this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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and I'm saying that as a firm Mastodon user and believer.
2 and 3 are massive. I'm on Mastodon, but am having a much better time on Bluesky. Mastodon is full of gatekeeping and policing and people complaining - Bluesky is just fun and interesting, like Twitter 12 years ago
Who are these people who actually FIND users go follow on either service???
I have Bluesky. I have Mastodon. I log into each every few months, realize nothing has changed, and there is nobody to follow.
Then I don't use either, until I wonder a few months later "heeeey, I wonder if people are on these services yet......"
Still no.
Mastodon revolves around following topics and hashtags, not individuals. I learned that early on, and am having a much better experience.
Sounds like a worse lemmy 😅
Not really. In terms of engaging with posts, oh my god, absolutely it's worse. Twitter and its clones suck when it comes to engaging with things people post (but Mastodon at least makes it a bit better by increasing the character limit). But there's just something different about following a hashtag versus following a Lemmy community. Like for example, when it comes to getting highly detailed, up-to-the-minute news about things, Mastodon beats Lemmy every time. Additionally, I can see people's random, one-off takes that wouldn't really warrant a post on Lemmy.
I would argue too that it's not even true that you should just be focused on following hashtags, but rather that you should be trying to do both.
To me, Lemmy is the type of place I could kill two hours; for Mastodon, it's maybe 15 minutes, but that doesn't make it inferior, just a different use-case. It's pretty apples-to-oranges.
Well then it will never be useful for me. I want to follow PEOPLE. I want people to follow me for the random shit I say.
Then they retweet the random shit, and now a whole NEW group of people can wonder what's wrong with me.
I follow hashtags I like, then see who the people are who use those tags, then follow those people.
I find that I discover people that way I would not have found otherwise.
It's worked well for me so far. I wasn't a twitter person before though, so I don't know if I have the experience you did for comparison.
See, I already know who I want to follow. I want to follow Nintendo. I want to follow Game Grumps. I want to follow my local pro wrestling indy. I want to follow MXRPlays.
But none of them are on the fediverse. Although, Andy Richter is on BlueSky. So that's something......I guess......
Ah, yeah fair point there.
Word.
If you start following hashtags, then you find interesting people. There are also curated lists that you can sign up for. That will introduce you to a lot of new content.
there's plenty of that going on, too, just not on as large a scale.
Put hashtags on your random shit and more people will find it
I'm going to copy/paste my last comment. You tell me what hashtag I'm supposed to use.
#random #absurd #mentalinstitution #helpme
There’s algorithms you can subscribe to and use to discover people based on your interests. Theres also algorithms that show you posts based on who you follow and what posts you like. You can also enable your normal Following feed to show you some algorithm posts
I'm following like 3 people. One is a bot that reposts things from twitter. One is a bot that posts local weather. And one is what I THOUGHT was Nintendo, but turns out it's just [email protected].
Well that’s the issue then stop following bots? Look up a hashtag or keyword and find people or subscribe to one of the many algorithms
Use lists on bsky to find people.
And just gained a million people, biggest spike yet. So should be a bit more active.
Yeah, but won't those 1 million all be speaking spanish?
Nope, portuguese
This is the thing I dislike more about Mastodon, I do not know if Lemmy handles it differently, but I don't have this problem with Lemmy.
*Portuguese
Potato/Tomato.
I guess some people don't get the joke.
The sayings potato/potahto and tomato/tomahto mean they're the same thing.
No one in their right mind would say a potato is a tomato or vice versa, just like no one would ever argue Portuguese and Spanish are the same. They're both of a category (veggies and languages respectively) but totally different and distinct items within that category.
First person to get it right.
It’s 2m now.
And plenty of them pick up English online
Depends a bit on the type of person and content you want to follow. But if you like retro computer Shenanigans etc. I know action retro is on Lemmy and Mastodon and I follow them on mastodon. But yes General content for the normies probably not so much.
The over policing thing is so true. I’ve gotten messages from techhub.social mods with warnings about making jokes that even hinted at breaking one of their precious rules. Like if I did something wrong, ban me I guess. It’s pretty clear I didn’t and the mod just wanted to flex his power towards me.
Take Brazil. Blusky saw the writing on the wall with Twitter, so they threw a ton of money into media. Guess where everyone went.
Do you have a source for that?
Nothing specific, just knowledge from those closer, and not likely they'll publicize ad spend, but uptick was seen. Bluesky ads started around April when they had the big influx after the first suspension. Overview, but not a reference: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cm2nkdkypk7o
Regarding 2: you can also join the Fediverse this way with certain clients I believe. You are automatically signed up for lemmy.world for example
So don't use it then. Gotcha.
I'm not on any of the services currently, but I have tried Mastodon in the past and point 4. was what made me bounce off it. I know Mastodon flaunts its algorithm-free feed as almost a point of pride, but as a user it just doesn't do it for me. I could not get it to serve me the type of content I wanted the way I wanted, and it just felt like way too much work for what I was looking for.
I solved this issue by following multiple tags that interest me. People tend to tag their posts on Mastodon it seems, so discovering posts about, say, wine and cacti is as easy as following #wine #cactus #cacti #redwine #oragewine and so on and so forth - it's working pretty good for me without an algorithm recommending stuff to me, maybe it's worth a try?
I'd still rather have algorithmic recommendations of what's been "hot" lately in the tags I follow over a chronological feed. But I'm considering giving Sharkey/Firefish/Iceshrimp another go.
Why are there three forks(?) of what I assume is Misskey? I think the original is still kicking, even.
Marketing, sure, but the onboarding from Instagram was a massive factor for Threads growth.
Absolutely agree with point 2, not just for Mastodon, but others like here on Lemmy or Misskey or whatever it may be.
The process of finding an instance can sometimes be annoying because you might find an instance that sounds alright, like I did for Mastodon, and then find that there's the problem of sign-ups not available. That, and signing up for the instance I got on then had a waiting period for account review and all that before I could do anything.
I assume, from what I've heard, all you gotta do for threads and bluesky is just sign up and start posting with less effort, which is what the majority of people want.
If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.
All these other "like Twitter but ______" micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they're profitable.
If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they'll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can't kill it.
I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.
For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a "just do this part for me" option, probably automatically enabled.
#3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.
#4 is hard... Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the "early" Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That's some very strong "lizard brain" stuff.
So... let's get going y'all! :)
There's no way in hell, even if you ignore #5
Hmmm maybe we should ignore #1 and focus on #5 then
There are some advantages to algorithms for discovery - it's certainly is more user friendly. It's just a shame they tend to enshitify or become toxic. Bluesky seem to offer an API of sorts to plug in feeds you create. Perhaps open algorithms are more accountable?