I've spent more than 7 years in Mastodon, and in my experience, new users always come in with a Twitter mindset, then getting a cultural shock because they come to Mastodon expecting a Twitter experience and end up finding something strange and bizarre.
To soften the blow, I'd like to explain the cultural differences between Mastodon and Twitter.
What Twitter was:
- You could follow microcelebrities (or "influencers") to read interesting things
- You didn't reach people unless you got lots of likes quickly, so it became a popularity contest
- The algorithm decides what you read and how you engage, even if it's negative content or something bad for your mental health.
- Toxic people drew others to quote posting, so it became a yelling competition. You didn't build community, you built followers by standing on a platform and holding a megaphone.
- Unpopular users just yell to the void.
What Mastodon is:
- A bunch of communities of people with diverse interests and real lives.
- Mastodon servers (instances) are careful of who they federate with. Some servers just moderate poorly and there are too many assholes.
- There are microcelebrities, but they're NOT looking to be popular. They just post the things they do; they're popular because their lives / hobbies are interesting.
- In Mastodon, you reach people who are actually interested in your stuff. You don't need to game an algorithm. There is no algorithm, people ARE the algorithm.
- If you don't want to engage with someone, you can block and report. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon admins do take reports seriously (unless it's one of the big instances; then good fucking luck). Reporting is encouraged on Mastodon, it keeps the community clean.
- Because admins often maintain the server using their own money, it's in their best interest that the community is healthy. (Unless they're assholes, but their instances get blocked quickly)
- There are no quote posts. You can paste a link to the other person's post, but it is discouraged because we know where that leads.
Longer explanation:
Mastodon has an entirely different culture compared to Twitter. Mastodon was founded and populated by people who believed Twitter was too toxic and corporate-driven. Mastodon is full of gays, transgender folks, sex workers, artists, furries, autistic people, etc.
These people were driven out of the big platforms (Facebook, Twitter) by hate and discrimination. These people have experienced sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, body shaming, etc. in their lives. It follows that the majority of Mastodon is left-leaning, anti-conservative, communist and anti-corporate.
Furthermore: Because it started (or quickly became) as a sort of safe haven for queer folks, they were more open to sincere posting. They post their problems, the discrimination they've experienced; their body dysphoria; depression; homophobia; transphobia and racism. And they give each other support, even economic. In my timeline I see posts asking for emergency money more than once per day.
If you wonder why this doesn't appear on Twitter, it's because the Algorithm filters them out. The public, the customers don't like hearing about people asking for money not to get evicted. They don't like to hear how people were harassed the other day by some karen who believes they're a man in disguise.
But Mastodon is different. People talk about their daily lives because they know their followers will receive 100% of their posts. This is how communities are built.
Mastodon is not, and never aimed to be a Twitter replacement. It was meant to be something different; a place where you could form communities and build connections without Big Brother examining you or deciding how you should behave online.
So the next time you look for "interesting people to follow", it could be possible that you're entering Mastodon with a Twitter mindset. No Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.
Start following people you think are interesting in YOUR instance. Then start seeing their boosts and follow people you think are cool. Little by little, expand your network, prune your follows and block / mute people you think are obnoxious, and keep building and shaping your network like a beautiful bonsai tree.
The time you invest on building a network from scratch is worth it: You will meet many interesting people, and you will meet new friends; real friends, not just a series of followers whom you have to entertain.
This may be the wrong place to post this, but it's something I've been thinking about for a while. "Algorithm" isn't a dirty word. And in fact, IMHO Mastodon could benefit from a few alternatives to its most-recent-first algorithm.
For instance, I might want to see posts by emergency services in my area first, followed by posts by friends, and posts by a bot that posts a cat picture every minute further down. Or someone might be going off on a rant, and I'd like to turn their firehose of posts down to a trickle for a few hours. Or maybe I'd like Mastodon to just stop showing me anything after a few hours of activity, to encourage me to take a break.
The reason Twitter's, Facebook's, algorithms are evil is that they encourage you to do things you wouldn't want to do, and because they show you content you don't want. Not because they're algorithms.
In a perfect world, every user on every instance would be able to choose how posts are presented. But that may be too computationally expensive, especially for large instances, especially when you start trying to figure out things like the mood of a post. But maybe each instance could decide which algorithm it wants to use, and user can migrate from one instance to another, depending whether they like how things are presented.
Personally, I think it's mainly an issue of transparency and lack of ability to change preferences.
If Facebook was transparent about how their algorithms worked and gave you access to tweak things, it would be a whole different story. But being profit motivated, they don't give a shit what you want. They're going to show you the things that are statistically most likely to keep you engaged for good or ill.
I would like if the preferences let you define your own algorithm too. Choosing from some presets would be much better than being stuck with whatever Google wants you to have, but if the interface let people plug in their own algorithms, then as the community started trying things we'd see some real development in algorithms that people genuinely like and that fit people's specific desires.