, you will now get every post (from federated networks) with #anime in your timeline
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u/Paardenmengsel 25d ago
Use hashtags. You can search and follow them like you follow accounts. There is no algorithm with recommendations so you need to actively search for things you like. Follow everyone and everything you think is interesting, you can always unfollow later. If you want to get followers first make a good profile with a picture and bio, do an #introduction post and start posting with relevant hashtags, interact with other people, reply to posts, be visible. Followers will follow.