Getting Started as a User

Why this page is separate from the protocol pages¶

Everything else in this section is architecture-first — how ActivityPub, AT Protocol, Nostr, and Matrix actually work under the hood. None of that answers the much more mundane question a new user actually has: which one do I sign up for, and what am I committing to. This page is deliberately practical rather than technical.

Picking a platform by what you want to do¶

General Twitter/X-style microblogging, want the largest reachable network today → Bluesky. Simpler onboarding (effectively one default host, bsky.social, with self-hosting available later if you want it), currently larger active-user base than Mastodon, see [[adoption-and-usage]].
Microblogging, but you specifically want the older, more server-diverse ActivityPub network, or care about nonprofit governance over Bluesky PBC's for-profit structure → Mastodon.
Photo sharing → Pixelfed. Video → PeerTube. Link aggregation/forums → Lemmy or Mbin. Long-form blogging → WriteFreely. All covered in [[other-fediverse-apps]].
You want end-to-end-encrypted group chat or DMs, not public posting → that's a different problem than the rest of this section solves; see [[matrix]].
You want identity that survives even if every server you've ever used disappears, and you're comfortable with a rougher, less polished experience → Nostr, see [[nostr]].

Choosing an instance (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, etc.)¶

For any ActivityPub app, your instance choice matters less than it feels like at signup, and more than people are often told:

Less than it feels like: you can follow and interact with anyone on any instance regardless of which one you join — there's no walled-off experience based on your choice.
More than people are often told: your instance's moderation policy, its defederation list (who it has chosen not to talk to), its size, and its uptime/funding stability are all things you're implicitly opting into, and they shape your actual day-to-day experience more than the underlying protocol does.
Mastodon's own server picker groups instances by topic/region and is the easiest starting point if you don't already know which one you want.
A small, well-moderated, topic-specific instance is often a better first experience than a huge general-purpose one — the opposite of how centralized platforms usually work, where bigger is simply better.

Bluesky's simpler starting point¶

Because Bluesky currently funnels most signups through its own default host, there's no equivalent "which instance" decision to make up front — you can treat the self-hosting option (running your own [[run-bluesky-pds|PDS]]) as something to revisit later rather than a decision that has to be made at signup, which is a meaningfully lower-friction starting experience than Mastodon's instance-first flow.

What migrating later actually involves¶

Bluesky: genuinely portable. Moving to a different PDS — including a self-hosted one — keeps your DID, your handle (once re-pointed via DNS if using a custom domain), your followers, and your full post history. This is the most consequential practical difference from the ActivityPub side.
Mastodon (and other ActivityPub apps): supports account migration — redirecting your followers to a new instance — but it has to be configured in advance on both the old and new account, and critically, does not carry your post history with it. An instance disappearing without you having set migration up beforehand means losing your follower graph and post history on that account permanently.
Nostr: there's nothing to migrate in the traditional sense — your keypair is your identity independent of any relay, so "switching providers" just means connecting to different relays; the tradeoff is that there was never a single authoritative place your data lived in the first place, so "your history" is only as complete as whichever relays you query happen to still be holding it.

Setting realistic expectations on discovery¶

Chronological, non-algorithmic timelines (Mastodon's default) feel different from what most people are used to coming from centralized apps — there's no single company-run "what's trending across the whole network" the way there is on X or Threads. Bluesky splits the difference: it has no single fixed algorithm either, but its [[bluesky|custom feeds]] feature means discovery is closer to "pick from many community-built algorithms" than "no algorithm at all." Search, hashtags, and curated starter packs or lists matter more on both networks than they do on algorithmically-driven centralized platforms.

Importing your existing network¶

Several third-party tools (changing frequently enough that specific names aren't worth listing here) help find people you already follow elsewhere who've also joined Mastodon or Bluesky, by matching against your existing X/Twitter following list. Worth a web search for "find twitter friends on [platform]" at the time you're actually migrating, rather than relying on any specific tool staying current.