How I use Mastodon in 2025

These are exciting times to be on Mastodon, one of the flavours of the Fediverse. Things are evolving fast, towards a space worthy of healthier online debate and exchange. Some of these conversations can be found on my own profile, if you’re curious.

Here are some of the cool things I have discovered Mastodon lets you do. If you’ve found some neat integrations or solutions, please do let me know in the comments. I am curious.

What I use

So, given that Mastodon does not have an Algorithm to keep you hooked on the platform, you are in control of what you read. If you decide not to drink from the firehose — sorted chronologically — of all the posts of all your followers, you can use Lists. With Lists you can maintain a group of people that usually write on a specific topic, or simply those whose posts you deem more relevant.

Lists I maintain on Mastodon. “Cream” are “VIP for me”. “Folks” are people I’ve met IRL.

If you use the web version of Mastodon, you can turn on column view in the settings and see all your lists, searches or hashtags in columns, Tweetdeck (RIP) style. To come back to this view, add “/deck” to your instance name (here is the example for mastodon.social). This way you can have an overview of your lists, like so:

Because Mastodon is a stable and open platform built on top of ActivityPub, people are using it to create diverse and cool stuff. If you miss an Algorithm automated curation, Phanpy is a thoughtfully designed web application, that will make your catching up with the world a joy.

Phanpy will display a bit of curation within your own personal feed.

Mastodon also plays well with the rest of the open web. Any account on Mastodon can be converted into an RSS feed simply by adding “.rss” to its Mastodon profile link. Mindblowing, I know. Let’s try this with Zeldman’s Mastodon profile link. We start from https://front-end.social/@zeldman, add “.rss” to it and get https://front-end.social/@zeldman.rss. Insert this link into your favorite RSS reader, and watch the magic happen.

Read Zeldman’s Mastodon posts on your RSS reader.

When I’m searching for snappy inspiration, want to get a feeling for the Zeitgeist, or have a fleeting idea I want to share with the world, I launch Tuba on my Ubuntu install. It’s a great Mastodon client, and a perfect example of a well-executed Gnome app.

One of the strongest points of Mastodon is also one of its main weaknesses. Content is federated in multiple instances, which means there is no single point of failure. No evil billionaire can simply acquire it and turn it to shit, and instances can refuse to federate with other instances (such as the Nazi next door, Threads by Meta, or both).

The downside of this design decision is that onboarding the application and following people in different instances can be daunting, particularly for newcomers. If you’re starting a new account, keep it simple and use mastodon.social. If you want to get more creative, try finding a community in which you would fit right in, such as one dedicated to people on the indie web, fans of knitting or journalists. Make your content searchable for optimal discovery by turning it on in the settings (h/t to Sara Joy). If you want to follow someone on another instance, the standard is to copy/paste their instance profile link into the search of your own Mastodon account. But there is another way.

Graze detected that Silvio Lorusso was on Mastodon and suggested I follow him, directly on his website. Priceless stuff.

Graze is a browser extension (I use the one for Firefox) that makes it simpler to follow people on other instances, with just one click. Their most recent update even adds a little overlay at the bottom of pages if it detects a Mastodon account out in the wild. Discover as you browse, sweet move. StreetPass has a similar concept, and I am just learning about it.

One last feature worth mentioning is verification. If you have your own domain, you can verify your Mastodon account, simply by saying these belong to the same person (you). All you need is a rel=”me” link on the HTML of your website.

What I’d love to use

In an ideal world I would mostly post from my website and have the discussions occur anywhere on the fediverse and still be readable as extensions of the post here on fredrocha.net. This is the best of both worlds, in which I can POSSIE and still have a diversity of ideas and perspectives in the conversation. I’m trying to figure out how ActivityPub, Webmentions and other technologies can work together to achieve that, specifically in the context of a WordPress install. #goals

Some accounts to follow

If you are new to the platform and are looking for some solid accounts to follow, here’s a living list (this might or not be a selection of my “Cream” and “Folks” lists, we’ll never know):

• https://indieweb.social/@maggie
• https://mastodon.social/@adactio
• https://mastodon.au/@kaib
• https://mastodon.social/@jamez
• https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral
• https://front-end.social/@chriscoyier
• https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic
• https://w3c.social/@timbl
• https://www.404media.co

Join the fun, say hi!

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So cool that you want to stay in touch! Expect a sparse but exciting email in your box.

Necessarily, discuss on Mastodon!