this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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I got sent an invite ages ago. I've jumped in every so often but I am always shocked by how crap it is. Mastodon is so much better.
IKR? I'm disappointed that most of my favorite artists went there, instead of something like Mastodon
People like to pretend Mastodon is confusing
Mastodon is confusing mostly because it doesn't help you in any way, it just sits there and goes "you have no feeds". Well what am I supposed to do about that?
There doesn't seem to be a "discover" feature so you have to just magically know the usernames people already on the platform and then add them.
This is at the top of all of the mastodon servers I have an account on. If someone lacks the curiosity to click the word explore, then that is on them, not on the tech.
The cries of every dev throughout programming history. Why are the users so stupid?
But the thing is, uses are stupid. People get confused if you put "sign in" instead of "log in'. If lots of people think that Mastodon is confusing then Mastodon is confusing. The consensus cannot be wrong. You might disagree with it but it cannot be wrong.
It requires a UX overhaul by someone who actually understands UX and researches it. I used to do UX as my job specialization and trust me everyone thinks it's easy and it isn't.
I actually don't disagree much about the Dev/UX parts of your comment. But you should take note that I was replying to the statement:
There is a discover people feature on my app at least.
I also kind of like it not to be bombarded with a useless algorithm just so i can doomscroll more. If you curate your feed with nice people and hashtags you get lots of traffic and if that gets too much you just make lists of topics within them.
I'm pretty sure at least when I started using Twitter that there was a kind of what are you interested in questionnaire. You'd fill that out and it'll give you a list of people you might be interested in you then select the ones you wanted.
Is it's a bit difficult to work out how you're supposed to start
Ah well afaik there is no such thing but i started looking for hashtags of my hobbies and found some nice profiles.
After you follow a few of them you can look into the recommended tab and will see quite a few similar people.
Someone here also told me about LisaMelton. She will throw many cool things into your timeline if you follow her.
Pretend? I'm a computer nerd and I put off signing up for Mastodon for months because of how complicated it is. I completely understand why normies nope the hell off.
What people don't understand is that you're the algorithm on mastodon. You're doing the work.
I'm on it and it's actually my best experience on social media for a long long time. People are nice and discussions aren't toxic like on others. But, it comes with the cost to be the algorithm.
Yeah once you're on it it's pretty great, although still a bit confusing with how the federation works. But learning what you should think about when choosing an instance, benefits of niche and general instances, big and small instances, what to do if you end up regretting your choice, how to find and add your friends and if they're on an instance that federates with yours or not, learning about Mastodon privacy when it comes to posts and "DMs", instance security etc etc etc. It's a lot.
Im an idiotic old man who can barely repair my PC anymore and it was very easy to make an account here and on mastodon. Dunno what people are on about.
It's not creating the account that is the problem. It's learning what you should know about the instance you choose, then choosing an instance, and understanding how the federation of posts work. Etc.
The downvotes on this are just strange. What impetus could there be for continuing to push the narrative that mastodon or lemmy are 'difficult' to sign up for and use? My wife(46) and mother(67), who are both technically impaired, signed up on the same day I did...
The process is so simple: All we did was google 'mastodon canada' and 'lemmy canada,' Then signed up for mstdn.ca and lemmy.ca.
Next steps? Nothing different than any other social site... Fill out the profile (like any other site) start looking for people and tags to follow (like any other site) and then bookmark the main page (like any other site).
This is ridiculous. Please turn in your nerd card.
More like people like to act smug and pretend it isn't.
I found it and Lemmy frustrating to get started tbh. Besides the flagship instances early on finding a server I could actually join was a lot of research and trial and error.
As an amateur artist, mastodon is really not friendly to newcomers like me.
I had to figure out what an instance was and pick one (I chose mastodon.art since I was interested in that)
After wondering why I couldn't find other people's accounts, it turned out that I shouldn't have picked that instance because it had defederated from almost anyone else.
So now I had to create another account in another instance, which turned out to be so full my posts were not getting any traction.
With Bluesky I just created an account and I immediately gained a few followers
It is just not worth the hastle.
Disappointed that you're downvoted, because you're right.
And it actually made me remember my experience few months ago on that exact same Mastodon instance, mastodon.art--they blocked almost every other instance!!! Even something like kbin.social mind you! I don't even know why they did it, I think they said something like alt-right content (CMIIW), but in my experience using kbin.social, I've never seen those kind of content. The worst thing I've seen from kbin.social is just... porn. It's a good instance over all
Sometimes I think defederation is what's going to ruin fediverse. I get that it's necessary, but if done like this, it's a bad thing.
I think if I'm gonna recommend Mastodon, I'm going to just recommend them the most popular instance. IMO the best thing about fediverse is that many different instance can talk to eachother, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to be "centralized"
Mastodon.art is well-known for being trigger-happy at blocking and usually even frame false accusations, their trch.lgbt block has made people lose any trust on them, but there are still people still think they are doing good while in fact they cause more harm tho
at least now we can just subscribe with RSS to get updates and actually have the links be usable
I don't get the hate, I've been there for a year and the place is pretty cool with many writers and artists that aren't on Mastodon. It feels like twitter on the good days. Maybe if you curate your friend list better you would get a better timeline?
I had the exact opposite reaction when I got my invite a few months after jumping ship to Mastodon. Mastodon just doesn’t have good discoverability and didn’t have a lot of the people I used to follow on Twitter. Bluesky’s feeds feature solves the discoverability problem; I’ve already found way more people I want to follow on there than on my entire time on Mastodon.
Mastodon is great if you want a social media site that'll have people shout at you for not putting a Content Warning on a post about you eating a ham sandwich.
When I do something that offends you: this is real life and you need to accept it bigot
When you do something that offends me: PUT A WARNING ON THAT
Same, it seems like a bunch of people that want to get off twitter but don't pull the plug so bluesky is thier backup plan in case it doesn't work out.