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When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but

by id00 3y ago

When moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I was really surprised by the amount of new type of people that I have little to no visibility before: not super famous but good writers, teachers, niche open source enthusiasts, less known indie game devs, open source hardware manufactures, scientists, regional activists, etc. I'm really pleased with the quality of my feed and discussions that I have. Reminds me of Twitter when it was just launched. People can complain about UX and the slow grow (especially compared to Threads) but the truth is - right now, there is enough audience and content to make it engaging and useful. I don't think there is much value in the explosive growth that some people want from it.

efields 3y ago
I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Mastodon might have had slow growth but it definitely is a community. It's going to operate differently. It won't scale fast or make big ad revenue money. That's okay. That's great, actually. Threads is _clearly_ a Hail Mary play to extract as much ad rev as possible from Meta's most engaged social network, Instagram, by putting those same users in a new space and hope they have enough juice to keep each other occupied long enough to justify the CPM.
- EA-3167 3y ago
  > I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Agreed, megaforums with links between them, but just enough to enable migration rather than direct contact, seems to be the way to go. I think another type of person is going to emerge from this though, and that's a lot of people who just decide to opt out. I like to think that people will take the experiences of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on... and realize that disengagement from these platforms is in and of itself empowering. A move away from endless engagement, endless over-consumption of meaningless twaddle, and distancing from the sorts of people and drama that only really exist online in the first place. Maybe we can all finally accept that, "Twitter isn't a real place," and all that entails.
  - efields 3y ago
    Self-empowerment through logging off is real. Felt good when I left Fb many many years ago and dumping Twitter finally was easier than I thought. I did sneak into Bluesky, but I like the meaningless twaddle of Bluesky. It's collectively unserious, full of the Twitter misfits who just want to let the weird leak out of their brain and onto the keyboard. I do want communities to come together online when it is fitting to do so, and it seems like we need some platform(s) or another to accomplish this, but they need to be designed to not bring out the worst behaviors in us.
- Shawnj2 3y ago
  I think this makes sense as the internet basically stops being a monolith. In the earlier days of the internet there was a lot of value in getting everyone onto a single platform and everyone using a site would generally have the same shared experience, but user personalization has lead to more specific/niche online communities.
seanthemon 3y ago
As a mastodon layman, how do I get myself started? Just directly through mastodon site or some other way?
- lokedhs 3y ago
  Join an instance, it really doesn't matter that much which one, as long as it's not one on the "freeze peach" side (I'd explain why, but I think you'll know them when you see them). If you pick one with a theme closer to your interests the next step will be easier, but it's less important than you might think. Then you look at the federated feed (all messages that are sent to your instance) and follow anyone who posts anything remotely interesting. Once your feed is too quick to follow, unfollow anyone posting any message you feel is uninteresting until the feed slows down. At this point you should have a pretty nice starting point. That's how I started in 2017 and I'm still there so I must have done something right at least.
  - seanthemon 3y ago
    Is there a way of finding a good instance? The idea of accidentally joining a bad instance and not realizing is causing me some weird starter anxiety I appreciate the thoughtful response!
    - FalconSensei 3y ago
      Just go with the "main" instance: mastodon.social. Unless you have a strong motive not to. Edit: I do love mindly.social for a more laid back/be nice overall sentiment. Although this week I decided to move back to mastodon.social because of the comments/replies thing I mentioned in my other comment here
      - RealStickman_ 3y ago
        From what I heard mastodon.social is rather lacking in moderation and therefor limited by lots of other instances. I went for fosstodon.org, as I think this suits my interests well enough, but there are other general or broad topic instances out there.
devn0ll 3y ago
It's already way more active then google plus ever was ;-)

by id00 3y ago

efields 3y ago

I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Mastodon might have had slow growth but it definitely is a community. It's going to operate differently. It won't scale fast or make big ad revenue money. That's okay. That's great, actually. Threads is _clearly_ a Hail Mary play to extract as much ad rev as possible from Meta's most engaged social network, Instagram, by putting those same users in a new space and hope they have enough juice to keep each other occupied long enough to justify the CPM.

EA-3167 3y ago
> I think we're in for an era of a more social networks with distinct cohorts that want to do things in their own way, not necessarily prescribe to established norms for web communities. Agreed, megaforums with links between them, but just enough to enable migration rather than direct contact, seems to be the way to go. I think another type of person is going to emerge from this though, and that's a lot of people who just decide to opt out. I like to think that people will take the experiences of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and so on... and realize that disengagement from these platforms is in and of itself empowering. A move away from endless engagement, endless over-consumption of meaningless twaddle, and distancing from the sorts of people and drama that only really exist online in the first place. Maybe we can all finally accept that, "Twitter isn't a real place," and all that entails.
- efields 3y ago
  Self-empowerment through logging off is real. Felt good when I left Fb many many years ago and dumping Twitter finally was easier than I thought. I did sneak into Bluesky, but I like the meaningless twaddle of Bluesky. It's collectively unserious, full of the Twitter misfits who just want to let the weird leak out of their brain and onto the keyboard. I do want communities to come together online when it is fitting to do so, and it seems like we need some platform(s) or another to accomplish this, but they need to be designed to not bring out the worst behaviors in us.
Shawnj2 3y ago
I think this makes sense as the internet basically stops being a monolith. In the earlier days of the internet there was a lot of value in getting everyone onto a single platform and everyone using a site would generally have the same shared experience, but user personalization has lead to more specific/niche online communities.

seanthemon 3y ago

As a mastodon layman, how do I get myself started? Just directly through mastodon site or some other way?

lokedhs 3y ago
Join an instance, it really doesn't matter that much which one, as long as it's not one on the "freeze peach" side (I'd explain why, but I think you'll know them when you see them). If you pick one with a theme closer to your interests the next step will be easier, but it's less important than you might think. Then you look at the federated feed (all messages that are sent to your instance) and follow anyone who posts anything remotely interesting. Once your feed is too quick to follow, unfollow anyone posting any message you feel is uninteresting until the feed slows down. At this point you should have a pretty nice starting point. That's how I started in 2017 and I'm still there so I must have done something right at least.
- seanthemon 3y ago
  Is there a way of finding a good instance? The idea of accidentally joining a bad instance and not realizing is causing me some weird starter anxiety I appreciate the thoughtful response!
  - FalconSensei 3y ago
    Just go with the "main" instance: mastodon.social. Unless you have a strong motive not to. Edit: I do love mindly.social for a more laid back/be nice overall sentiment. Although this week I decided to move back to mastodon.social because of the comments/replies thing I mentioned in my other comment here
    - RealStickman_ 3y ago
      From what I heard mastodon.social is rather lacking in moderation and therefor limited by lots of other instances. I went for fosstodon.org, as I think this suits my interests well enough, but there are other general or broad topic instances out there.

devn0ll 3y ago

It's already way more active then google plus ever was ;-)