I don't understand what anyone uses twitter, bluesky or mastodon for anymore. I used twitter to follow companies (like CoffeeStain) or YouTubers/Artists.
Bluesky has some of that, meanwhile mastodon is just a circle pit of yelling and also the same stuff I see on Lemmy.
I don't understand what people use it for. There's no information to follow like company game accounts for games I play, and when I tried to do goofy shitposts like old twitter i got a grand total of 0 likes.
I use masto for myself, not for likes. I use it to get SilentSunday and Mosstodon photos and to goof around with people I meet in the online space.
Sure it'd be nice to see a like or a response to a shit post, but for that you need to be followed by people who share your sensibilities, as there's no algorithm boosting your stuff into other people's timelines. Unless you use a relevant hashtag that's being followed by others.
I moved from Twitter to Mastodon when Elon bought Twitter. I think what you saw on Mastodon was a product of what you were following (people and hashtags).
The other nice thing happening somewhat recently is that I can follow Bluesky (through a bridge) and Threads (some accounts now, more as federation between the platforms matures).
Not being able to follow the brands you want is just a symptom of them not being on these platforms yet. I follow a few news outlets, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kagi search, Vivaldi browser, Cloudflare, Mozilla, The Internet Archive, etc.
I'm hoping more show up on these platforms with time and that BS and Threads actually do integrate more fully with Mastodon.