Use of the Fediverse.

Alright! So one fine day I decided to check the Fediverse out and eventually joined mastodon. I've downloaded the Megalodon app on my phone and everything. And now I'm at a loss on what to do with it. In reality, how do you use Mastodon? I've never used Twitter before, so I'm completely new to this form of social media. All I saw were people talking about strange topics only they understood with no engagement whatsoever, and the other posts were straight up anime furry porn left and right. I only found out about Lemmy today. and it's even amazing than I expected. I'd love to hear how you use the Fediverse platforms and any tips you have.

Sibbo,

Twitter is interesting when you follow people that are central to something, who keep their feeds clean. For example, someone posting about their three different hobbies and their job and family is very annoying if you are only interested in one of that.

Twitter alleviates that a bit by promoting posts that they classify as "interesting", which I think are those that get a lot of interaction. Maybe also other things. This way, you can follow a heap of people but you will see updates from the more interesting ones first.

Mastodon on the other hand just gives you a raw stream. Which is pretty boring because people tend to talk about all kinds of topics, and only few actually curate their content. And even if you follow just the curated content, it is very easy to miss some interesting stuff if you happen to not read every single post in your timeline.

Mastodon alleviates that by boosting, which puts a pushes a post on top of your timeline again. But then you only see it if you are looking at the timeline while someone is boosting. There is also some sort of a trending page being developed on there, but it is only for posts that get boosted at least five times or so, and it is not necessarily related to your interests. A bit like Reddits "all" community.

Reddit and Lemmy seem to combine the best of both worlds. Posts are sorted into communities that revolve around certain topics. So you can choose which topic to follow. And you never need to weigh following a person because they post about interesting thing A, but also boring thing B. You can choose to share only your common interests with that person by participating in the same community. Much like friendships work in real life.

On top of that, Reddit and Lemmy employ a voting mechanism to present the topics that appear most interesting to most users first. This is great, because even within a topical community, there are various subtopics to discuss, and not all are most relevant all the time. Also, naturally people say sometimes more interesting things, and sometimes less interesting things. And sometimes people spend more effort on a post and sometimes less. All totally natural things, but things that make participating into a larger community hard. Voting alleviates that, because people don't need to think if what they post is interesting to the community at the moment, but the community decides that democratically.

Reddit and Lemmy also allow following users (not sure if Lemmy already does), so one can still follow that one cool rock star or that one CEO or that one journalist that posts only interesting things about various topics.

themadcodger,
themadcodger avatar

I don't think Lemmy allows following users, but kbin does as well as interacts with Calckey/Mastodon. This allows you to follow topics their from the comfort of kbin (and if they enabled it, Lemmy too).

The trick with Mastodon/Calckey is to follow hashtags, not people in the case you're talking about. While not important here, it's the main way of finding other posts of interest there. So you can follow and anytime someone posts about it, it'll appear in your timeline.

You are correct about the timing, if you're not on regularly you will miss posts. But the nice thing about the fediverse is the content is all the same, you just decide how you feel like experiencing it.

carturo222,
carturo222 avatar

Your Mastodon experience will be shaped by what you choose to follow. I manually added everyone I already was following on Twitter who also had a Mastodon account, plus I follow a number of hashtags. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon won't try to guess what you might like. You have to be very deliberate with curating your timeline.

Pinklacey,

"All I saw were people talking about strange topics only they understood with no engagement whatsoever, and the other posts were straight up anime furry porn left and right"

That? Right there? Is why I absolutely fucking hate the fediverse.

Not to mention the comments are posted FIRST and then the post? Makes no dam sense. Every one is just taking about whatever with no context.

There's no topics or communities to follow. That's what I'm into. I'm not into following 'people '

Lemmy and kbin are gunna be your best option when it comes to being more reddit like. But lemmy bans just like reddit does.

Not sure about kbin, but from what I've seen they seem more relaxed

Sibbo,

Lemmy bans just like reddit does?

Pinklacey,

Indeed

notacat,

But isn’t it the instance/server owner the only one who can ban a user? So it depends on how ban-happy the admin is for the server you joined.

Pinklacey,

And if Lemmy bands other instances that you use but also bans you on their instance you can't use the app

EnglishMobster,
EnglishMobster avatar

You can use the app just fine, or you should be able to. If you can't, then you should file a bug report.

effingjoe,

Notably, you can follow hashtags in Mastodon, in addition to people. My Mastodon feed is pretty well tuned to my interests because I went through and followed a bunch of hashtags I'm interested in.

However, I much prefer the format of reddit so Lemmy is probably a better fit for me.

themadcodger,
themadcodger avatar

Have you tried kbin? It lets you follow mastodon easier than Lemmy, so sorta best of both worlds.

Cralex,

I struggle a little with Mastodon. The accounts I follow are all either people I follow on other social networks that just happen to mention that they have a mastodon account or accounts that are centered around a given topic that I searched for, such as AI art. Mastodon has a handy “verified” feature whereby you can prove that you are a representative of a website by adding a code snippet, but not everyone does. In short, it’s getting there but I can’t find people that I want to follow as easily as on old Twitter.

Lemmy is proving more intuitive to me so far, although part of that is because I’ve always been more of a Reddit person than a Twitter person. Once you get used to looking for communities, it’s easy to find any that may exist for a topic that you want. I’ve got multiple communities around the same topic from different instances, such as technology, but it’ll be easy to watch them over time and prune any that seem redundant or that may fall apart.

themadcodger,
themadcodger avatar

Try following tags in Mastodon to get what you're looking for. It takes a bit more work than Twitter since there's no algorithm, so you have to curate your feed the way you want it.

That said, I do have a Calckey and kbin account and go between them because I like a little compartmentalization.

theory,
@theory@sopuli.xyz avatar

Ironically Ive known about fedi for years and years, but only with lemmy am i now properly active in it. I wouldnt bother with masto, its not anywhere as fun or worth it

themadcodger,
themadcodger avatar

Yeah, that's not fair to say it's not worth it. Different strokes for different folks. With no algorithm it takes some effort to curate your feed, but because it doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it's not worth it.

It's all the same information on the fediverse, and we all get to choose how we want to interact with it.

Copio,

It's subjective to each of us, I wasn't a fan of Twitter, but Masto just gels well with me.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • asklemmy@lemmy.ml
  • tacticalgear
  • DreamBathrooms
  • cisconetworking
  • khanakhh
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • modclub
  • InstantRegret
  • rosin
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • kavyap
  • ngwrru68w68
  • JUstTest
  • everett
  • tester
  • cubers
  • normalnudes
  • thenastyranch
  • osvaldo12
  • GTA5RPClips
  • ethstaker
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • megavids
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •