this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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I am on Mastodon for 5 years now (fuck it is really 5 years since August 2019, what the hell) and just can't get into it. It just feels lonely over there. What am I doing wrong?
Tbh, I think it is the post statistics thing. It says "1 reply", then I click at ot and it has 4 replies and it ALWAYS says "0 favorites" even when 10 people comment how great that post was.
Twitter's format feels a bit like yelling into the void and waiting for replies...you may luck out and get some engagement from a hub or a small subgraph of the network. Mastodon makes that stronger by removing the algorithm (I'd like there to be a user-customizable feed sort algo by an array of parameters, not sure what the technical limitations to that are: processing, security?)
Comment trees feel better (to me at least), because there is a hierarchical origin, a native indexing by topic>post>comment>countercomment...it sort of resembles how we relate with the world or navigate maps.
You need a couple of people to follow, then it’s great! I met most of my Twitter folks on conferences and such. The majority has now moved to Mastodon. It’s mostly programming folks.
But what if I don't want to follow people, but topics?
That's why I'm here, and one thing that made Twitter acceptable.
Twitter is people based as well, no?
Idk, I haven't used it in years. But I thought you could just follow hashtags, no?
I don't use Mastodon either, so maybe that's already a thing, idk. It was advertised as "federated Facebook," and I really don't like the people-based nature of Facebook (though TBF, haven't used Facebook in... 10 years?).
There are hashtags on Mastodon as well.
Can I follow them in a reasonable way? I don't really care who makes the content, I care that it's reasonably engaging.
Yes, very easy > explore > hashtags > select follow icon in top right
Maybe I'll check it out then.
For me, it was the interface. I found it rough around the edges and not as inviting as Twitter used to be. I know it's seen as superficial but UX/UI is important.
Like, for example, to create a post or reply, the input was on the left navigation panel for some reason. I used to have trouble visually separating one post from the next in my head until I got used to it. Also, the way thread comments were nested could've been improved. And why did it only show me the top 5 trending news stories? Why couldn't I browse more? Idk, overall I felt like I was fighting the UI mentally.
I think Lemmy did a better job subtly improving on the details. I didn't see Mastodon doing that much when I was on there.
What platform are you on? There are lots of alternative apps for both iOS and Android, and they can be customized beyond the defaults as well. I primarily use Moshidon on Android, and it's great.
Most of the people telling you it's superficial are programming nerds who themselves are intimidated by UX design so use cope to justify its trivialness.
I know what you mean. I've had more than one conversation with devs who didn't understand design basics.
What sort of stuff do you like? Maybe some folks can make some good recommendations to jump-start a more interesting experience.
Recommendations and boosts from other users are how I've discovered interesting people there, and at this point, my feed feels just as full as my old twitter feed.
If you like news, a lot of breaking news is happening on Mastodon much more accurately and faster than on Twitter. There are a LOT of publications on there now, here are a few off the top of my head:
There are a lot more local news sources too, so depending on where you live, you can probably follow news for your specific area. The account @[email protected] regularly bundles up follow suggestions for different regions, interests, and topics. If you go that account and search for a hashtag (i.e., #texas) you'll get a lot of active and high-quality local accounts to follow.
The statistics thing is a downside of how Mastodon implements ActivityPub.
Two possibilites:
I think you can simply hide the counts if it irritates you.
You can install Fedifetcher to pull in missing interactions to your local server: https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher
I'll have a look at that fetcher thing. Thx.
Did you use Twitter much before then? Some people just don't like the format. I use it to get updates on some things, but I don't use it as much as Lemmy (or Reddit before that).
If you did use Twitter, perhaps the content you followed back then still didn't make its way to Mastodon (or it went to bluesky/threads?)
Last thing you could try is following more people. I find that fediverse platforms need you to seek out content more actively, while old profit driven social media platforms were constantly seeking engagement. On top of that there just isn't as much content on any of the new platforms compared to the older ones.
That all being said, the quality of the content is equal or better every time