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this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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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.