Mastodon is hard to get into because at first you only really see what is coming from your own instance. You have to really look around and find the people and topics you want to see in your feed. It’s a much more carefully curated set of content than you get from Twitter, which just bombards you with hot takes and garbage all the time.
I think the most enjoyable feature is that there is no algorithm in Fediverse. And decentralization means that if you host your own server for Pixelfed (instagram equivalent) for example, your data will go offline at the moment you disconnect your server from the internet.
Lemmy is great alternative for Reddit especially if you’re into tech.
What do you mean by “no algorithm”? There must be something controlling the order of “hot” vs “new”? Or do you mean the kind of algorithm that shows you suggested communities?
Yeah, there’s an “algorithm” here but rather than a black box of trade secrets and manipulation it’s entirely open source, and mathematically simple.
mastodon idk, it probably has a similar algo for its Explore page but I think the user feed is just made up of posts from people you follow in chrono order.
the user feed is just made up of posts from people you follow in chrono order.
You can also follow hashtags, block hashtags, and block words/phrases.
The Local Timeline shows posts from everyone on your instance. The Federated Timeline is a fire hose. It shows all posts in chronological order (as received by your instance).
I think there’s a lot of value to the algorithm, but it needs to be based on real engagement rather than arbitrary bullshit that a soulless corporation wants to promote.
I subscribe to a lot of people, but not all of their content is worth seeing. Having it curated down to just the stuff that’s actually popular can be nice. It’s definitely tricky to make that work in a fair and useful way though.
The nice thing is, if an instance wanted to put in the effort they could totally make an algorithm. We will have to grow a lot before it’s worth the bother to make a good one, but it’s totally possible.
Some people are building systems on top of Mastodon, for example fedistats.cc/trendsIn the end something like “plug in your own algorithm” would be great.
And thanks to activityPub there is interoperability between services. I only have a Mastodon account, but I can follow people on pixelfed without problem. It moves the focus back onto communicating rather than being on the platform
It’s really interesting… i gave it a shot a few days back. You’ve to follow stuff or hashtags you’re interested in for things to show up… after that take it slow and follow more things… I’ve found some really good music playlists, art, programming discussions on there. There’s also an explore section which shows trending topics and posts. I can recommend it as the users are mature and in my experience not toxic.
It’s not like here at all. No shitposts. Only people who use their real name and work for some non profit sharing their highly intelligent news bulletins. I haven’t found any memes
It‘s like Twitter basically, but since it‘s also in the fediverse there is a bit of overlap where Mastodon people can comment on Lemmy/kbin stuff too anyway. Usually they have something like @LostCause and hashtags like #mastodon and so on in their comments, that‘s how I typically spot them.
So their growth is relevant for us, but you don‘t need to make an account there.
If a mastodon user mentions (@) a community, they’ll post there. They can also reply to comments on Lemmy and you’ll see it. Unfortunately I don’t think Lemmy has a way to see regular mastodon accounts/comments right now other than that.
Just like twitter except what you see on your feed is reliant on what #’s or people you follow. So you essentially have more control over what you see and you wont get any posts from some rando like twitter does
Is it recommended to create an account specifically for Mastodon or just use your Lemmy-account? Will it fuck up my feeds/subs in some way if I only use one account for both? (I’m new to the whole fediverse thing)
This is great! But generally can’t see Mastadon overtaking any other major social platforms until it introduces an equivalent of For you feed from Twitter. The days of following specific people and hashtags is over, it’s tedious and I don’t give a shit about 3/4s of the feed.
2017-2020 Twitter was absolutely peak Twitter algorithm wise and thousands of users want that exact experience back, yet nobody will provide it.
Stay away from advertising money , if you need money to keep a server up then start a gofundme or a patreon or something … make it community based so that your instance stays community based .
Thats likely due to lack of algorithms with goal to keep you browsing forever. Twitter likely harvests all the data it can get from you when you browse twitter. They can also track your browsing habits using your IP (among many other things) and sites that have embed twitter content like share button or embed tweets.
Just look for the things that you are interested in. That’s how i accumulated many of my followed accounts over time as well as subscribed subreddits over time.
You can also look for users under the same name on Mastodon and (hopefully) find them.
Please note that if you find an account you also followed on twitter and it ends with @bird.makeup, it’s a bot mirroring tweets on Mastodon without mirroring your answers on Mastodon back to Twitter.
Hashtags are your friend. It also helps if you have some active posters for the tag. I get good content from following #sciencefiction#coffee and #python.
Ok. What’s next? There’s a tweet, there’s an icon that it has 16 comments, but I can’t read those. When I click on that icon I have the ui to write a comment.
Finding people to follow in Mastodon mostly happens by:
Search topics using hashtags
Randomly browsing local feeds of different instances
Randomly browsing the federated feed
Randomly browsing local feed
There are instances for different interests like game development, art, information security, foss etc so there’s a lot of places to dig for good content.
Add comment