I wrote a thing[0] about Mastodon a while ago. Currently there is no way to migrate an account, but that's being worked on actively, and progress is being made. You can already export your data, and who you follow, block, or mute.
Ideas are being discussed as to how your followers can follow you when you move, but that's tricky given the entire concept of federation.
This is explained on the page I wrote[0], but if anyone on your instance follows person X on another instance, toots from person X turn up on the federated timeline on your instance, you can have a chance to see those toots. Similarly, if someone on your instance boosts a toot, it turns up on your instance, so you can see it and decide whether or not you want to remote follow that person. This the network of connections grows, albeit slowly.
And yes, you can comment on threads on other instances.
Hope that helps. You can always join an instance with a throwaway account, try it out, and if migration does come to life, migrate. If not, start afresh on the instance of choice with a new account. Come find me here:
Useful information, thanks. I've followed your account, though I'm finding it hard to get into using Mastodon. A means to show the oldest unread Toots first, and to sync this across devices/web, might be helpful.
Mastodon generates an RSS feed for every user. Check out their web profile pages and look in the HTML header. Most popular RSS readers will just pick it up if you paste the profile URL in.
That could be rather useful - many thanks.
As an aside, I used to follow various organisations' RSS feeds from Facebook, before that was shut down. It was a great way to keep up with their activities.
Atom was Google's answer to RSS back when they cared about an open web. As far as I can tell, everything that handles RSS also handles Atom, and they're exposed in the header in the same way.
Firefox users can right click on the browser chrome, go to Customize, and add a subscribe button that lights up when a page has a feed. It's not as snug a fit as what used to go in the address bar, but it still works.
> Firefox users can right click on the browser chrome, ...
... but I've made a note of your comment, and when I get time I'll go hunting to find out how it works. It seems to me that RSS/Atom/Subscription is going to make a comeback. Technical people are moving off other platforms and putting their output on their own sites, so some sort of subscription management is the way to go.
The thing to do is ask about these things on Mastodon - people might answer, features like this might already be in the works.
I tend to just open up the browser interface and scroll down will I don't recognise things, then read upwards. I've wondered about writing a took to do that, the idea being that if I do so and find it useful then I can offer it to others, and then if it becomes popular then it might get integrated into the code. It is, after all, open source. My problem is that I can't see how the interface would work. "Displayed" is not the same as "have read", and if i's been a while then it might be along way back.
It's things like this that let to the "Things you might have missed" feature in Twitter. Does Mastodon need something similar? Personally, I prefer it as it is, but I can see how others might want something different.
Similarly, I have thought about writing something, but lack of time and engagement have meant that I've never got around to looking at it.
The interface works well with the Twitter clients I've used, usually involving showing a count of unread messages which decreases as one scrolls up. All can be marked as read by scrolling to the top (e.g. by tapping on the count). I suspect it might be harder to manage given the federated nature, though.
Ideas are being discussed as to how your followers can follow you when you move, but that's tricky given the entire concept of federation.
This is explained on the page I wrote[0], but if anyone on your instance follows person X on another instance, toots from person X turn up on the federated timeline on your instance, you can have a chance to see those toots. Similarly, if someone on your instance boosts a toot, it turns up on your instance, so you can see it and decide whether or not you want to remote follow that person. This the network of connections grows, albeit slowly.
And yes, you can comment on threads on other instances.
Hope that helps. You can always join an instance with a throwaway account, try it out, and if migration does come to life, migrate. If not, start afresh on the instance of choice with a new account. Come find me here:
https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo
[0] http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_...