1y ago

Seeing how good Lemmy is makes me frustrated with Mastodon

My Problems with Mastodon

Even with growing pains accommodating an influx of new users, Lemmy has made it clear that a federated social media site can be nearly as good as the original thing. I joined Lemmy, and it exceeded my expectations for a Reddit alternative run by an independent team.

These expectations were originally pretty low when Mastodon, the popular federated Twitter alternative, was the only federated social media I had experience with. After using Lemmy, Mastodon seems to be missing basic features. I initially believed these were just shortcomings of federated social media.

Likes aren't counted by users outside your instance, and replies don't seem to be counted at all (beyond 0, 1, 1+), leading to posts that look like they have way more boosts (retweets) than likes or replies:
This incentivizes people to just gravitate toward the biggest instance more than people already do. My guess is that self-hosting a mastodon instance would also not be ideal, since the only likes you'll see are your own.
There's really only one effective ways to find popular or 'trending' posts. There's the explore tab which has 'posts', and 'tags' sections. The 'posts' section shows some trending posts across your instance and all the instances that it's federated with, this is the one I use it the most. The 'tags' section is a lot like the trending tab on Twitter, but it's reserved just for hashtags, which I guess isn't a huge deal, but it feels like a downgrade. However, I do like the trend line it shows next to each tag! The 'Local' and 'Federated' tabs are a live feed of post from your home instance and all the other instances, respectively. I feel these are pretty useless and definitely don't warrant their own tabs. Having a local trending tab for seeing popular posts on your instance would be more interesting.
The search bar basically doesn't work, is this just me???
This one is more minor and more specific to a Twitter alternative, but when looking at a user's follows, you'll only see the one's on your home instance but for some reason this rule doesn't apply to followers.

From what I've heard, a lot of these issues are intentional in order to create a healthier social media experience. Things like less focus on likes, reduces a hivemind mentality, addiction, things like that (I couldn't find a source for this, if anyone has one confirming or disproving this please lmk).

Why this is a Problem

Mastodon seems to have two goals: To be an example of how a federated alternative to Twitter can work well, and to be a healthier social media experience. It's not obvious, but I think these goals conflict with each other. A lot of the features that are removed in the pursuit of a healthier social media will be perceived as the shortcomings of federation as a concept.

In my eyes, Mastodon's one main goal should be proving federated social media as a whole to the public, by being a seamless, familiar, full-featured alternative to Twitter. For me, Lemmy has done that for Reddit, upvotes are counted normally, you can see trending posts locally and globally same with communities, and the search function works! All its shortcomings aren't design flaws, and I fully expect them to be fixed down the road as it matures.

As annoying as Jack Dorsey is, I have high hopes for BlueSky.

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175 comments

This is a feature, not a bug. Clout-chasing is what kills corporate/surveillance social media. Get over fantasy Internet points and start providing and consuming actual content.
I'd like to see "trending" removed entirely from Mastodon. I don't give a shit what people at large think is important or cool or funny or whatnot. I care what my social circle thinks is important or cool or funny or whatnot. And for that? I've got my feed. Get over algorithmically spoon-fed statements of what you should care about and, you know, interact. On social media.
The search bar works, just not in the way any sane person would expect it to work. It's badly designed, badly named, and badly implemented.
This is an unfortunate side effect of distributed social media. Federation is already a huge bottleneck for the Fediverse. Adding social graph follows to the list of things being transmitted around willy-nilly is a bandwidth killer. Any social media that is truly distributed (read: not BlueSky) will have the same issue.
- is the reason many of us were on Twitter to begin with. I never kept to with friends there, but I really liked seeing breaking news, etc. It was useful and functional. Madstodon is not useful in this way, which breaks one of the key features many of us want in a Twitter replacement.
  Sounds like I need to look at this Fish place instead.
  
  That's me. Besides the ads/promotion/tracking shit pre-elon Twitter was doing pretty much exactly what I want from it. It was mostly for the parasocial relationships not for keeping up with actual friends. I'd get news and announcements straight from the source quickly and even with a verified checkmark to help ensure I wasn't getting trolled. Now it's trash.
  
  Big agree, Twitter I previously used to see "what's happening" in the world outside my little bubble
  
  That's what makes threads like this so interesting to me. I never got into Twitter(despite many attempts literally since it was first released) but absolutely love Mastodon. And sometimes I read these threads and just think...what?
  But in reality it just comes down to your individual use case and whether the specific thing that Mastodon is actually fits that use case.
  Until this thread, for example, I didn't know there was such a thing as a trending tab and I didn't know there was a problem seeing people's follows because it would never have occurred to me to look.
  I use the advanced interface and, while I do follow people, very very rarely pull up the home feed. My columns are all crafting hashtags and my local feed because I'm on a crafting-focused server.
  If you're into following topics, Mastodon is a great time. If you're into following people or you want to to kept up to date with the outside world then I can definitely understand not being a fan.
  
  I tried following #ukraine on Mastodon, but I got spammed by repost bots so it just completely clogged my feed
  
  I think this disconnect here on Lemmy comes from why people use the platforms they did before (Reddit vs Twitter).
  Reddit was always purely content focused, and I feel people trying out Mastodon from Lemmy are expecting the same thing - where Mastodon is about content, and not people you want to follow.
  I also love Mastodon as well and I don't think the issues people are posting about in here are issues at all either, as Mastodon being about directly connecting with people and a purely chronological feed is why I like it - if I want to search content relating to a topic, I browse Lemmy instances instead.
  
  If you wanted spoon-fed content, then yes, Twitter is the place for you! And you know what? It's still there!
  I left Twitter because of the spoon-fed content and the algorithmic attempts to "engage" me by fostering outrage and am happy that Mastodon thus far does not have this misfeature. If you want that misfeature Twitter is still there. So is BlueSky (eventually). So is Threads. So is Instagram. So is Facebook. There's an embarrassment of choice for the pabulum crowd. Please don't bring it here.
- Seeing upvotes on posts is literally why you're using Lemmy right now. Advertising / engagement driven media can exploit our desire to get feedback on what we say but getting feedback on what we say is not a new or novel phenomena, it's a fundamental part of human nature and why we converse. It's literally the exact same reason why doing a zoom presentation with cameras on, so that you can read body language, is better than cameras off, where you feel like you're talking to an empty uncaring void.
  If you want to catch up with you family and friends go outside and talk to them or call them, or hell, set up your instance and only allow their posts to come through. The rest of the world users twitter to connect with the Twitterverse not their neighbours.
  I see no reason it would be any harder than Lemmy syncing upvotes acros ls thousands and thousands of comments.
  
  First, I don't give a shit at all about the upvote counts (and even less of a shit about the downvote counts) on Lemmy. To the point I have them concealed. Second, so you're saying a different piece of software with different goals does things differently? WOW WHAT AN OBSERVATION! YOU SHOULD GO APPLY FOR A NOBEL PRIZE, GOOD SIR!
  Please point to where I said "family"? (Hint: this is not possible.)
  You see no reason, ergo there is no reason, Q.E.D. You, sir, are also a consummate logician.
  
  It's a different piece of software with the same user facing goals, fostering online discussion in community run communities centered around different topics.
  Please look up what a semantic argument is, and then realize you're missing the point.
  Sooooo....
  You claimed something was impossible,
  I pointed to an instance of it being possible that we're using right now
  you mocked me for being too logical? Ok.

175 comments