Mastodon is a little different than other social media. It doesn’t use an algorithm to feed you content. Instead you follow people and hashtags that you like and end up creating your own custom feed. While this isn’t hard it does take a little time to build up.
Start out following whoever you can find that might be even a little interesting. Watch for boosted posts from your followers to find more people to follow.
Search for hashtags to find more people. You can also follow hashtags directly – this is a great way to get more content on subjects you are interested in.
The “Home” timeline is made up of people & hashtags you follow.
The “Local” timeline is all posts on the server you signed up on, and the “Federated” timeline includes posts from other Mastodon servers. Be sure to check the Local & Federated timelines often to find more people to follow.
Give it time. After you follow someone or a hashtag it takes a while for new posts to start filling your timeline.
Once your Home timeline starts filling up you can then unfollow people or hashtags that you find aren’t quite what you were looking for.
Before you know it you’ll have a customized timeline with lots of interesting content. There are plenty of people with great content on Mastodon!
