A Twitter Off Ramp

A tutorial for getting on Mastodon

Patricia Aas, 18 November 2022

I’m not one for fluff, and if you’re here you’ve made up you mind, so let’s get to it. Here’s the plan

  • Part 1 : (OPTIONAL) Ask for your twitter data
  • Part 2 : Collect the new handles of the folks you follow
  • Part 3 : Get a Mastodon account
  • Part 4 : Re-follow all your Twitter follows
  • Part 5 : Put your Mastodon account on your Twitter profile
  • Part 6 : (OPTIONAL) Get your Twitter data
  • Epilogue

Do this on a computer instead of mobile, my site isn’t great on mobile, and you need to save some files and upload them.

Part 1

(OPTIONAL) Ask for your twitter data

This step is just to store all your tweets in case something happens to Twitter. It is not needed for getting a Mastodon account.

  1. Go here: Twitter settings for downloading Twitter archive
  2. Log in
  3. Press the button with the text “Request archive”
  4. Later when it’s ready it will say “Download archive” (this might take a day or two)

Part 2

Collect the new handles of the folks you follow

  1. Go here: Fedifinder, an app that will help you find the handles of folks you follow
  2. Press the button with the text “Authorize to extract handles”
  3. Press the button “Authorize app” under the text “Authorize Glitch Experiments Read-Only to access your account?”
  4. This will bring you back to Fedifinder
  5. Click the button with the text “Scan followings”
  6. Wait
  7. Scroll down to the bottom and find the button with the text “ Export fedifinder_accounts.csv”
  8. Click button and save the fedifinder_accounts.csv file to your Downloads folder

Tip: you can open the file in a spreadsheet program like Google Sheet or Excel to see what it contains

Part 3

Get a Mastodon account

  1. Go here: Vivaldi (the browser company) has created and maintains this Mastodon server
  2. Click the button “Create account” on the right hand side
  3. Fill in all your info and log in with your new password

Part 4

Re-follow all your Twitter follows

  1. When logged in as your user in Vivaldi Social, press the item “Preferences” on the right panel (link)
  2. In the new view, press the item “Import and export” on the left panel (link)
  3. This expands the item in the panel
  4. Click on the sub item “Import” (link)
  5. Under “Import type” “Following list” should be selected. If not, click on the dropdown and select it
  6. Make sure the “Merge” radio button is selected
  7. Click on the button “Choose file”
  8. Select the fedifinder_accounts.csv file that you downloaded to your Downloads folder in Part 2
  9. Click on the “UPLOAD” button
  10. Click on the item “Back to Vivaldi Social” on top of the left panel

Part 5

Put your Mastodon account on your Twitter profile

This is important so that other people can also find you using tools like Fedifinder in Part 2.

  1. Click on your profile picture on the top left to go to your profile in Vivaldi Social
  2. Copy the url from the address bar
  3. On Twitter go to your profile
  4. Click on “Edit profile”
  5. In the “Bio” field put your handle like this “@YOUR_HANDLE@vivaldi.net” (see note below)
  6. (Share this post so that others can do this too!)

Edit: Since Twitter now bans urls that go to most Mastodon servers, I’ve changed the advice in point 5 above to recommend putting the handle in the bio text instead of putting the link in the “Website” field.

Note: You can put your handle like this “@YOUR_HANDLE@vivaldi.net” in your bio, location field, name or pinned tweet.

Part 6

(OPTIONAL) Download your twitter data

This step is just to store all your tweets in case something happens to Twitter. It is not needed for getting a Mastodon account. Before you can do this step you might have to wait a few days.

  • Follow the same steps as in Part 1
  • The text on the button should now say “Download archive”
  • Click the button and store the archive somewhere safe

Epilogue

There are more advanced ways of doing things and other servers you can choose, but I want to keep this straight forward.

If you want to know more about Vivaldi, their wiki page is here. I used to work there, they will take care of you until you get comfortable. Then you can choose if you want to move to a different server. I will be writing a post on that too.

Some intros from Vivaldi Social