this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Basically it’s “I can’t get ✨ engagement ✨ on Mastodon”
People want big amounts of likes and reposts you don’t get that on Mastodon, the system is too distributed for that.
Bluesky gives them the big numbers
They want an algorithm.
As much as people mock it, or know it’s the source of why social media optimizes for outrage and other unhealthy behaviors, the algorithm is what they are missing on Mastodon.
As someone who always used third party Twitter apps, and never directly saw the algorithm in my timeline, mastodon feels like Twitter always did.
Yep. Actually brave to say this given the fever that word throws people into. But not only is everything literally an algorithm, including “show your subscriptions in chronological order” but we all want a little more than that because it’s easy to imagine how one frequent poster would throw that experience off completely. We need to talk about what we want from algorithms and lay down this narrative that we must stamp them out of existence.
This is exactly why I just could not get into mastodon, and probably Twitter-likes in general
There's no way, atleast at the time, to sort by top of the day. No way to see what was trending across the larger fediverse, no real way to find new and interesting things every hour on the hour
Lemmy is thankfully significantly better with this, and it's honestly become my go-to social app now
Some people don't want a suggestion algorithm but do want full reply federation.
Alec from Technology Connections stopped using mastodon because of this, every post he made would get nitpicked on by 20 different people from instances who did not federate the replies with each other so each reply guy thought they were the first.
I have a single user instance and I use a relay, but most replies are still missing if I click on a post unless I go to the original webpage.
Lazy-federating replies when a post is viewed sounds like an obvious solution but AFAIK the mastodon devs are very opposed to this.
I would not have guessed that reply guys replying to really popular accounts would ever check if their reply is a duplicate.
I didn’t catch that this is why Alec stopped posting there. I assumed he was just being sensitive to being a public figure in general.
When you make a channel that is filled with “well actually” and “turns out.” You should expect your audience is into doing the same.
And when you don’t have an algorithm filtering these for you… well, then you get the reality of other people’s interactions. Twitter just optionally hides this reality from big accounts. (I’m talking about what they use to label “low quality replies” or something similar.)
The federation issues of replies/boosts/hearts/etc are still a big bummer, though.
He was really popular on twitter, and if he says mastodon's worse despite having a smaller audience there, I trust his judgement. Literally his pinned toot.
"First replies shown are the ones the author replied to and/or liked" seems like an obvious, simple, and transparent algorithm. Like youtube comments. Give lazy reply guys an opportunity to see without scrolling down that they aren't as original as they think they are. The fact that this isn't implemented in even a basic form is absolutely insane and shows a very fundamental ideological disconnect between people who want "open twitter with decent moderation" and whatever the fuck it is that the mastodon OGs/devs are trying to achieve.
Damn we can’t get influencers? How will we live.
we need People to tell us what to like!!!
Mastodon is fantastic for niche things. For example myself and my colleagues use it for work stuff and I also use it with a few friends for gaming. that's it. Beyond that if you're going to Mastodon to reach a lot of people and chase clout or what have you you're gonna have a bad time. you'll just be shouting to the void in many cases. I also use it to connect with people using linux for help and suggestions.
But just read feeds on Bluesky and you'll see many people, probably the vast majority, just say they want something that "just works" and them trying to use Mastodon was too difficult. They didn't understand the instances and what have you. It's a generation that's been raised on downloading an app, tapping on it, and it works. Login with your google, facebook, or apple id...that's it.
People these days simply don't want to do too much to use something. they don't want to customize their online experience like we used to do years ago. If it doesn't instantly "work" right out of the box, they won't use it. And even regardless of how much they'll complain about using it and all it's bugs and foibles (X/Twitter, Windows 11, etc) they'll continue to use it cause, again, "it just works".
"Freedom of choice Is what you got Freedom from choice Is what you want" -Devo
Who is this wise sage, Devo? Are they internet search, wait the 80's band with the construction helmets?
Whip it? Whip it good??
’80s* band
Yeah that looks better! Ty.
People want to socially interact on a platform with the intention of letting you socially interact. I understand Mastodon intends to do the same thing as.BlueSky so the question is why is BlueSky more.popular.
As someone who uses both. Mastodon's UI and signup process is not as straight toward at least that is my personal reason why.
The reasons mentioned in the article:
I think that's saying the content tends to be very niche and it's hard to find people with similar non-tech interests.
and
This lines up with my experience: it's hard to find people with similar interests. Even when you do, people aren't saying much of interest.
Yep, same problem Lemmy has vs reddit. Only the nerdiest tech nerds got on here. Not many communities from reddit or just in general here. For example, I had to go back to reddit for a good sized general anime community. It's that or fucking 4chan, and no thanks on the latter.
To me, Lemmy feels very much a giant technology board with a few memes.
But I will say, the past few days, Bluesky has gotten a lot more interesting.
I've had the same experience. I still post here because I want the platform to take off, but Lemmy doesn't fulfill my needs.
The last part I think happens because the people who are there are most likely the ones that dislike very short content, which is what Mastodon offers by default (I know it depends on instance, some allow 1k or 5k character toots), but it's a disorganized mess. It's a kind of service/software for fast communication that can be done better in a specific Discord server. The "good stuff" will always end up posted elsewhere, like personal blogs or websites, where it's better organized (most of the time)
One thing that keeps people on xitter is the "it's where I get the news". Major news outlets aren't on Mastodon and likely won't be. There's also the stuff that "you get to know before it becomes news", which also won't be on Mastodon because it lacks the "gossipers" and the mass of users that is needed for having people "everywhere"
It's not the gossipers, it's a trending view. Mastodon doesn't tell users about active conversations as they happen. That makes it really hard to get breaking news, because you need to be following someone who is posting about it AND you need to recognize that it's breaking news.
Maybe that has improved in the year or two since I used Mastodon.
It's not a place for lurking, IMO. If you've got nothing to offer, don't expect to get engagement on shitposts and rage-bait.
I personally get more engagement on Mastodon, because I couldn't please the twitter algorithm. And I have 7 times fewer followers on Masto than I had on twitter.
Organic reach is best reach. Everything else is noise.