BERLIN: No ads, no trackers, no prompts to get you to spend US$8 a month for a premium version - Mastodon has been welcoming users fleeing Twitter ever since tech billionaire Elon Musk rebranded it as X.

However one of Mastadon's biggest advantages has also been something of a headache when it comes to finding and following new users.

Unlike X's one-platform-for-all approach, Mastodon uses a decentralised approach, allowing people to pick from a broad range of versions of Mastodon, with each different instance of the platform having its own rules and servers.

However, the distribution across countless servers makes it tricky to connect and communicate with others, since searching for a profile name or handle, as you would on X, is often not enough to find the user you're looking for.

To follow someone, you need to also know the server address (domain) of the community where the profile is hosted. This combination is called a handle - for example, @profilname@community-name.de.

To simplify things, Mastodon has now updated its Android app to make it easier for users to find each other, especially in real life.

Say you meet someone at an event, you can now show them a QR code they can scan to quickly find and follow your account.

A QR code symbol now also appears next to the name of your own profile or the profiles of others in the Android app. This can be used to open up the QR code for scanning or sending.

In further updates: If you tap on the domain name in a profile, you will receive a detailed explanation of the components that make up the handle.

More information has also been included in the confirmation dialogues for muting or blocking profiles. These dialogues explain exactly what effects the respective action has on your own Mastodon usage, as well as what the muted or blocked contact will notice when you block them.

 - dpa