Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
Mastodon has the responsibility to promote diversity in the Fediverse
I love the Threadiverse. Compared to the microblogging Fediverse’s sea of random thoughts, Lemmy and kbin are so much easier to navigate with the options to sort posts by subscribed, from local instances or everything federated. You can also sort by individual community, and then there are the countless ways to order the posts and comments (which are stored neatly under the main post, by the way). That people can more easily find the right discussions and see where they can contribute also means that the discussions tend to be more focused and productive than elsewhere. Decentralisation also makes a lot of sense, since it is built around different communities. All that’s needed is users.
Things were going quite well for a while when Reddit killed third-party apps, prompting many to leave and find the Threadiverse. However, it is quite difficult to entertain a crowd that has grown accustomed to a constant bombardment of dopamine-inducing or interesting content by tens of millions of users, if you only have a couple hundred thousand people. This is causing some to leave, which of course increases this effect. The active users have more than halved since July, according to FediDB. The mood is also becoming more tense. Maybe the lack of engagement drives some to cause it through hostility, I’m not quite sure. Either way, the Threadiverse becoming a less enjoyable place to be, which is quite sad considering how promising it is.
But what is really frustrating is that we could easily have that userbase. The entire Fediverse has over ten million users, and many Mastodonians clearly want to engage in group-based discussion, looking at Guppe groups. The focused discussions should also be quite attractive. Technically we are federated, so why do Mastodonians interact so little with the Threadiverse? The main reason is that Mastodon simply doesn’t federate post content. I really can’t see why the platform that federates entire Wordpress blogs refuses to federate thread content just because it has a title, and instead just replaces the body with a link to the post. Very unhelpful.
The same goes with PeerTube. There are plenty of videos on there that I am quite sure a lot of Mastodonians would appreciate, yet both views and likes there stay consistently in the tens. Yes, Mastodon’s web interface has a local video player, but in most clients it is the same link shenanigans, may may partly explain the small amount of engagement. This is also quite sad, because Google’s YouTube is one of the worst social network monopolies out there, if not the worst.
And I know some might say that Mastodon is a microblogging platform and that it makes sense only to have microblogging content, but the problem is that Mastodon is the dominant platform on the Fediverse, its users making up close to 80% of all Fedizens. It has gone so far that several Friendica and Hubzilla users have been complaining about complaints from Mastodonians that their posts do not live up to Mastodon customs, and of course, that people frequently use “Mastodon” to refer to the entire Fediverse. This, of course, goes entirely against the idea of the Fediverse, that many diverse platforms live in harmony with and awareness of each other.
The very least that Mastodon could do is to support the content of other platforms. Then I’d wish that they’d improve discoverability, by for instance adding a videos tab in the explore section, improving federation of favourites since it is the dominant sorting mechanism on many other platforms, and making a clear distinction between people (@person) and groups (!group), but I know that that is quite much to ask.
P.S. @feditips , @FediFollows , I know that you are reluctant to promote Lemmy and its communities because of the ideology of its founders, but the fact is firstly that it’s open source and there aren't any individual people who control the entire project, and that the software itself is very apolitical. In fact, most Lemmy users both oppose and are on instances that have rules against such beliefs, so I highly encourage you to at least help raise awareness on the communities. Then, of course, there’s kbin, which isn’t associated with any extremism at all. As a bonus, it has much better integration with the microblogging Fediverse, but it is a lot smaller and younger, and still very much under development.
Anyways, that was a ramble. Thanks for hearing me out.
I just found this list of the current top 10,000 most followed users on the Mastodon part of the fediverse. It's interesting to see what the fediverse looks like from that perspective. I do wish we had something like this fediverse wide but appreciate the work that has gone into compiling this list specifically for Mastodon. #fediverse#mastodonmost-followed-masotodon-accoun…
Increasingly I'm finding #LinkedIn to be the best of the "normy" social media platforms. #Mastodon is where I have conversations, LinkedIn is where I follow industry trends and try not to become nauseated with the hustle culture nonsense.
I don't see how #Threads or #BlueSky really fit in to my mental conceptions of what I want out of social media. But LinkedIn, eh, it serves a purpose.
If any #lawfedi or @law folks are similarly straddling both worlds, look me up.
My year with Mastodon (#MastodonWrapped)
I celebrated my first #Mastoversary a few days ago. It’s been a good first year on Mastodon for me; I like the #Fediverse idea, I like people here, and I like the calm vibe this place offers.
Also, I ditched all of my other #SocialMedia accounts. All but one.¹
As I say, Mastodon is a good #platform to be, however there are a couple of things I’ve been struggling with the whole time. I’m going to put together a brief summary below in hope that someone can help me with them.
¹ I still keep Instagram to exchange cute pics of sloths and pandas, and ice-hockey reels with my sons. 😁
@xl8freelancer
Caveat: These tips work for the web interface. I don't use any apps.
When looking at someone else's profile you can eliminate boosts by clicking on the "Posts and Replies" tab. Still has replies but does leave out boosts.
Do you know about Just My Toots? Here's an link for my posts:
I should take a break from whining about #ActivityPub to crow about my big breakthrough. Today, I successfully sent my first messages and replies between #Emissary and #Mastodon. And all it required was a complete overhaul the custom ActivityPub outbox.
It’s a small step forward, but a huge milestone for me. Hopefully, it will translate to big wins for other devs who can use my #Golang libraries in the future.
Do you need help with using Mastodon and the Fediverse? Especially if you're a beginner or unsure about techy things?
You can ask by messaging me or replying to this thread, and I'll try to help or find someone else who can help. Don't worry if a question seems silly or basic!
You can also look things up on the guide at https://fedi.tips, which has an "essentials" section at the top and a complete list of answered questions below that.
We're the George Lansbury Memorial Trust, set up in 2012 to commemorate the life of George Lansbury; the life-long campaigner for social justice.
George started life as a radical Liberal, became a socialist in the early 1890s & joined the Social Democratic Federation, Independent Labour Party, and then finally a Labour MP in 1922, leading the Party in the early 1930s.
@academicchatter I recently published something on my personal website for the first time, and accidentally bumped into some interesting data on the #academic reach of #socialmedia.
I shared the content on #Mastodon first (November 1), and on #Twitter the day after. On November 20 I edited the post here, leading to two new boosts.
My toot received 6 boosts and 7 stars; my tweet got 6 retweets and 38 hearts. Yet, in terms of website traffic the two dates of Mastodon activity outperform Twitter.
"in terms of website traffic the two dates of Mastodon activity outperform Twitter"
If I'm reading this correctly, I think this means that Mastodon users are more likely to visit a website and read the article (at least some of it) than X/Twitter users?
Do I know anyone here who is willing to share their experience deploying an institutional Mastodon server? A contact of mine is looking for someone to discuss the experience as he works on getting a government agency to deploy their own instance. Boosts appreciated #fediverse#mastodon
Just wanted to note that it was about this time last year when many of us migrated over from Twitter and kept the #AllStarTrek community going on #Mastodon. I’m so glad I kept some old #StarTrek friends and made some new ones. @allstartrek
@Oozenet@RichardShaw@srfirehorseart@radlschorsch@academicchatter@edutooters I must say that saddens me. Many were put off by the 'complexity' here. Perhaps that was fair, but also unfortunate, as this place has improved vastly in terms of features and UI, but by the time this has happened, most have left and won't give a second look. #Mastodon was almost too ready but not ready enough last year!