How do you join mastodon.social?

Question

I was trying to follow a user on mastodon.social but I when I try to look for that server on the site, it's not there.

Answer 1

Some of the larger Mastodon instances occasionally close to new registrations so they don't become overwhelmed. (Remember, it's not funded by advertising, so new users don't necessarily mean new revenue.) But you can follow a user on mastodon.social from any other Mastodon instance which federates with mastodon.social (which is most of them). Or, indeed, from many non-Mastodon servers too. (Mastodon isn't the only server which implements the ActivityPub protocol.)