Why are Mastodon's trending hashtags so ... dull?

As a new user, I’m enjoying Mastodon’s vibe so far but the one thing that is a letdown is the trending hashtags. I’ve been checking them regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seems like they’re pretty much always like this.

Even on days with big news stories, people on Mastodon are only talking about what day of the week it is like company employees on some internal message board?

Is there anything that can be done to liven them up a bit?

Prandom_returns,

Because mastodon doesn’t have an algo that promotes division and controversial topics. These hashtags are what normal, everyday people talk about. Drama isn’t its strongest side.

Asafum,

Are you saying that Lemmy does have those algorithms? Because this shit is never boring lol so many instances I never wanted to see or know existed…

Slightly related: how many freaking instances of “yiff” shit do we need!? I couldn’t believe I was STILL seeing it after I blocked like 7 separate instances lol

Prandom_returns,

Lemmy ““promotes”” upvoted stuff.

Mastodon “Trending” is just stuff that wasn’t talked about, suddenly being talked about. That’s why constantly popular things don’t appear on Trending, but things like “BigBoobFridayWhatever” (or equivalent) gets trending (people don’t use the hashtag for a week, and everyone use it for that day). I see how they thought it’s perfect for world-wide events, but it just end-up being a bunch of “weekly” stuff.

tony,

BigBoobFriday has to happen.

GeekFTW,
@GeekFTW@kbin.social avatar

I will make it happen.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

Needs more alliteration.

HonkTonkWoman,

H4Lambda,

Furries invade every tech space because they’re all programmers for some reason. Must have something to do with being bullied as a kid and/or never seeing boobs irl. I know because I like their porn but not their identity, I’d never wear a suit but a cat is fine too

CarlsIII,

I guess the reality is that I want at least SOME controversy. I don’t know why the only two choices have to be “fascism-enabling hellscape” or “nobody saying anything interesting ever.” There has to be at least some possible middle ground!

Prandom_returns,

I agree. The Trending algorithm needs improvement. Luckily, we can do that ourselves.

ko4la,

explain how

Prandom_returns,

By creating a pull request in Github. (Don’t yet angry, that was supposed to be a lighthearted joke)

Rabbithole,

I can imagine some alpha-cunt Tate-esque grifter selling courses on how to "Just Shout at People" like it's some sort of magic spell that mysteriously makes everything that you want happen.

Selling it like it's the hidden secret sauce to the universe or whatever, rather than just being a dick to everyone.

Would the community even be any worse, I wonder? :)

mojo,

i angy 😡

superflippy,

I agree. I want to see people’s opinions on the news of the day. By the way, I recommend following @BlackAzizAnansi if you want a little controversy. He was one of my favorite posters from Twitter & has gone all-in on Mastodon.

Zaktor,

I think the #tuesday hashtag isn’t really what normal people talk about, but probably people gaming the system to get on a reliably trending hashtag.

mojo,

yeah sounds like boring shit. I get that already from talking to actual people, not virtue signalling boomers on mastodon

the lack of algo reduces the quality of content to this garbage, but this is the same people who think more content is bad as well. I don’t want some breaking or interesting post to be hidden by some random person posting completely meaningless garbage

Prandom_returns,

You sound like you might enjoy TikTok more.

mojo,

Yeah it’s either useless boring small talk on Mastodon, or zoomer tik tok. Absolutely no middle.

Prandom_returns,

*useless only if you have no interests. There’s plenty of people talking hobbies and interests. If you’re just shooting shit, I agree, it’s boring. And no, there’s no middle. Maybe Instagram is the middleground?

sbv,

It’s boring and shitty. It’s hard to find interesting stuff. Good luck finding trending/newsworthy events.

noodlejetski,

you get from Mastodon what you put into it.

tootytootwoo,

The amount of people on Mastodon who are like “ahh finally, nothing interesting to look at now that I left Twitter, I am at peace and can just scroll through pictures of someone’s dinner and obscure academic naval gazing :)” is so high

Tag365,
@Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

Wait, so the recent topics that occur suddenly on Twitter aren’t the normal things people talk about? So the hype on Twitter events are fake?

Prandom_returns,

They are. But they’re also influenced by who talks about it, how many comments, replies, likes it has. How many people click on it. Etc.

On mastodon is just how many people used the hashtag in a short period of time.

Puffymumpkins,

I think as Mastodon gets more popular, we will see more interesting tags pop up

Kovu,
@Kovu@lemmy.world avatar

tbh I really like mastodon but the userbase is incredibly boring

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I disagree, actually. Scrolling through the posts on my local instance, I see lots of interesting posts and witty commentary on current issues.

