I love:

  1. The users/community
  2. That it is a viable alternative to twitter for me
  3. That it had so many people on there
  4. That the development is community funded
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
    8·
    4 years ago

    I find Mastodon is strictly better than Twitter at this point. The UI shows more useful info with the column layout, and feels snappier because it doesn’t have ads and trackers baked in. Meanwhile, federation means that you don’t have a single entity deciding what goes for everybody. Anyone can make their own community and run it any way they like. I also find that the federation model results in smaller and friendlier communities around shared interests.

    In general, I think that it’s really important to decommericalize social media. Commercial platforms exist to monetize the users, and they ultimately don’t have user interests at heart. These platforms have been shown to be invasive and unhealthy, they use opaque methods to curate content, and they tend to work closely with governments.

    Platforms like Mastodon and Lemmy have none of the problems associated with commercial ones because they don’t aim to monetize the users of the platform. Open source projects are developed by the users for the users. There is no incentive to keep users constantly engaged, push ads, or track users. This creates a drastically different user experience that’s not designed to exploit the user and turn them into a commodity.

    One simple example is that Mastodon allows you to disable notifications for likes and retoots, you can just ignore them completely. So you can just see when people reply to your posts and actually interact with you. This small change makes a huge difference in the experience. And this is precisely the kind of feature that simply can’t exist on a service like Twitter because that would result in lower engagement.

    There’s now a whole federation of such open source services using ActivityPub, and I really think it’s the future of social media. The federation is inherently decentralized, with servers being run by regular people across the globe. You can find communities that focus on your particular interests, and there’s no single entity deciding how the platform should work for everybody. This approach is also more resilient to censorship as servers are located in many countries across many different jurisdictions. This is precisely the way internet was originally meant to work before it got commercialized and turned into the nightmare that it is today.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
        1·
        4 years ago

        Oh hey, good to see you here as well :)

        And I ended up making a bot that can mirror Twitter to Mastodon that might be of interest if you want to see stuff from Twitter Js community on Mastodon.

        Regarding email v2, I think we’re kind of already in that scenario now. All the major social media sites are walled gardens. The reason fediverse took off in the first place is because a lot of people want a decentralized and social media open platform. Now that it exists I don’t think it’s going to go away.

        Also agree that I’d like to see grassroots orgs use fediverse. I actually ended up writing a bit on the subject in the we must own our tools article.

        Following Lemmy from Mastodon will be pretty neat. I’m hoping you’d be able to follow communities as well and treat that like you newsfeed.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
            1·
            4 years ago

            Thanks, glad you to hear you enjoyed the article, and I’ve been meaning to set up write.as at some point but haven’t had the time to do more writing. Might set it up at some point and put my newsletter articles there.

            And yeah it looks like there won’t be fediration with Mastodon in the near future, but sounds like we’ll get there eventually.

    • cloudycloud
      2·
      4 years ago

      Platforms like Mastodon and Lemmy have none of the problems associated with commercial ones because they don’t aim to monetize the users of the platform.

      This also means the developers or those running an instance might run into money problems and be cheaper for someone to buy to sell their data.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
        3·
        4 years ago

        That’s true, but that still requires making deal with each instance operator on case by case basis. With a centralized platform you get access to the whole network all at once. I do think that it would be good to have some sort of a crowd funding model for ensuring that instance operators are able to operate without needing to resort to something like selling user data. At the end of the day it’s a question of creating the right incentives.

  • dignity
    5·
    4 years ago

    I found lot of open and friendly people on Mastodon and not only bot.

    • kernel
      6·
      4 years ago

      Do you have any recommendations on how to find friendly/interesting people? My local/federated timeline is mostly trash.

      • dignity
        4·
        4 years ago

        try to find a smaller instance with your interests and use filters.

      • pinkpriusOP
        1·
        4 years ago

        Every time you think someone is cool/worth following/interesting go through their following list and check out who they are following. You will have to click on the list on the profile on their server, not in the web UI because your server won’t know all people they are following.

  • Arden
    5·
    4 years ago

    Approachable people, it’s a great community to find people around the 'verse.

    Pretty easy moderation tools for your own timeline so you can block who yo uneed to, and CWs etc

    I like the fun bots people make to experiment with, eg Tartan Generator, Levels Checker. I just made my own first bot to try it out which is a port of a specific function of a discord bot I made earlier (@ruemorgue@botsin.space, yeah even bots have their own instance heh), and that bots are clearly marked.

  • ant
    5·
    4 years ago

    Everyone seems pretty friendly, there’s a good amount of technical resources on the technology instance, feeds are not manipulated by anyone but the user, and most of all it lacks the dread-inducing background radiation of worshipping corporate overlords that exists on Twitter, Facebook, etc

  • Maya
    3·
    4 years ago

    I love how there are spaces where i, a relative normie, get to interact amicably with people who might hide their weirdness or niche interests otherwise. it’s remarkable to that it’s both that open (they don’t know me) yet feels safe enough.

  • leanleft
    3·
    4 years ago

    text based. light on resources. overwhelmingly liberal.

  • Aeolun
    2·
    4 years ago

    I like that the community is smaller, and therefore almost by default a lot better.

  • sgtnasty
    2·
    4 years ago

    Its not twitter and flooded with idiot celebrities.

  • trokhymchuk
    2·
    4 years ago

    There are many instances which are focused on some things (technology, privacy, etc.). It is cool for separating different communities and because of the federative network you can follow anybody.

  • Kamui
    2·
    4 years ago

    For me: Friendly community, freedom to be myself, openness, and decentralized!

  • SirLotsaLocks
    1·
    4 years ago

    The amount of people, generally with things like this the communities are small but mastodon is massive.