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How to use Mastodon as a Facebook replacement
by Mark Meisner – Version 1.2, 2025-02-04
Are you wondering how to get away from Facebook (FB), but still want to keep in touch with actual friends and family? It’s not easy. The “network effect” keeps people on FB because that is where their friends and family are.
But, if like me, you’re sick and tired of all the ads, privacy violations, algorithmic enshittification, and general bloat of FB, not to mention its toxic leadership, then read on. There are many alternatives to FB, but I want something that is ad-free, private, not centrally controlled, open source, and flexible. For that reason, I’m going to suggest Mastodon which I have been using for a couple of years. But to be clear, Mastodon does not have all the same features as FB.
On the surface, Mastodon appears more like Twitter than FB in the sense that anyone can follow you and posts are brief. But with two simple changes to your Mastodon settings, you can restrict who can follow you to only people you approve and you can change the default privacy setting of your posts to only be seen by your followers (or not). Again, don’t expect the same features on Mastodon as on FB. The main limitations of Mastodon are comment threading and post length. Depending on the server you join, posts can be restricted to 500 characters, so you have to keep things brief. But you can add photos and videos, as well as audio. A list of servers with higher character limits is here.
### JOIN MASTODON
First, be sure to check out Mastodon’s features. Second, join a Mastodon server (hosting service) of which there are many. I’m on mastodon.social. One cool thing about Mastodon is that if you later decide you don’t like the server you are on, you can easily switch to another server without losing your followers or your follows. Also, it’s important to know that you don’t have to be on the same server to follow or be followed by someone. The servers work with each other. That means you can join any server that catches your fancy. That’s something that also sets Mastodon apart from FB: it’s decentralized, you own your data, and it’s portable.
Once you have your Mastodon account set up, you can start looking for friends and family and encouraging them to join Mastodon if they haven’t already.
### RESTRICT WHO CAN FOLLOW YOU
To restrict who can follow you, go into **Mastodon Settings > Public Profile> Reach**.
Then uncheck “Automatically accept new followers”. Be sure to save your changes.
That way you can approve who can follow you and hence read your private (followers only) posts.
In this setting area, there are several other things to consider and they are pretty self-explanatory.
You can, of course, choose who to follow. It’s probably a good idea to follow back your fiends and family who you let follow you :-). That way you become like FB friends. You can follow other accounts too.
### MAKE YOUR POSTS PRIVATE BY DEFAULT
To make your Mastodon posts private by default so that only your followers can see them, go into **Mastodon Settings > Preferences > Other > Posting Defaults > Posting Privacy**.
Then choose “Only followers” from the dropdown. Be sure to save your changes.
Later, if you want to make a specific posting public, you can do so in the area where you write the post, as on FB.
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That’s about it. I recommend taking a few minutes to go through all the Mastodon settings to customize your experience. I promise these settings are less complicated than FB’s.
From now on, I’m going to be using Mastodon only for actual friends and family. But if you don’t know me and want to hear more from me for some reason, then please find me on BlueSky @markmeisner.bsky.social
Cheers!
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