It’s just that the trending hashtags don’t seem to reflect that at all.

Heastes,

I think the issue is that people nowadays have come to expect a certain degree of individualized feeds and discovery features.

There is probably plenty of content on mastodon that would be of interest to any given user, but the discoverability is kind of lacking - especially if you are used to Twitter’s algorithmic feed.

ttmrichter,
@ttmrichter@lemmy.world avatar

Search on hashtags. That alone gave me loads of useful and interesting content (to the point I had to make lists to separate them out into columns). Also look for community aggregation accounts. That’s a bot account that automatically boosts any post that mentions it. So if you’re interested in, say, progrock and there’s a @progrock community aggregation account, every time you post something on progressive rock, you mention @progrock and your post is seen by everybody who subscribes to @progrock.

There have been a lot of creative ways people have come up with to make finding content easy. Start with the hashtags and you’ll find the aggregation accounts in no time.

DudePluto,

witty commentary on current issues

Am I the only one who doesn’t enjoy the twitter-takes? Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with most of the takes. It’s just that it all feels like they’re trying to one-up each other with the cleverest gotcha and it makes me roll my eyes. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for a twitter/mastodon style community

Kichae,

Big, noisy rooms promote this kind of behaviours. It's also why comment chains on big Reddit subreddits degrade into memes, injokes, and other flavours of referential humour.

It's all about being punchy and popular for Internet points, because otherwise no one is ever even going to read your words. They'll just be buried in the noise.

Kotking,
@Kotking@mastodon.social avatar

@Kovu @aleph "You don't know how to cook em!" /jk But really it all depends on what you interested in and if people even use # ... do you know how many people joined due twitter fkups recently? Do you know how many use tweeter to mastodon conversion thingy to find old pals and use it as a message board instead you know.... SEARCHING VIA # ? so yeah it can be boring if people don't use # and only advanced users speak and search things. REally look at local feed and not only in eng! Translate it!

survivorseason44,

I used to feel that way on Mastodon myself! Being immersed in mundane content felt more like Facebook w/strangers (kind strangers, at least!) instead of what I’d want from a Twitter alternative (fluid breaking news discussions, humour, even “viral” content). What helped me is aggressively following hashtags and users who post stuff I care about, cuz the Mastodon experience relies heavily on follows compared to Twitter — now my feeds are much more active and focused on stuff I care about.

It isn’t perfect though, and there’s much I miss about Twitter’s content/follow recommendation system. Like obviously we shouldn’t repeat the ultra-unethical aspects of that system (privileging “angertainment,” conflict, false information, hate content, etc). But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.

ElectroVagrant,

But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.

Besides that last point (as that depends entirely on getting those in the space to begin with), I think the first two come down to the Mastodon culture needing to shift a little to be less…Hesitant? That may not be the best word for it, but some of the discoverability and openness of discussion may be related to this culture of hesitancy to connect & post from some who have faced the brunt of bullshit & harassment on corporate social media.

There’s also the other side to this of an air of proactive rule/norm enforcement that itself makes folks uncertain of what’s okay to post or which way to post in some instances, which may be a misreading of the instance/space but sometimes it isn’t and though well-intended, doesn’t help a ton either.

superflippy,

There are a few of us out there being weird. But it is very tech-heavy right now, as was Twitter at first.

LostCause,

Another another day of work, can‘t wait for to come around!

-Mastodon user probably

PixelPassport,

The worst is the “good night” posts, I find it so cringey.

Posts like: “Can’t keep these sleepy eyes open, sweet dreams everyone”. It seems like mastodon is for people that love small talk.

LostCause,

It‘s kinda why I never warmed up to Twitter, it feels more focused on everyone posting their random thoughts on daily life and building up some public persona.

Anyway, I do enjoy their comments sometimes showing up in threads around here so it‘s not all bad.

PixelPassport,

Yeah same, it feels like being in a group chat with strangers. I’m glad it’s an option for those that want it though.

possum,

It’s funny how you can often tell a comment came from Mastodon because the way people type is just different somehow

tootytootwoo,

mastodon users always type like they got that puffed out chest looking down at you

Korne127,
@Korne127@lemmy.world avatar

To be fair, I’ve seen so many like them on Twitter

And every morning (or like at 5-6 am when I was going to bed), the (not personalized) Germany trends were full of stuff like “Good morning”, “Hello”, and the names of individual people.

Marxine,
@Marxine@lemmy.ml avatar

That really synthetises why I dislike microblogging so much: It’s a bunch of people throwing small-talk and rage bait everywhere, all the time.

