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About 5 years ago, I set up a Mastodon instance in a DigitalOcean VPN, for me and some friends. It never really caught up; I have been occasionally upgrading b

About 5 years ago, I set up a Mastodon instance in a DigitalOcean VPN, for me and some friends. It never really caught up; I have been occasionally upgrading but almost never used it. A few days ago I finally put some effort to follow interesting accounts. The ability to control what I see (e.g. exclude boosts, no personalized timeline etc.) made me realize how much more engaging it was compared to, let's say, Twitter. It was pretty refreshing to see a no-nonsense timeline and to be able to tailor the interface to my needs (I used the 3-column layout). I haven't been on Twitter for a while, but I think I'll give Mastodon a try as a replacement.

philipov 3y ago
Imagine, getting force-fed posts by a company whose business goal is to eliminate your agency in favor of their algorithm isn't very engaging. Add user agency back in, and you get engagement. It's almost like they're the same thing!
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Add user agency back in What do you mean by this? Twitter has following, likes, watch time, Not interested in this tweet, etc which give you agency on your recommendations. Mastadon gives you less agency over your feed because it has a primitive recommendation system which isn't able to find as relevant posts as twitter's can.
  - philipov 3y ago
    What I mean is that people who actively participate in the service are more engaged than those who passively prune the output of a recommendation engine. Agency arises from having to do it yourself.
amitp 3y ago
Agreed, having control over what you see makes a big difference. I've been using Twitter this way for several years and it's been nice ("Lists" feature and TweetDeck).
timbit42 3y ago
The real power of Mastodon is in following hashtags, more so than following accounts.
- skinnymuch 3y ago
  Interesting. I’ll try it out if I can remember my info

philipov 3y ago

Imagine, getting force-fed posts by a company whose business goal is to eliminate your agency in favor of their algorithm isn't very engaging. Add user agency back in, and you get engagement. It's almost like they're the same thing!

charcircuit 3y ago
>Add user agency back in What do you mean by this? Twitter has following, likes, watch time, Not interested in this tweet, etc which give you agency on your recommendations. Mastadon gives you less agency over your feed because it has a primitive recommendation system which isn't able to find as relevant posts as twitter's can.
- philipov 3y ago
  What I mean is that people who actively participate in the service are more engaged than those who passively prune the output of a recommendation engine. Agency arises from having to do it yourself.

amitp 3y ago

Agreed, having control over what you see makes a big difference. I've been using Twitter this way for several years and it's been nice ("Lists" feature and TweetDeck).

timbit42 3y ago

The real power of Mastodon is in following hashtags, more so than following accounts.

skinnymuch 3y ago
Interesting. I’ll try it out if I can remember my info