Fedi.Tips

You can use animated GIFs for your Mastodon profile's avatar and header image. However, these may not animate automatically for some people depending on their settings or app. If they don't animate automatically, they can usually be activated by clicking on them or hovering a mouse pointer over them.

⚠️ DO NOT use any kind of rapidly flashing animations! These can be extremely dangerous for people with certain neurological conditions. More info at https://fedi.tips/dont-use-flashing-images-or-emoji

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There is no algorithm on here. You are free to like and share and interact with whatever you want, it won't affect what appears in your timeline.

The only things in your timeline are all the posts from all the accounts and hashtags and groups you've followed. That's it, it's as simple as that. You control your timeline, there isn't any content being pushed at you or hidden from you or promoted by anyone.

Lots more info and questions answered about this at https://fedi.tips/does-mastodon-and-the-fediverse-use-algorithms-does-it-start-pushing-stuff-at-me-based-on-my-interactions

#FediTips

Do you have any questions about how to use Mastodon or the rest of the Fediverse?

Happy to try to help in this thread, or feel free to ask any time 🙂 (and of course there is also lots of help on the website at https://fedi.tips)

Any question is fine, am especially trying to help new or non-technical people.

#FediTips

Hello to all the wonderful Germans following this account 👋

Please, for the sake of humanity, use your vote today to stop the AfD.

Thanks to Germany's excellent proportional voting system, Germans have a wide range of parties to vote for and every vote counts towards the result. Voting for any party except the AfD will help to stop them by diluting their vote share.

If ever there was a time to vote, today is that day. This is your chance to make a difference.

EDIT: See voting tip in reply!

You can make your posts much easier to discover in Mastodon searches by opting into "full text search". Once you've opted in, people will be able to search your public posts by any word or phrase in the post instead of just hashtags.

There's a guide to how to opt in here:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-opt-into-or-out-of-full-text-search-on-mastodon

The guide also answers lots of common questions about the full text search system 🙂

#FediTips #Mastodon

If you want to restrict who can follow you on Mastodon, here's how to do it:

1. Log in through your server’s website or web app
2. Click your profile image to go to your profile page
3. Click "Edit profile"
4. Click "Privacy and reach" tab
5. UN-tick box marked "Automatically accept new followers"
6. Click "Save changes" button at bottom of page

After you've done this, future follows will be follow requests that you can approve or deny. More info at https://fedi.tips/restricting-who-can-follow-you-in-mastodon

#FediTips

Are there accounts that are really important to you, and you don't want to miss any of their posts? Here's how to make sure you don't miss them:

1. Log in on your server's website or web app
2. Go to the profile page of the account you want to follow more closely
3. Click the 🔔 notification bell (it's next to the profile's follow and options buttons)

With this active, every time that account posts it will also send you a notification. More info at https://fedi.tips/how-to-be-notified-when-someone-posts-on-mastodon/

#FediTips #Mastodon

Some accounts on here are marked as "Automated" or "Bot". This is not a bad sign! These are generally good and useful bots 🙂

These labels are added by the bot's owner to let people know there isn't a human responding to replies. More info at:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/why-are-some-accounts-marked-bot-on-mastodon

You can find lots of useful weather bots at https://fedimeteo.com

Some bots are interactive, for example @votechess lets people play a collaborative game of chess. @dungeons is another popular interactive bot.

#FediTips

If you have an official website, you can use it to verify your Mastodon account as official too. It's easy to do, you basically just insert a special bit of code into your website's front page or header.

Here is a complete guide to how to do it, and the guide also includes a troubleshooting section in case it doesn't work:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-verify-my-account

This verification will also work on platforms that allow custom HTML or which support the rel=me standard for account links.

#FediTips #Mastodon