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I get that people love the decentralization aspect of Mastodon, but... does it have better content than Twitter? I remember trying it very briefly once, and the

I get that people love the decentralization aspect of Mastodon, but... does it have better content than Twitter? I remember trying it very briefly once, and the few toots I saw were similar content -- some interesting info, but also a heap of complaining/virtual signaling.

kstrauser 4y ago
I believe it has much better content. The easiest way to boostrap your friend group is to look at the local timeline and see who posts interesting stuff, and follow them. When they repost things from interesting people, follow those people. Lather, rinse, and repeat.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  ya that's just a description of how to use twitter tho. what's better here other than there being a lot smaller of a pool to draw from?
  - kstrauser 4y ago
    My personal experience has been that the most interesting people I now chat with on Mastodon either 1) left Twitter long ago, or 2) deliberately stayed away from it. For instance, if you're into infosec stuff, Mastodon is a wonderful place to be.
    - discardedrefuse 4y ago
      Is there a specific place or way to find these infosec related posts? I've bounced hard off Mastodon a couple times in the past, maybe I just don't know where to look.
      - rapnie 4y ago
        Yeah, you point out where fediverse differs from Twitter, FB and Instagram. There's no algorithm that starts pushing you in some direction based on your first interactions. Initially your personal timeline will be completely empty. You might start by choosing an instance that is more on-topic than others, like https://hackers.town https://hackers.town and discover people from the server timeline, or browsing the website. Then filter on various hashtags and see who interacts with them. Having some good people you follow you also see whose posts they boost and this will lead you to find more.
        kstrauser 4y ago
        Upvote for hackers.town, whose t-shirt I'm wearing today.
        discardedrefuse 4y ago
        Thanks, I really appreciate the info!
- mattl 4y ago
  Very few people outside of open source tech and a couple fandoms seem to really use Mastodon.
  - rvz 4y ago
    There you go and that is the truth here. Other than the open source tech echo chamber using it, it has no network effect to get regular users off of Twitter and to use Mastodon (the actual platform). 2 million users after 6 years is more or less of a slow failure to move users off of Facebook, and Twitter on to Mastodon's own platform. I had high hopes for Mastodon to compete against the likes of even Twitter. It still cannot. It is also not 'early days' either.
    - mattl 4y ago
      Yeah. I’m the co-founder of GNU social, a previous attempt at all this.
    - riffic 4y ago
      Compared with previous versions of fediverse server software, Mastodon has been wildly successful as an open source project. It's not only maintained a solid release cycle, but it's shipped native clients and has slowly but surely built out an interest in the federated social web. Mattl, you can chime in and tell us what things were like back in the Gnu Social days or maybe someone else remembers the StatusNet/Identi.ca era further back. How many installations did you have, roughly? It wasn't a very active scene. Seems like Eugen Rochko and Mastodon gGmbH know what they're doing. Yes it's not 'early days' but we can also argue the whole system (based on ActivityPub, including software like Pixelfed, Peertube, Misskey, etc) is a genie unable to be returned inside its bottle. It doesn't really matter if Mastodon gets mass adoption or not, as long as it follows the same path taken by email, DNS, or other internet standards it'll do okay in the end (Lindy Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect - these old and crusty standards have proven the test of time and are not going anywhere soon. Twitter could collapse tomorrow depending on what Elon decides to do with it.)
      - 4y ago
riffic 4y ago
I've been reading recently a lot of people are getting better engagement results than they would over at Twitter. One example: https://twitter.com/atomicpoet/status/1512202694391345188 https://twitter.com/atomicpoet/status/1512202694391345188 edit: Chris has been expounding on this engagement thing, this goes into more detail: https://blog.peerverse.space/my-pixelfed-instance-is-a-bigger-success-than-i-could-ever-have-predicted/ https://blog.peerverse.space/my-pixelfed-instance-is-a-bigge...
Tao331 4y ago
> does it have better content than Twitter? That's a pretty low bar.

kstrauser 4y ago

I believe it has much better content. The easiest way to boostrap your friend group is to look at the local timeline and see who posts interesting stuff, and follow them. When they repost things from interesting people, follow those people. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
ya that's just a description of how to use twitter tho. what's better here other than there being a lot smaller of a pool to draw from?
- kstrauser 4y ago
  My personal experience has been that the most interesting people I now chat with on Mastodon either 1) left Twitter long ago, or 2) deliberately stayed away from it. For instance, if you're into infosec stuff, Mastodon is a wonderful place to be.
  - discardedrefuse 4y ago
    Is there a specific place or way to find these infosec related posts? I've bounced hard off Mastodon a couple times in the past, maybe I just don't know where to look.
    - rapnie 4y ago
      Yeah, you point out where fediverse differs from Twitter, FB and Instagram. There's no algorithm that starts pushing you in some direction based on your first interactions. Initially your personal timeline will be completely empty. You might start by choosing an instance that is more on-topic than others, like https://hackers.town https://hackers.town and discover people from the server timeline, or browsing the website. Then filter on various hashtags and see who interacts with them. Having some good people you follow you also see whose posts they boost and this will lead you to find more.
      - kstrauser 4y ago
        Upvote for hackers.town, whose t-shirt I'm wearing today.
      - discardedrefuse 4y ago
        Thanks, I really appreciate the info!
mattl 4y ago
Very few people outside of open source tech and a couple fandoms seem to really use Mastodon.
- rvz 4y ago
  There you go and that is the truth here. Other than the open source tech echo chamber using it, it has no network effect to get regular users off of Twitter and to use Mastodon (the actual platform). 2 million users after 6 years is more or less of a slow failure to move users off of Facebook, and Twitter on to Mastodon's own platform. I had high hopes for Mastodon to compete against the likes of even Twitter. It still cannot. It is also not 'early days' either.
  - mattl 4y ago
    Yeah. I’m the co-founder of GNU social, a previous attempt at all this.
  - riffic 4y ago
    Compared with previous versions of fediverse server software, Mastodon has been wildly successful as an open source project. It's not only maintained a solid release cycle, but it's shipped native clients and has slowly but surely built out an interest in the federated social web. Mattl, you can chime in and tell us what things were like back in the Gnu Social days or maybe someone else remembers the StatusNet/Identi.ca era further back. How many installations did you have, roughly? It wasn't a very active scene. Seems like Eugen Rochko and Mastodon gGmbH know what they're doing. Yes it's not 'early days' but we can also argue the whole system (based on ActivityPub, including software like Pixelfed, Peertube, Misskey, etc) is a genie unable to be returned inside its bottle. It doesn't really matter if Mastodon gets mass adoption or not, as long as it follows the same path taken by email, DNS, or other internet standards it'll do okay in the end (Lindy Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect - these old and crusty standards have proven the test of time and are not going anywhere soon. Twitter could collapse tomorrow depending on what Elon decides to do with it.)
    - 4y ago

riffic 4y ago

I've been reading recently a lot of people are getting better engagement results than they would over at Twitter. One example: https://twitter.com/atomicpoet/status/1512202694391345188 https://twitter.com/atomicpoet/status/1512202694391345188 edit: Chris has been expounding on this engagement thing, this goes into more detail: https://blog.peerverse.space/my-pixelfed-instance-is-a-bigger-success-than-i-could-ever-have-predicted/ https://blog.peerverse.space/my-pixelfed-instance-is-a-bigge...

Tao331 4y ago

> does it have better content than Twitter? That's a pretty low bar.