Welcome on Todon.eu or Todon.nl! It's an honour to have you on one of our Mastodon servers. 🙇

💡 First we will give you a few follow suggestions to start with. Click the + to follow someone. Please follow our admin, our moderators and as much other users as you like. After you clicked Done, your home timeline will be populated with posts from the users you followed.

🖼️ ⚙️ Next we advise you to edit your profile, create a bio and upload your profile photo (.eu/.nl). We also advise you to check your preferences (.eu/.nl), like which languages (.eu/.nl) you want to see on the public timelines and trending posts.

🔎 🕵🏻 Mastodon has a separate settings page where you can configure your privacy and your reach (.eu/.nl). In short: disable all checkboxes for maximum privacy or enable all checkboxes for maximum reach. You probably want to fine-tune this. Example: when you only disable the check-boxes under Search and enable all the others, people can easily find and follow you, but full text in your public posts will not be indexed by Mastodon and not by third party search engines (if they follow the search engine etiquette).

📯 Then it's time for your first post (aka toot)! Use the hashtag #introductions to introduce yourself (.eu/.nl).

👥 Now follow a lot of users! Mastodon had no corporate algorithm, so it's important you follow a lot of users yourself. You can even follow #hashtags. You can always go back to your personalized follower recommendations when you go to For you tab (.eu/.nl).
When other users like your intro and bio, they will probably follow you. You can follow them back and find more users to follow on the 👥 local & 🌍 federated timeline. Another tip is to look into the follower list of people you follow (if not hidden).

Other ways to find people and to make yourself discoverable are:

• 🔎 Fediverse.info Directory (add yourself)
  
  
• 🔎 Trunk for the fediverse (add yourself)
  • scroll down for the list
    
    
• 🔎 FediDirectory (add yourself)
  
  

📚 Want to get help? There are multiple options for you:

• 🔖 The official *User Guide*
  
  
• 🔖 Mastodon Help
  
  
• 🔖 Fedi.Tips
  
  
• 🔖 *An Increasingly Less-Brief Guide to Mastodon* by Noëlle Anthony
  
  
• 🔖 *Mastodon quick start guide* by Nico
  
  
• 🔖 *Getting Started With Mastodon* by Kev Quirk
  
  
• ❓ If you still have questions, use the hashtag #help or #support.
  
  

🪪 Although Mastodon is, because of being open-source, in general more secure than commercial social media, there are still issues to consider. The most important one is probably the fact that private mentions (direct messages) can be read by your (and the receiving) server administrator. They have to manually consult the database and search for a specific user or message, but it is technically possible. So yes, we can read your direct messages if we want. We can promise you not to do this, but you shouldn't trust anyone on the internet, so also not us. This is not Mastodon specific, because also e.g. Twitter and Meta (Instagram, Facebook) can read your direct messages. The Mastodon developers are working on a fix and until then, don't be to personal in your DM's.
Click on the link below to read more about how to use Mastodon secure, especially for anarchists and other activists.

• 🕵🏻‍♂️ Operational security best practices for Mastodon users
  
  

🖥️ Recommended browser extension:

• Fediact: Mozilla Firefox (incl. Nightly for Android and Fennec), Google Chrome (and other Chromium browsers, including Kiwi & Yandex on Android)
  
  
  • This extension simplifies follow and post interactions on Mastodon servers other than your own. So if you feel lost on the fediverse sometimes, this extension is for you!
    
    

📱 Pick your mobile app:

• Android:
  
  
  • Mastodon for Android (official): Google Play, Fdroid
    
    
  • Tusky: Google Play, Fdroid
    
    
• iOS:
  
  
  • Mastodon for iOS (official): App Store
    
    
  • IceCubesApp: App Store
    
    
• 🌐 You can also use Mastodon's web-app. It (almost) behaves like a native mobile app.
  
  

📜 Don't forget to read our Terms of Service (aka our server rules).

🪀 If you want more from us, please checkout Todon Tools!

💰 Todon.eu, Todon.nl and Todon Tools are operated and moderated by *.Todon.*, a small collective of volunteers, and is funded by your donations. More info on our Donations page.