There's no algorithm on Mastodon. Nobody's pushing content into your feed. When you first sign up, your timeline is empty - and it stays that way until you find people to follow.
Picture a Canadian politician who finally leaves X for Mastodon. They sign up, post an introduction, and wait. Nothing happens. No replies, no boosts, no followers. After a few days they stop checking. After a week they're gone. This happens constantly - not because the Canadian Fediverse is empty, but because there is no easy way to find their people.
What We Built
The Follow List Builder is our answer to the empty timeline. It's a hand-curated directory of Canadian Fediverse accounts - every account reviewed by hand, verified active, actually Canadian, and worth following.
You can filter by type (politicians, journalists, creators, community groups), by topic (politics, digital rights, climate, open source), by language (English, French, bilingual), and by province or territory. Filter for exactly what you care about, export a CSV, and import it directly into Mastodon. Your timeline goes from silent to full of Canadian voices in about 30 seconds.
How to Use It
Go to the Follow List Builder, click the tags that match your interests, and hit Export CSV.
Simply follow the steps from the image above: import it into Mastodon under Settings > Import and Export > Import. Select "Following list", upload your file, make sure Merge is selected, and you're done.
Help Us Grow the List
The directory currently tracks 49 accounts. There are thousands of Canadians on the Fediverse. We need your help finding them.
If you know a great account - a local journalist, a city council member, a community organization, a creator - scroll to the bottom of the Follow List Builder and click Suggest an Account. Fill in their handle, display name, and profile URL, tag them appropriately and hit submit.
Every suggestion is reviewed by a real person before it goes live. We're building a quality directory rather than a dump of every account with a maple leaf emoji. If the account is inactive, or is shown to only boost rather than post, it may not be accepted.
This Is Just the Start
We want to grow this list to hundreds. The Follow List Builder is part of Elbows Up Digital's broader #MastoCanadaGOV campaign to get Canadian politicians and institutions off American platforms and onto the open Fediverse.
It's not just for our campaign - anyone on-boarding a new Fediverse user can point them here. Every active Canadian poster is a potential addition to the list. Every account added makes the directory more useful. That is how this grows!
