this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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Mastodon

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I had been spending quite some time on mastodon, but lately realized that it just isn’t for me.

Mastodon is very focused on individuals, not as much on content. I’m not saying there isn’t a need for mastodon, and I’m happy it’s there, but my main use case is contacting (semi) public figures or software-support there, which happens rarely. Curating a feed that is both interesting to me and "high quality" without being overrun doesn’t seem feasible.

Lemmy is much more focused on content. You don’t follow people, you follow topics or interests and get the things surfaced that the most people in that interest group appreciate. The discussions work much better (Twitter-like reply’s are just one huge bag of trash). It also doesn’t matter who the people are behind the content, as long as it’s interesting it will find an audience.

Just something that I’ve been thinking about. Any thoughts on this?

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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just like threaded discussion. It doesn't matter who I am, I'm just the first person in this comment chain.

Though there's been some bugs with showing context, hopefully those are addressed soonish.

[–] Datas_Cat_Spot@startrek.website 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'll follow someone on Mastodon or Twitter because they post funny content, but then they start posting selfies or something and I have to decide how much of that I mind scrolling past every so often.

It makes so much more sense to follow topics than individuals.

[–] fer0n@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I tried to use ivory‘s filter to limit some of the other hobbies or stuff that I’m just not interested in, but it only goes so far

[–] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is a really weird thing to post here to be honest and yet I think I've already seen this thread like five times. In so far as there is a Lemmy circle jerk this is definitely part of it.

[–] elouboub@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The lack of a thread-view is just annoying. It's much easier to follow discussions with a thread-view.

[–] spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

Some apps do have a thread view. Phanpy comes to mind and I want to say fedilab does too?

[–] donut4ever@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My mastodon is like an abandoned city with only a few people in it. It's so quiet and depressing. Lol

[–] garrett 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Two ways to liven up your Mastodon feed:

  1. You can follow hashtags (search for a hashtag and follow it) and it'll show up in your main feed.
  2. You can find people to follow based on the people who you're following are following using https://followgraph.vercel.app/
[–] donut4ever@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago
[–] jamisonnbishop@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago

I am a heavy ex-Twitter user who left when the blue checks went wild. I have substituted it with Mastodon/Post/Spoutible. Yes, all three. Less than than half the people I followed are on any of them combined, but it still has some people I like to hear opinions from. I'll never go back to Twitter, and it's weird not seeing all the alt-right freaks on any of those other platforms. But really, it's been good for me to not get into the useless arguments I used to inevitably fall into with those people.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good for you. Stick with what you like.

The ActivityPub protocol (the plumbing of the Fediverse) makes them interoperable and that's good. Other than that, knock yourself out.

[–] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can also look into kbin which supports both the regular article based content (like Reddit with subreddits) and posts (which are like tweets attached to a topic with tags).

Been finding some decent topics to follow recently

[–] Nomadin@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

That’s what attracted me to kbin, although I use the Lemmy side far more than the Mastodon one. I am still looking for some good follows on Mastodon.

[–] Bebo@literature.cafe 2 points 1 year ago

I, too, prefer topic focused content. On Mastodon I can somewhat achieve this by browsing hashtags. For me, hashtags ~ communities. This is the only reason I was able to get interested in Mastodon. Also, I enjoy sharing sharing articles etc which I find interesting.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never used Mastadon but the way you're describing it, it sounds like they're doing what digg tried to do in 2010, and we all know how well that went for them.

[–] fer0n@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

They’re like Twitter and Twitter (was) doing just fine. I’m not saying the format is objectively bad, it’s just not for me.

[–] StoicLime@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I would love Mastodon with Lemmy/Reddit-ish sorting. Purely chronological feed means I get low quality content at the top of my feed simply because someone posted something 2s with a hashtag I follow.