I recently quit using Twitter altogether. Its owner has been abusing the platform for political gain and profit. It made no sense to keep supporting that. I am more active on Mastodon anyway, the friendly federated social platform that all of you should prefer over Twitter, BlueSky or Threads 😉
I wrote an article about switching to Mastodon a while ago, check out Migrating from Twitter to Mastodon. But after the recent mass-exodus from Twitter after the US elections, I thought it would be a good idea to write an update for those people who recently found their new home on a Mastodon instance.
When you are new to Mastodon, it can be a bit of a daunting task to get the information to flow. Unlike the other aforementioned platforms where the ‘algorithms’ ensure that your feed is constantly populated, you actually need to subscribe to one or more topics and/or start following actual people, to kickstart your federated timeline and see stuff worth reading.

Coming up with topics is not hard – just type something that comes into your mind in the search field of your client, and you will be able to look for hashtags, posts or people matching or containing that text string. Start following a hashtag is enough to start the flow of posts to read.
But finding people may be harder. Not everyone posts on Mastodon using their own name or with a recognizable nickname. How to find interesting people to follow? Here are some options.

Also called a ‘Starter Pack‘, the FollowPacks are a concept that was actually born on the BlueSky platform. Now they are also created for Mastodon and boosted by the MastodonMigration account. FollowPacks are a convenient way for new users of Mastodon to quickly populate their list of people to follow in the Fediverse.
In essence, a FollowPack is a CSV file containing the listname and Mastodon addresses of up to 35 people who have a relevance to a certain topic area. An example line in such a CSV file for an “OpenSource” list could be a reference to myself:

OpenSource,@alien@fosstodon.org

The MastodonMigration blog has a instructional article about FollowPacks and how to use/import them into your Mastodon account: the Mastodon Follow Pack FAQ, as well as a page with a directory of these packs that they themselves maintain – on topics of ‘Astronomy and Space‘, ‘Climate‘, ‘US Politics‘ and ‘Miscellany‘ and hopefully more to come: the Mastodon Follow Pack Directory.

Instructions for obtaining and importing the packs are simple: download the pack’s .csv file and import into Mastodon to follow all accounts contained in there. As the list content grows, you will be able to merge new names into existing lists. In more detail:

  • Click on a FollowPack’s .csv file link to download it
  • Click on the ‘Preferences‘ (gear) icon at the bottom right of your Mastodon homepage
  • On a mobile or narrow desktop click the  “hamburger” button located at the top right of the page
  • Click ‘Import and Export‘ > ‘Import‘
  • As the ‘Import type‘ in the dropdown: Select ‘Lists’ (NOT ‘Following list’)
  • Verify that ‘Merge’ is selected (IMPORTANT)
  • Click the ‘Browse…’ button and select your previously downloaded “[file name] – list.csv”
  • Press ‘Upload‘ > ‘Confirm‘

You can create such a FollowPack yourselves too of course, and share it with your friends.

What else is there? If you are in need of expansion of your personal ‘following‘ list, you could look at the accounts that someone else is following. For instance, here is the list of people I am following: https://fosstodon.org/@alien/following . In general, add “/following” to the Mastodon homepage of any person.

To broaden your search, look for people who are actively posting. The Mastodon server instance where I have my home, Fosstodon, is a place whose users have an affinity with Open Source. That may lead to the discovery of some interesting people. If you want to know who posted most recently on Fosstodon, check out the server’s directory like this: https://fosstodon.org/directory?order=active&local=true .
Mind you, Fosstodon is just one of many servers in the Fediverse, so everything that gets posted there will find its way to your own Mastodon home if you or other people on your server instance are following the topics mentioned in their posts. You will find more people to follow, if you visit other instances’ directories. Lists of Mastodon servers can be found here or here, or find them via a convenient search form here.

Yet another way to quickly find people that fall in certain categories is to use fediverse.info. For instance, this search string leads to a directory of accounts that are tagged with “OpenSource”: https://fediverse.info/explore/people?t=OpenSource .

Found anything else to boost your ‘following‘ list? Let us know in the comments section below!

Have fun! Eric