Considering a lot of people are really bad at conservation in every possible way, it also makes sense why microblogging is so much more popular than forum-like platforms.

sangle_of_flame,
@sangle_of_flame@lemmy.world avatar

tbf, that’s just microblogging in a nutshell

TheRealBob,
@TheRealBob@lemmy.world avatar

If you’re looking for news, follow some of the accounts here, and there’s a spreadsheet of journalists on mastodon here.

Don’t rely on trending hashtags, it’s not a useful feature on mastodon.

SL3wvmnas,

Thank you, I found this list very helpful! I’m also relatively new to Mastodon and still trying to figure out how all of it works. For some reason my mobile client puts first and foremost, making it my current cute pictures/ dopamine app ;)

mtcerio,

Most are twitter mirroring bots, which means it’s OK to follow but there will not be much engagement.

TheRealBob,
@TheRealBob@lemmy.world avatar

The ones in the spreadsheet aren’t just mirrors though.

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

That second link is great, thank you. From Twitter I learned that it’s much better to follow a few specific journalists rather than the news agencies themselves.

Venomnik0,
@Venomnik0@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you so mucch!!! This honestly helped me alot with finding news. Didn’t even know press.coop even existed.

TheRealBob,
@TheRealBob@lemmy.world avatar

Happy to help!

WheeGeetheCat,
@WheeGeetheCat@sh.itjust.works avatar

Does anyone know if mastadon people can be followed from a lemmy account? I think I saw a way but having trouble finding the post now

GlintingKingfisher,
@GlintingKingfisher@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for this, I was curious if certain news outlets were on Mastodon yet. Helps me a lot!

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Because there’s no algorithm so most content avoids clickbait and is spread organically.

Also, Mastodon (and the Fediverse) tends to skew older, smarter, and more technically inclined.

Edit: hashtags.fyi has a lot more variety, though.

beefbaby182,
@beefbaby182@mastodon.world avatar

@cupcakezealot @aleph

"Also, Mastodon (and the Fediverse) tends to skew older, smarter, and more technically inclined."

Get off my lawn grumbles cocks shotgun

DLSchichtl, (edited )

shots cockgun

What now? 🤨

Tag365,
@Tag365@lemmy.world avatar

So you’re saying I act like an old grumpy man but at a young age?

beefbaby182,
@beefbaby182@mastodon.world avatar

@Tag365 Exactly

mojo,

…and we see the result of that, an incredibly boring community. No wonder so many people leave. Without an algo, it’s simply awful. That’s why Lemmy is already 10x more interesting with basic rating algo systems.

ttmrichter,
@ttmrichter@lemmy.world avatar

Weird. I have exactly the opposite experience with Mastodon. Without the algorithm it’s been great. I get the content I look for instead of the content some ragebait-mongering corporate entity thinks I need to see so that I stick around and click their ads.

I get more useful and/or interesting content on Mastodon than I ever got on Twitter before I ditched it.

mojo,

Would like to see your feed because after months of tweaking and following hash tags, my feed is still boring.

ttmrichter,
@ttmrichter@lemmy.world avatar

Define “boring” here? If you mean “as full of shitposts and memes as Twitter and/or Reddit” then yes, you’re going to be bored on Mastodon. Since, however, I found those very posts boring as all shit on Twitter/Reddit, my feed suits me. A few hundred posts a day on topics that interest me, with about … say … 50% of them being somewhat insightful and/or thought-provoking. (The equivalent on Twitter was “however many posts the algorithm could shovel into my heap per day with about 0.01% of them being even slightly interesting”. For Reddit it was so low I never bothered with an account.)

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I mean to each their own but I don’t think it’s boring.

But Lemmy and Mastodon are essentially the same thing in that they both make up the Fediverse.

paddirn,

Is #ThickTrunkTuesday not about men with large cocks? That sounds pretty exciting to me.

Chrishering33,

I hear you. I just described Mastodon to my partner the other day as better than Twitter for my serious side but there is not a lot of light hearted fun to be had here :D and the breaking news aspect of twitter is also nowhere to be found, sadly. It’s still very niche and stuff like that doesn’t help

ElectroVagrant,

You’re kinda not wrong, and definitely not wrong about the breaking news part, but I’ve found a lot of lighthearted goofing about to do on there, partly from following silly bot accounts & boosting them, and partly from the more relaxed & imo better curated all/other server feeds of smaller instances.

