3 ms·

Would love to hear from people that use Mastodon on a daily basis. What is your experience like? How do you find interesting people? I'm on Twitter every day,

Would love to hear from people that use Mastodon on a daily basis. What is your experience like? How do you find interesting people? I'm on Twitter every day, mostly following artists, tech people, and political shitposters.

nimbius 5y ago
ugh, i tried. i really tried, and i really really wanted to love this but eventually came to find it inherited all the trash neoconservative hot takes, woke culture virtue signaling and micro-aggression bellyaching that twitter has. its a "federated" service only insofar as large groups of admins openly advocate for, and agree to ban traffic from certain servers with speech they disagree with, so thats also been a sticking point with me as well.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I mean isn’t that like the whole point, sign up for a server that aligns with your preferences for moderation and enjoy? You can have everything from total firehose to catholic nun levels of moderation all on the same network.
  - kstrauser 5y ago
    I believe that's the killer feature. There's no futile one-size-fits-all moderation policy that has to work for every user in existence. Instead, each server is a freestanding little community with its own values and mores, and which can decide which other servers it wants to talk to. I love that.
  - root_axis 5y ago
    > I mean isn’t that like the whole point, sign up for a server that aligns with your preferences for moderation and enjoy? That's exactly how http websites already work...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
proactivesvcs 5y ago
I love it. I find people having read the documentation and the advice of people they're. I think a lot of people who claim there's no network effect or "content" may have just skimmed by without understanding or putting any effort in. The network doesn't operate by manipulative, abusive algorithms that are designed to addict the user. One has to understand and put in some effort to curate a network. Tags are the one of the primary discovery methods - searching for your type of content can be as simple as searching for relevant tags, which can be subscribed to and followed as their own timeline. One can pin tags to one's profile and find, and be found by, users searching other users. There's also a selection of specialised instances for art, tech, sports, writing, etc. As someone who joined with very little social media experience or knowledge, I found curating my own network rewarding and not overly difficult. If some people prefer to be force-fed content that's designed to rile and instigate, without putting in the groundwork, then they're welcome to it.
fomine3 5y ago
Not discoverable like twitter, but find from other user's reply/following and instance's timeline. I miss other user's Liked post list feature on Mastodon.
rsolva 5y ago
I use it (almost) daily and really like it. The biggest challenge coming from Twitter to Mastodon is that your feed is quite empty and you have to actively curate who you follow over some time – no algorithm. Since this was one of the main attractions for me, that was not a problem. Although I have far fewer followers on Mastodon than Twitter, I always get a much better discussion and engagement on Mastodon. Twitters algorithm seems to "kill" most of my tweets (by not showing them to my followers), except for a few where I write about a specific topic that interests me, where I suddenly get a lot of reach. But mostly likes and retweets, not many reactions or any interesting discussions. I find this really discouraging in the long run. Mastodon just feels much more human and community-like, akin to how the good old forums felt.

nimbius 5y ago

ugh, i tried. i really tried, and i really really wanted to love this but eventually came to find it inherited all the trash neoconservative hot takes, woke culture virtue signaling and micro-aggression bellyaching that twitter has. its a "federated" service only insofar as large groups of admins openly advocate for, and agree to ban traffic from certain servers with speech they disagree with, so thats also been a sticking point with me as well.

Spivak 5y ago
I mean isn’t that like the whole point, sign up for a server that aligns with your preferences for moderation and enjoy? You can have everything from total firehose to catholic nun levels of moderation all on the same network.
- kstrauser 5y ago
  I believe that's the killer feature. There's no futile one-size-fits-all moderation policy that has to work for every user in existence. Instead, each server is a freestanding little community with its own values and mores, and which can decide which other servers it wants to talk to. I love that.
- root_axis 5y ago
  > I mean isn’t that like the whole point, sign up for a server that aligns with your preferences for moderation and enjoy? That's exactly how http websites already work...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

proactivesvcs 5y ago

I love it. I find people having read the documentation and the advice of people they're. I think a lot of people who claim there's no network effect or "content" may have just skimmed by without understanding or putting any effort in. The network doesn't operate by manipulative, abusive algorithms that are designed to addict the user. One has to understand and put in some effort to curate a network. Tags are the one of the primary discovery methods - searching for your type of content can be as simple as searching for relevant tags, which can be subscribed to and followed as their own timeline. One can pin tags to one's profile and find, and be found by, users searching other users. There's also a selection of specialised instances for art, tech, sports, writing, etc. As someone who joined with very little social media experience or knowledge, I found curating my own network rewarding and not overly difficult. If some people prefer to be force-fed content that's designed to rile and instigate, without putting in the groundwork, then they're welcome to it.

fomine3 5y ago

Not discoverable like twitter, but find from other user's reply/following and instance's timeline. I miss other user's Liked post list feature on Mastodon.

rsolva 5y ago

I use it (almost) daily and really like it. The biggest challenge coming from Twitter to Mastodon is that your feed is quite empty and you have to actively curate who you follow over some time – no algorithm. Since this was one of the main attractions for me, that was not a problem. Although I have far fewer followers on Mastodon than Twitter, I always get a much better discussion and engagement on Mastodon. Twitters algorithm seems to "kill" most of my tweets (by not showing them to my followers), except for a few where I write about a specific topic that interests me, where I suddenly get a lot of reach. But mostly likes and retweets, not many reactions or any interesting discussions. I find this really discouraging in the long run. Mastodon just feels much more human and community-like, akin to how the good old forums felt.