mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

18K
active users

If someone recommends an account to follow and it looks blank to you, it probably isn't actually blank! It probably just looks that way when you view it from your server.

If you follow the account, future posts will start showing up on your server.

It is confusing, but there are really good reasons why it happens. You can read more about it (including how to check what a profile really looks like, and how to prevent your own profile looking blank) here:

➡️ fedi.tips/why-does-someones-ac

fedi.tipsWhy does someone’s account page look completely blank? Is it really blank? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
More from Fedi.Tips

p.s. As mentioned in the article, there's a very easy way to prevent your own profile *ever* looking blank to anyone!

Pin posts on your profile, and these will always show up no matter what server other people are on. You can pin up to 5 of your posts on your profile, and they can include images, audio, video. Here's how to do it:

➡️ fedi.tips/how-do-i-pin-my-post

The article also mentions how to check what profiles really look like through the "original pages" feature:

➡️ fedi.tips/what-are-original-pa

fedi.tipsHow do I pin posts on my Mastodon profile? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
More from Fedi.Tips

@feditips This is the kind of thing that people testing the Mastodon waters run up against, don't like, leave and never come back.

No amount of education about instances and servers and what-not will attract and retain people who think of social media as an app and, justifiably, have zero interest in infrastructure.

FediTips has moved!

@Corb_The_Lesser

I've tried to explain the situation and why this happens in the article. TL:DR: There are good reasons why this happens, because the current alternatives are worse.

This isn't a deliberate choice by the designers, this is a consequence of building a social network that cannot be taken over by people like Musk.

There are features that mitigate this problem though, such as pinning posts, and other features on the way.

@feditips Not questioning the why of it, just asserting it is a hindrance to increased adoption and that I don't think any amount of explaining to people who are already here is going to help attract and keep people who are not here.

@Corb_The_Lesser

The developers are aware this is a hindrance, it's just a question of what to do about it.

I've raised some of the possible solutions in the article, such as backfilling where the server automatically fetches some recent posts for profiles you follow (or possibly look at?).

Backfilling is by far the most requested feature on Mastodon's github site, but there are some complications to deal with which are explored in a long thread which I've linked to from the article.