On the larger instances it’s harder to find this good middle ground, especially if you go in without anyone in mind to follow. The other weird quirk to all this is that by default Mastodon is more private than spaces like Twitter, so people have to actively choose to tag their posts and enable features that might help others find them. Also, if you don’t have many remote followers, your posts won’t federate to as many other instances, and similarly, if someone limits who can follow them their posts (which may be fun & great) won’t travel as far. The latter isn’t a default enabled setting or anything, btw, but I think it may have a subtle effect on the general vibes of the space.

ladodger34,
@ladodger34@infosec.pub avatar

When that weird ass Wagner rebellion went down a few weeks ago, I followed the , , and hashtags and the news was just as up to the minute as anything on Twitter was. After the rebellion fizzled out, I just unfollowed the hashtags. I also happened to find some reliable accounts to follow that were knowledgeable about that part of the world.

I’m not even sure that any of those hashtags showed up in the ‘trending tags’ part of my app, though.

pruwybn,
@pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

This is so bizarre. Who is going around putting #tuesday or #wednesday on their posts? They want to capture the audience that wants to read more about what day it is?

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Thank you, my point exactly. And it’s literally like this every day.
It’s weird.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

To be fair, that is kind of the original point of hashtagging on platforms without full-text search.

For categorisation.

Zaktor,

From a brief browse, it looks like the day of the week is mostly hashtag spam, presumably for the purpose of trying to get noticed by using an easy and reliable trending hashtag. I saw one post about the Wednesday Addams TV show, but everything else was literally the day of the week. About half of the uses were in long lists of hashtags.

ScOULaris,
@ScOULaris@lemmy.world avatar

Because it’s just an incredibly small userbase made up mostly of tech/privacy enthusiasts as of right now.

StaggersAndJags,

Are tech/privacy enthusiasts known for being super into Wednesdays?

I'd expect them to be... I don't know, complaining about Prime Day sales today. Or taking about something remotely interesting. And I bet they are, but Mastodon isn't finding it.

ScOULaris,
@ScOULaris@lemmy.world avatar

Oh hell yeah they are. I’m a tech enthusiast, myself. Don’t even get me started on Wednesdays because I’ll never stop.

astral_avocado,
@astral_avocado@lemmynsfw.com avatar

They have 2 million active users supposedly, 10 times bigger than Lemmy.

ScOULaris,
@ScOULaris@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, that surprised me, actually.

I just took Mastodon for a spin only a week or so ago, and it felt much less active than most of the communities on here do. Just my anecdotal experience, though. I couldn’t find more than a handful of Twitter-migrated accounts on Mastodon that I cared to follow. There just wasn’t much happening on there that I’m interested in when I last checked. I’ll look again.

mojo,

because they nerf discoverability so hard. You wouldn’t be surprised they hate Lemmy and how it crawls instances so you can actually find their communities in the search feature. They strongly hate that for some reason, somehow about it hurting minorities or some shit. That tends to be their go to if you disagree with the hivemind’s stance on anything, that you must hate minorities.

ZodiacSF1969,

Lmao, yeh it sounds exactly like what I thought it would be. Attracts a certain type of person and politics.

PugJesus,
@PugJesus@kbin.social avatar

You must be the change you wish to see!

aleph,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I generally agree with this sentiment completely, but in this case the solution is beyond what I, as a single user, can achieve.

I’m wondering whether the hashtag ranking system could be filtered and tweaked to make the topics more varied and less boring.

AnonTwo,

Based on all the comments though, the reason seems to be baked into Mastodon's design

It seems to be a clash of what two groups of users want since a few seem to be happy with how Mastodon does it.

lohrun,
@lohrun@fediverse.boo avatar

This is an issue I’ve had with many social media sites, it can be really difficult to find content that is interesting to you. Sure the bigger sites will have some sort of recommendation algorithm but that breaks down at two places. The first, if you don’t follow or engage with enough content it doesn’t know what to recommend you (but how do you find content to follow and engage with if you are are new). The second, you start to notice a pattern with the recommendations especially on something like YouTube. I get recommended the same like 20-40 videos even when I mark “not interested.”

Laticauda,

I was going to mention that if it’s still growing the user base there may be some less interesting tags, but damn. Yeah, those are just really dull in a random way lol.

MyOpinion,

The hashtags are near unreadable and almost never interesting. Please capitalize each word.

Santcuff,

camelCaseForTheWin

Marxine,
@Marxine@lemmy.ml avatar

?

tootytootwoo,

The culture of Mastodon is currently super dull. It’s gotten a bit livelier from the Twitter migrations and a little more sanewashed as more normal takes came in, but it’s still got that “heh, ate some lasagna today. nice” atmosphere.

mojo,

mine are even worse, they should just gut the feature tbh

this is gen x level of entertainment, the same ones that preach no algorithms are somehow better

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