749
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
749 points (100.0% liked)
Mastodon
2296 readers
24 users here now
The project: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
Mastodon instance affiliated with Lemmy.World: https://mastodon.world/
Discuss the Mastodon platform here. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I want to enjoy Mastodon so much, but I just never see that much discussion. It just feels empty.
Who knew, taking away algorithm-fed drama and rage bait doesn't really excite the brain. But it can be a nice replacement for Twitter, when someone had withdrawal effects.
There is maybe a little bit of rage baiting on Lemmy ... but in today's political environment it may not be considered bait ... just news.
News are (rage) bait by design. They have to get you click the article, it is the only way they can make money.
I wouldn't really consider news as something unique to any platform. I was thinking user made content.
Yeah I just have it to follow some people, companies and projects that don't really have a good RSS feed.
All Mastodon feeds are RSS feeds. You just have to add ".rss" to the end of the URL.
They probably meant company's own RSS feed, so they have to use Mastodon.
Do you want some lists to get your timeline going?
Sure! I think a lot of people would be interested here.
The more you interact the more it will open up. Follow and boost without pause. Follow #introduction and #introductions.
I think I have more somewhere. I'll try to dig up old posts tomorrow.
Mastodon art curator thing is great. Love that account, follow it myself!
Also, following groups is key.
Can also follow the Hype Bot (@hype@keks.club) which boosts popular posts. From that you can follow those you like. I put Hype in its own List so it doesn't spam my main timeline.
Microblogging is honestly just a bad concept. Mastodon has like 20x the amount of MAUs as lemmy, but it feels empty because all those users are so spread out.
Here its easy for people to group around a topic, but on microblogging platforms that dont use algorithmic recommendations, you will not find new "content" unless you actively look at 3rd party lists or the discover feed.
Bluesky has done something important, which is subscription lists that you can import into your account to automatically follow a bunch of people that fit the criteria of that list. Mastodon will need to add things like this or people will always just look at the platform and think "There is nothing here".
I personally like having a minimalistic feed that only shows me things that i actually care about, but others just want a stream of stuff to keep them entertained. The latter might not be a good goal to strive for, but i think it could be achieved with mastodon while preserving user choice.
The problem with microblogging platforms is they revolve around following users and not topics.
Mastodon has tried to change that by encouraging following hashtags but with limited success.
They are great platforms for people who are already (internet) famous and want a soapbox. But for ordinary folk tooting or tweeting or whatever else it’s called is just shouting into the void. There’s no discussion because nobody ever sees what others post.
I like Mastodon but it seems it can’t escape the inherent problems of the platform model itself.
That was a perfect description.
Microblogging is surprisingly good for discussions between scientists and other academics, but I think this feels like the exception that proves the rule — a particular scenario where it does make sense to follow people rather than topics
Apart from the "subscription list" system there are lots of other things that would not be hard to implement. For example if creators are unwilling to use hashtags, then just let users do the tagging. If you are scared of false tags, implement a system where multiple people have to assign the same tag before it becomes active.
Then you can search for or subscribe to tags which would make discovery a looot better.
I follow a lot of hashtags, and interact with a lot of people. It may seem more quiet if you're not engaging on the platform and adding content to your feed by following people and topics. We are working on the Fediscovery project to help to surface more discussions across platforms, as well.
Same here. It's a better platform in several ideological ways to Bluesky, but the initial hype seems to have died off a bit and it's pretty quiet there.
I'm really hoping it can take off though. I would love it to surge in popularity and become the biggest social media app/site of that type. I guess part of that is being the change you wish for in the world.
Gotta build up your timeline, follow hashtags, or maybe check out the local timeline for a server. Another comment here has some accounts to get started. My tl is pretty busy
I swear, my follow feed is only super active because I follow someone who I swear is chronically on there, posting and boosting other posts seemingly all the time somehow.
I have the opposite problem, my feed is so overwhelming and I never feel like I've hit the important or interesting posts. I'd love the ability to sort by boosts or favourites.
I don't use Mastodon particularly, but I share your view here. I find that Mastodon makes me go "little bit of algorithmic feed, as a treat?" sometimes, because it feels like it takes work to find good stuff sometimes.
To me, that's basically what Lemmy is.
I think it depends a lot on who you're following or what instance you're on. The ones I have are pretty active. That's a problem they're trying to solve, they did a nice conference about it at Fosdem.