I switched away from Twitter for all the problems since Musk took over and there is no end in sight as their revenues continue to crumble, moderation and infrastructure breaks down and so on.
Mastodon feels very mature on the provided functionality level, but lacks in many areas.
When to expect a proper inclusion of algorithms? For example I like some accounts, but they flood my timeline into unusability due to high post frequency.
I was trying to search for more news with the #reddit hashtag and get mostly shown irrelevant gonewild posts.
I prefer the Elk UI for various reasons as it seems to be more mature. However trends, hashtags, especially clustered by countries or language is inaccessible on it and the popularities what the hot topics are never feel right, missing out on usable information.
There is a lack of focus on the like button, leaving a lot of engagement and interesting stuff on the table. I do not quite understand why reposts only function as a boost instead of a possible accompanied comment.
As Twitter has still the primary status, many official accounts of companies simply do not exist on Mastodon. Sometimes entire communities are still strongly tied to Twitter and one can only hope to catch crossposts from the birdsite on it.
But I do not see myself on Twitter anymore, because the content is overall quality wise up there and just about broad enough to feel informed about random happenings in the world.
What is your future outlook for Mastodon?
I solved that “gone wild” problem simply by muting that account. After that my #reddit search started working as intended.
Speaking of searches, I’m really interested in a bunch of topics, so making certain searches frequently seems like the only way to see interesting stuff on Mastodon. So far, I haven’t figured out how to make a specific feed for specific hashtags. Actually, I think I need like 10 feeds for different purposes. Since I haven’t found a way to do that, there’s not much to read on Mastodon unless I do specific searches deliberately.
I don’t really care about people, so following them never really made much sense to me. I have found some people I almost care about, so I followed them, but now my feed is full of stuff that I might care about only a few times a year. Did I say there’s hardly anything to read on Mastodon?
I tried following some news on Mastodon, but there are some accounts that post stuff every 20 minutes, so now I have a feed with 99% of the content is taken over by a single account. I wish there was a way to group these accounts so that all the news stuff would be in one place and all the FOSS people are in another place. There has got to be a way to make this work, but I just haven’t figured it out yet.
Algorithms in Mastodon are rather unlikely, for a couple of reasons.
- There is no central view. Your home instance could only work on what it can see, so either toots originating there or by someone followed from it.
- The dev behind Mastodon already stated he doesn’t want algorithms.
I personally like it that way. I prefer that it feels like a Social Network, not something harvesting my attention. My algorithm for finding new accounts to follow are the recommendations of those I’m already following based on their retoots, as I trust that judgement more than that of some unclear algorithm that can be played by clever keywords.
Algorithms are required either way. You know what will happen when Mastodon dominates and no solution is brought up for transparent algorithms?
There will be secondary accounts “pre-posting” to harvest engagement data and then schedule posts at perfect times in their main accounts. Of course only few will be able to do that, and it would blast the platform into Facebook.
Because too active accounts have to be muted, accounts posting only sometimes very useful information will get buried.
The simplest of algorithms to prevent post floods are absolutely required.
I’ve noticed some of the same issues as you. I was never a big Twitter user other than following sports journalists for news and none of them have moved. Twitter didn’t start with big names either though so hopefully Mastodon continues to grow until it eventually can draw some bigger accounts.
I switched to Mastodon simply because I really enjoy the concept of the fediverse. The internet should be a free and open space for anyone.
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