I had been spending quite some time on mastodon, but lately realized that it just isn’t for me.
Mastodon is very focused on individuals, not as much on content. I’m not saying there isn’t a need for mastodon, and I’m happy it’s there, but my main use case is contacting (semi) public figures or software-support there, which happens rarely. Curating a feed that is both interesting to me and "high quality" without being overrun doesn’t seem feasible.
Lemmy is much more focused on content. You don’t follow people, you follow topics or interests and get the things surfaced that the most people in that interest group appreciate. The discussions work much better (Twitter-like reply’s are just one huge bag of trash). It also doesn’t matter who the people are behind the content, as long as it’s interesting it will find an audience.
Just something that I’ve been thinking about. Any thoughts on this?
I think masto and indie/fedi microblogging makes sense for seeing the empherial now that you are interested not topic based content. (Especially on small niche instances via the local feed) its a also great way to meet like minded people and build longer lasting connections as you see more of a person via their stream than only seeing them in niche spaces. Granted many people single topic their accounts, but masto is way more personal and less influencer type accounts than Twitter was, though those accounts exist too. You can still follow topics, but that's a way of finding new people with shared interests not necessarily only deep diving in a topic.
Lemmy and topic forums in general are great at deep diving in a topic, but since you stay in the niche while you might see people frequent in that niche you really don't have those longer interactions. Some forum communities try to mitigate this by having general chat posts or chat rooms on the side.
Different kinds of social media have their strengths.
Fair point. There’s definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.