2 and 3 are massive. I'm on Mastodon, but am having a much better time on Bluesky. Mastodon is full of gatekeeping and policing and people complaining - Bluesky is just fun and interesting, like Twitter 12 years ago
The over policing thing is so true. I’ve gotten messages from techhub.social mods with warnings about making jokes that even hinted at breaking one of their precious rules. Like if I did something wrong, ban me I guess. It’s pretty clear I didn’t and the mod just wanted to flex his power towards me.
Not really. In terms of engaging with posts, oh my god, absolutely it's worse. Twitter and its clones suck when it comes to engaging with things people post (but Mastodon at least makes it a bit better by increasing the character limit). But there's just something different about following a hashtag versus following a Lemmy community. Like for example, when it comes to getting highly detailed, up-to-the-minute news about things, Mastodon beats Lemmy every time. Additionally, I can see people's random, one-off takes that wouldn't really warrant a post on Lemmy.
I would argue too that it's not even true that you should just be focused on following hashtags, but rather that you should be trying to do both.
To me, Lemmy is the type of place I could kill two hours; for Mastodon, it's maybe 15 minutes, but that doesn't make it inferior, just a different use-case. It's pretty apples-to-oranges.
See, I already know who I want to follow. I want to follow Nintendo. I want to follow Game Grumps. I want to follow my local pro wrestling indy. I want to follow MXRPlays.
But none of them are on the fediverse. Although, Andy Richter is on BlueSky. So that's something......I guess......
If you start following hashtags, then you find interesting people. There are also curated lists that you can sign up for. That will introduce you to a lot of new content.
IIRC there's an iOS only frontend that fills that niche.
Also there is a trending section but its hidden behind the "explore" page, along with the search function. One of many reasons I really don't like Mastodon.
There’s algorithms you can subscribe to and use to discover people based on your interests. Theres also algorithms that show you posts based on who you follow and what posts you like. You can also enable your normal Following feed to show you some algorithm posts
I'm following like 3 people. One is a bot that reposts things from twitter. One is a bot that posts local weather. And one is what I THOUGHT was Nintendo, but turns out it's just Nintendo@Lemmy.World.
The sayings potato/potahto and tomato/tomahto mean they're the same thing.
No one in their right mind would say a potato is a tomato or vice versa, just like no one would ever argue Portuguese and Spanish are the same. They're both of a category (veggies and languages respectively) but totally different and distinct items within that category.
Depends a bit on the type of person and content you want to follow. But if you like retro computer Shenanigans etc. I know action retro is on Lemmy and Mastodon and I follow them on mastodon. But yes General content for the normies probably not so much.
Nothing specific, just knowledge from those closer, and not likely they'll publicize ad spend, but uptick was seen. Bluesky ads started around April when they had the big influx after the first suspension. Overview, but not a reference: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cm2nkdkypk7o
I'm not on any of the services currently, but I have tried Mastodon in the past and point 4. was what made me bounce off it. I know Mastodon flaunts its algorithm-free feed as almost a point of pride, but as a user it just doesn't do it for me. I could not get it to serve me the type of content I wanted the way I wanted, and it just felt like way too much work for what I was looking for.
I solved this issue by following multiple tags that interest me. People tend to tag their posts on Mastodon it seems, so discovering posts about, say, wine and cacti is as easy as following #wine #cactus #cacti #redwine #oragewine and so on and so forth - it's working pretty good for me without an algorithm recommending stuff to me, maybe it's worth a try?
I'd still rather have algorithmic recommendations of what's been "hot" lately in the tags I follow over a chronological feed. But I'm considering giving Sharkey/Firefish/Iceshrimp another go.
Absolutely agree with point 2, not just for Mastodon, but others like here on Lemmy or Misskey or whatever it may be.
The process of finding an instance can sometimes be annoying because you might find an instance that sounds alright, like I did for Mastodon, and then find that there's the problem of sign-ups not available. That, and signing up for the instance I got on then had a waiting period for account review and all that before I could do anything.
I assume, from what I've heard, all you gotta do for threads and bluesky is just sign up and start posting with less effort, which is what the majority of people want.
There are some advantages to algorithms for discovery - it's certainly is more user friendly. It's just a shame they tend to enshitify or become toxic. Bluesky seem to offer an API of sorts to plug in feeds you create. Perhaps open algorithms are more accountable?
If Mastodon wins out in the long run the only reason will be persistence.
All these other "like Twitter but ______" micro blogging or whatever sites only stay viable while they're profitable.
If Bluesky or Threads become (net) unprofitable, they'll die. Mastodon is already unprofitable, so that can't kill it.
I think we could compete with #1 just by word of mouth.
For #2 some person or group needs to develop a Mastodon app (FOSS obviously) that has a "just do this part for me" option, probably automatically enabled.
#3 is on us. We have to do what we can to make Mastodon (and Lemmy) more open and accepting without falling pretty to the paradox of tolerance.
#4 is hard... Although I think if Mastodon follows or tries to replicate the "early" Facebook user experience where most or all of the content people got was from people they follow, that could be better. The only challenge is that algorithms tickle our anger/hate/disgust impulses to drive and maintain engagement. That's some very strong "lizard brain" stuff.