[bkuehl]

You can be a part of a large or small instance and your consumption/conversation is not limited to users on that instance. You can follow people from other instances as well as scroll through a timeline that is posts/toots from across the fediverse (not just your local instance)

[augustuspolius]

Got it. Does it make any difference where I register first? E.g. if that instance disappears overnight, will I be able to recover my account or not? I understand that I can access posts from all instances in the instance I use, but not sure how account handling/ownership works.

[davidw]

This seems like a big weak point. I went to check it out just now and it's like "pick a server" and... I don't know, which one is best? Can I change later? Seems confusing, pass for now.

[CodeArtisan]

>Does it make any difference where I register first?

Yes; Each instance has its own posting rules and an instance may suspend (block) another instance for different reasons. Mastodon.social has suspended quite a few instances, for example. Always read the about page of the instance before registering.

https://mastodon.social/about

[bkuehl]

To start, you should choose an instance that had been around for a while and isn't too small. Instances do shutdown occasionally but the admin(s) will give you plenty of time to migrate to a new instance. Mastodon has built-in tools to migrate your whole account (and content) to another instance if needed. I'm currently having to do that because a large well-established instance (mastodon.technology) is shutting down the end of the year.

[cmrdporcupine]

There are migration tools to move your followers and your followings between nodes. But no way to move your posts. And so, yes, your identity partially/kind-of doesn't move. But mostly sort of does?

At first this bugged me, but then it was pointed out that if you could just move your posts you could also potentially violate the moderation rules of the host you were moving to. So it makes some sense.