Grace this is a fantastic article, so much needed!!! I spent last few hrs agonising and panicking over having disconnected the mastodon link, thinking I would loose my account, followers, stories etc. My account however on mastodon is intact and everything OK, only issue is since I originally clicked on medium to link to mastodon, I amended my username, so the username I have wouldn't be the same anyway. I agree it should be set to default on medium, as many don't fully understand what it is or how it works. Took me hours to figure it and even then I don't know that much about it but think I understand basically how it works. It's a decentralised server.