elk VS instances

This has lead to a delightful variety of custom clients like https://phanpy.social/ - https://elk.zone/ is another example that I really like.

It's the complete opposite of the Twitter API situation, where they locked their API down and killed the entire ecosystem of third-party clients.

And there are tons of third party clients. I think Tusky is the best one I’ve seen for Android, and there’s an interesting web-based one called Elk that’s very nice. You load up https://elk.zone and then use it as a front-end to sign in to your server.

The answer to that is https://elk.zone atm, a fun and chef's kiss interface (built with nuxt). You can insert elk.zone/ before any Mastodon url. https://phanpy.social is also great, with multi columns even for lists.

A browser plugin (like "Mastodon – Simplified Federation") to follow, favorite, etc. directly on any server has also improved my experience a lot.

Quick! Tell Obama and Taylor Swift about https://elk.zone! They're going to be so excited!

Also try logging in through https://elk.zone/ if you want to stick with the familiar twitter interface

For me, the boost/reply-numbers using https://elk.zone have been much more reliable than the original app. (It's also the (web)app that convinced me. Mastodon is the real deal.)

Try elk.zone. You can log into the UI with an account from any instance. I use it as my main UI and it looks pretty close to twitter, at least close enough for me.

Mastodon

A good way to find an instance that works for you is the site: Mastodon instances https://instances.social/

Firstly, you can start by searching for instances of interest here.

The latter. Source is at https://github.com/gallizoltan/usercount which states:

> A bot which counts users from all instances listed at https://instances.social then posts statistics to Mastodon.

> User Count Bot for all known Mastodon instances

For those on the fence, but know more about how instances work, this resource may help you pick a relevant one. There is also this Github resource that enlists all academia-based instances.

I used this site for finding specialized Mastodon servers. I used a variety of search string and did not find any Mastodon servers specialized to Indigenous People's concerns.

Go to this place to find a place to sign up: https://instances.social/

Find and join communities in Reddit alternatives. Here's a list of Mastodon communities, and here's an online tool to find and parse through the different Mastodon communities. This is a list of popular Lemmy servers. However, do keep an eye out as some existing subreddit's moderators may create new communities on these sites.