Here's my most recent Mastodon experience / observations:
- No idea which server I should be joining
- No idea who the recommended users are.. why should I follow them? I’m looking for familiar brands / sources of information
- Hard to scan recommended users. I don’t care to see their banner and number of followers, I just want to see a profile picture, name, and bio.
- No easy way to follow people without clicking to their bio every time
- Main client “what’s on your mind” box is kind of annoying
- Not many interesting users, hard to find any interesting content
- I like that they show trending hashtags, easy to get into the conversation
- Like https://joinmastodon.org/ and how you can join right from there, no lengthy explanations
- UI is fast
- No bitcoin content, refreshing in the short term, but I might miss it in the long term.
My very first, second and now 3rd attempt to test out Mastodon has ended the same - didn't find any interesting content or people, no reason to stick around. From memory, it feels a bit more neutral than BlueSky, but still left-leaning and a bit negative.
What Mastodon would need for me to consider it: Following of topics and users who talk about those topics. I'd want an improved UI too - Id probably look at some of the other clients, the main joinmastodon client UI is not that great.
People will tell you to use Lemmy or kbin instead if you're topic focused. But those are totally unnecessary. Just create accounts on forums and blogs like it was before reddit.
You can indeed follow hashtags.
I've been liking phanpy as a client lately. It's "catch up" mode is pretty great.
Like any social network the key is to follow hundreds of people really.
Oddbean new post about login | logout 