I have written a short piece on "How to use Mastodon as a Facebook replacement", mostly for my friends on FB, but worth sharing.

[markmeisner@mastodon.social]

I have written a short piece on "How to use Mastodon as a Facebook replacement", mostly for my friends on FB, but worth sharing.

I hope it's useful for people. If so, please share. Feedback welcome. Full text with links here:

https://meisner.ca/2025/02/02/how-to-use-mastodon-as-a-facebook-replacement/

Attn: @FediTips

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@markmeisner

That's really good, nice! Very interesting to emphasise how to make Mastodon's user experience more Facebook-like, that could help more new people come here

One thing: some servers have more than 500 characters (I've listed a few good ones at https://fedi.garden/tag/larger-post-size but there are lots more.) ...but it's your call if this adds confusion or complexity.

Also you might want to copy paste the text into the description of the image? That will get you a lot more boosts on here

[petrescatraian@libranet.de]

@markmeisner @FediTips There's a lot to get used to if going from Facebook to Mastodon. There are lots of missing features (compared to Facebook) and if you're on a server that has the default 500 characters limit, then bad luck!

If not, it could be more bearable, but:

• They would still have to cope with the fact that there is no threaded view in the comments of a post. Every comment is linear, so you don't know who replied who. Unless...
• People just tag each other in order to be notified by a response. This is mandatory. If you don't, the people before you won't be notified.
• They would still have to cope with the fact that longer posts are threaded and can be sometimes difficult to read through
• There's no way to create events and groups (and no way to attend these events).
• There's no granular control on privacy except for the 4 options that we know. If you want to make a post and only want to make it visible to a specific group of people, you're out of luck.

If these aspects are important for those people, consider also recommending Friendica (and possibly Diaspora too). The Fediverse is really lacking when it comes to Facebook alternatives. Nearly all of them seem to have a learning curve even bigger than Mastodon itself (which, fwiw, has been worked on in the past years). Friendica seems to be the most accessible though, among the ActivityPub platforms. There are two great apps for Android (Relatica and Raccoon - with the former also being worked on to support iOS too). Plus there are countless user created guides on how to use Friendica. I tried to gather them all in this megathread, so if you need to give a guide to someone, pick any of the ones I linked there.

[markmeisner@mastodon.social]

@FediTips Thanks for the tips. I have updated the text and put the first chunk into the image ALT area though it only accomodates 1500 characters. Cheers.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@markmeisner

Okay, brilliant! I've just boosted it, hopefully other people find it useful too

A lot of people are looking for ways to get their friends off Facebook, so it's great to see guides like this.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@petrescatraian @markmeisner

I wouldn't recommend Diaspora at the moment as it has very few active users (just a few thousand), it cannot connect to Mastodon, Pixelfed etc, and Diaspora's development seems to have slowed to a crawl. Hopefully it gets back to its glory days at some point, but it's currently not a good place for new people to start on IMHO.

Friendica is a much better option, it reaches almost all of the Fediverse, but it still lacks some things such as an abuse reporting tool.

[shanmonster@c.im]

@markmeisner @FediTips the thing I miss most about FB are the groups and the events. I haven't seen anything comparable here.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@Shanmonster @markmeisner

There is a platform on here specifically for replacing Facebook Events called Mobilizon, more info at https://fedi.tips/mobilizon-event-organisation-and-discovery

Facebook Groups is trickier, there's not a direct replacement yet. Some Fediverse platforms like NodeBB seem to be looking at group privacy but they're not ready yet.

[alexchapman@tweesecake.social]

@markmeisner @FediTips Um, image with no description? Excuse me, but please remember to use alt text, some of us can't read the text of the image, and we don't wanna have to screw around with OCR bullshit. Sorry if I sound rude but I'm getting tired of the same old image with no description image with no description crap.

[crcordray@ieji.de]

@markmeisner @FediTips there is a Facebook replacement based on same structure as Mastodon - called friendica.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@alexchapman @markmeisner

The image has a description which was edited into it today. It's possible the edit didn't federate to your server yet, and your server is showing the old version without the description?

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@crcordray @markmeisner

There is, but Friendica is lacking some things such as a moderation system:

Feature Request: implement Moderation system · Issue #8724 · friendica/friendica

I think it would be good to have a moderation system similar to Mastodon where you can report problematic content, an admin will be notified and decide what to do with that reported post: warn the user silence the user (content won't be ...

GitHub (github.com)

[madjo@mstdn.social]

@markmeisner @FediTips I'm sorry but the image doesn't have any ALT text associated with it in your post.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@madjo @markmeisner

It definitely does have alt text, you can check on the original page for the post:

Mark Meisner 🌎 (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image I have written a short piece on "How to use Mastodon as a Facebook replacement", mostly for my friends on FB, but worth sharing. I hope it's useful for people. If so, please share. Feedback welcome. Full text with links here: https://meisner.ca/2025/02/02/how-to-use-mastodon-as-a-facebook-replacement/ Attn: @[email protected]

Mastodon (mastodon.social)

This was added to the post later, perhaps the edit hasn't federated to your server yet?

[rinmari@urusai.social]

@markmeisner I feel like another part of why people stay on Facebook is because it has community tools like Groups and Events, which Mastodon doesn’t have. As much as I would prefer that people not use Facebook for event management, there aren’t any other sites that are widely used for such.

[markmeisner@mastodon.social]

@rinmari Apparently there is a Groups feature on Mastodon. Here is yet another great tip from @FediTips

How to use groups on Mastodon and the Fediverse | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

(fedi.tips)

As for events, see this tip.
https://fedi.tips/mobilizon-event-organisation-and-discovery/

[rinmari@urusai.social]

@markmeisner @FediTips Ooh, good to know. Thank you!

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@rinmari @markmeisner

Just to clarify, the Groups feature in that particular guide is basically a "super hashtag", it lets people on different servers more easily participate in discussions with accounts that their server hasn't noticed yet.

It's similar to the email discussion lists of the 1990s/2000s.