Los Angeles Acting blog by David August: How to Find Your Twitter People on Mastodon

Friday, November 18, 2022

How to Find Your Twitter People on Mastodon

people you follow on Twitter may be on Mastodon and you can find them

two robots, one in the foreground and one in the background
Assessing by David August

Trying to find people you connected with on Twitter here on Mastodon is complex right now.

I'm using the three tools to try to get people's handles over here on Mastodon off of Twitter. All of these are a little unstable right now since so many people are using them at once.

https://twitodon.com/
You log into both your accounts with it, let it work, and then can download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people. The catch: those people need to have used it too.
https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/
Lets you basically scan your Twitter folks profiles to see if they've left a Mastodon forwarding address for people. Then you can download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people (or manually look through, which I recommend). The catch: if might get things that aren't actually Mastodon addresses, or their colleagues info scooped up instead.
https://fedifinder.glitch.me/
Like Debirdify (number 2 on this list), it scans your twitter folks profiles over there to try to find their Mastodon handles. It also download a file you can then upload to Mastodon to follow people (or manually look through, which I recommend). The catch: it also might scoop up stuff that isn't actually a Mastodon addresses, or their colleagues info.

So far, there is no single, easy way to migrate. That is kinda what happens when a single company with 7,500 employees keeping things working is no longer involved. Disappointing, but Mastodon can be an alternative and stop-gap right now; Mastodon may be able to grow into a more resilient option than Twitter or any other run-by-a-single-company social network ever has been. Right now, much of Mastodon is just struggling to accept the huge number of new people using it. Patience is probably a good plan. Good luck, and let me know if I can help you. I'm @davidaugust@mastodon.online on Mastodon and have other links on my linktree, and should always be findable through davidaugust.com.