Fediverse

Same reason i don't use Twitter, I'm not a narcissist.

Mastodon has a horrible UI and UX, at least in my opinion. I've found Misskey and its forks to be better.

I've been engaging with Lemmy more than Mastodon. Lemmy allows for more interactions through discussions. To me, it seems like Mastodon is slower to get interactions (for context, I have accounts on three different instances and used to post dark/gothic/satirical/surrealist poetry written by me daily, but I haven't posted in days because no one seems to be really engaging with it). Mastodon has a lot of potential, but I think few are really committed to stick to the fediverse and all its potential.

As for why people don't come back, maybe they're confused about which instance to use since there are thousands of different instances for different purposes, I'm not exactly sure.

I'll throw my -opinion- in the ring here because no one else is saying it the same way.

• Echoing what other people said, finding a server was hard especially as at the time I thought defederating seemed stupid (changed my mind somewhat now that I use Lemmy). Then once signed up discovery was/is a pain. How do I find good accounts when they aren't synced with the instance I am on? Fuck if I know, I never found an equivalent to lemmyverse.net for mastodon.
• Now into the big problem I had: federation was a pain. It was my first interaction with a federated service that isn't email and it was confusing and annoying. Finally find an account you like? Well you either can't see any of their posts or the few you can have 1 reply and 5 likes. Eventually you realise you have to click onto the account's instance to see everything and they have 100 replies and 500 likes (made-up numbers, obviously) but guess what you can't interact with any of them because you are no longer on your instance. It basically forced me to browse logged out for 99% of my browsing, constantly following links between websites. I have not had quite the same trouble with Lemmy because despite having some similar problems, it has been a LOT quicker to sync especially once you point your instance to another.
• The lack of algorithm or fine control of my feed was off-putting. I still hate that Facebook and other platforms make it hard or impossible to sort chronologically, but having only chronological makes for a potential to miss out on massive amounts of stuff.
• And on a personal note, I think I'm just falling out of favour with the idea of a microblogging platform with strangers. If my friends used it things might be different.

I did try out Firefish and enjoyed that way more as it had a fun and engaging UI and lots of extra features, but it holds the same federation and discovery issues.

I think people are tired of the 140 character type social networks, the novelty has simply worn off. It's either self-promotion or "I had two eggs for breakfast lol" type of posts.

People who came to Mastodon, posted "Hello world!" and didn't bother to set a profile picture or add a description will always complain about the lack of discoverability, or the place being boring.

You literally have to put in work to set up your feed, follow hashtags, people and post yourself for it to be a network and not just a feed of things. And I think people struggle with this concept a lot.

I do understand that it's not for everyone. But it's not a problem with Mastodon, it's just a natural filter IMO. "You have to put at least this much effort to integrate". Low-effort things are usually just rage-bait.

i posted in another thread how i think content discovery stinks on mastodon. bluesky is much better at it. mastodon feeds are a wall of noise

mastodon + opt in to bridgyfed is the way

Because it doesn't have $100s of millions to throw at marketing, or the name dropping of Twitter creators behind it.

It is what it is. You can either be alright with being small, or hurl money into it, but the people who hurl money into things tend to want it back at some point, and that means becoming a shitty business.

I prefer Mastodon over Twitter for microblogging. However, I didn't use Twitter for microblogging, but to receive news (directly or at least officially) from game devs, directors and other creators.

Mastodon is my only presence on social media. I love it. I found (over time) a large community of people who share my different interests. I love the wokeness of it. I don’t miss my lefty mutuals who are somehow still on X/Meta. I love the absence of influencers, algorithms and nazis. I love discovery through following hashtags. I could go on and on. I’m fine with people hating it for all the reasons I love it. They would ruin the vibe if they moved there.

On the feature side, according to Mastodons recent 4.3 release post development is only 4 full time employees and a budget of under $500k annually. That is basically nothing in the realm of social media companies.

Improving Mastodons features requires money and resources, but Mastodons users are unwilling to pay for instances and unwillingly to fund development. Hell, the .world folks host a bunch of instances for collectively hundreds of thousands of users and they take in about $1k a month in donations. I’m surprised that even covers hosting costs.

So…it’s no wonder that it isn’t going to be as polished as other social media in ways that would reduce the attrition.