Comment on Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media — in a Good Way

The_Tribble_Juggler@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• penguin@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I just don’t understand how people find accounts they like to follow.

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  • Domille@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    just follow hashtags you like, that way you’ll see people who post about interesting stuff.

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    • mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Same as really old old Twitter.

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    • skybox@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s the main reason why I’m half and half on mastodon (besides the terrible user search and onboarding). I believe the way hashtags are implemented in microblogging services is so inorganic, and I prefer having a little help finding cool posts and people through some kinda filter. Bluesky has been a better experience in those aspects for me so far.

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      • PeleSpirit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        They do have a “for you” on the Mastodon app where they recommend people you might like BUT it’s hard to find and they don’t have the option to follow general hashtags like, “sportsnews” or something like that. Tusky is FOSS and does have the general hashtag follow but no “for you” section. Early stages and all.

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  • Eccitaze@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    First, it’s important to find an instance that caters to your interests, especially if you have more niche hobbies. Once you’re set up, search for and follow hashtags related to your personal interests, and use those to find accounts you like. Use hashtags in your own posts so that people can discover you more easily, and browse users that follow you to see if they’d be interesting to follow back and expand your network out. Keep an eye on the local and federated timeline for interesting posts, which includes all posts from people on the same instance and from all federated instances. Eventually, as you build up a follow list (and especially as you follow highly active accounts) your followed accounts will start introducing you to new accounts themselves through boosting posts.

    It’s more work since you’re building the network yourself instead of having it spoon-fed to you by an algorithm, but it’s overall much more rewarding, and lets you tailor your experience to your own personal preferences.

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    • woodcroft@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Good explanation - thanks.

      Can I export a list of accounts I follow and share that batch with friends?

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      • BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yes! your fedi client will spit out a text file (.csv format I think) of accounts you follow, or of accounts following you and I forget how many other kinds of information (like block or mute lists, etc). You can share that with others, or if you decide to migrate to a different instance, you can use that in your new account to automate following of everyone you followed in your old account.

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      • ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yep

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  • blergh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    A big part of it is just choosing the right instance. If you have any niche hobbies or interests, try to find an instance catering to that. My first mastodon account was on mastodon.social and I really didn’t like the experience, since most posts seemed to be about American politics and IT.

    But then I found an instance catering to heavy metal fans, and the experience has been much better. When you find a good instance, you can find interesting accounts to follow just by visiting the local timeline. Then, as other said, there are hashtags. And sometimes, you can open the federated timeline too, and just look randomly.

    I really like that aspect of Mastodon because it feels like the old old Internet where you found interesting stuff mainly accidentally and by searching for things you’re into.

    Now that I’m mentioning the very old internet, I’m reminded of StumbleUpon and I wonder if some implementation of that would work on the Fediverse for finding communities and accounts. Basically you’d tell the system your interests and then it would give you random stuff based on that.

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  • Bebo@sffa.community ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I started by just following a bunch of hashtags and my feed was already quite interesting. Over the next few days I started following a few people who seemed to consistently post content that I found interesting.

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  • Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have the same issue on Lemmy, but at least there’s All. I can’t figure out where “All” is on Mastodon.

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    • russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The equivalent to All would be the federated timeline, some apps don’t show it though, and some may call it something else.

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      • Psythik@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I guess the official “Mastodon” app doesn’t show it, then. I’ll look at the other options.

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  • BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    how people find accounts they like to follow.

    The low-hanging fruit is sometimes checking out posters that show up in your feed because someone you do follow boosted their post. This sort of amounts to having the people you follow nominate people for you to also follow.

    (fwiw, boosting a post just shares it to your followers, liking it just notifies the poster that you liked it)

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  • thal3s@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    mastodon.online/…/110789014074565447

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• lorax@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I prefer pull vs push media. Less intrusive. I have a feeling lemmy users may also like RSS feeds for the control it provides. I know in mastodon you decide who to follow, but the whole culture to encourage re-blogging means a lot of potential unwanted crap in our feeds.

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• Izzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I completely agree. I like the concept of Mastodon and like that it exists, but I just can’t get into the idea of following individual or organizations rather than topics. Thankfully Lemmy is a thing.

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  • BeautifulMind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    FWIW you can follow hashtags in mastadon If you know where to look you can see trending hashtags In other fedi clients (particularly firefish) you can configure antennae and channels to give you the ability to have pre-set feed filters and focuses (e.g. search by hashtag, keyword/subject, etc) You can also curate lists (can include people you don’t follow if you don’t want) in case you want to look at what the law or history or cycling people on fedi are talking about just now. Often when I want to change subject I’ll check to see what #lawFedi or #histodon or #biketooter have to offer today

    If that sounds a bit like rolling your own algorithms, that’s probably because it sort of is

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    • Izzy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It sounds worth trying if people are good at tagging. I might have to try again.

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      • BillDoor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I have the same problem as you with mastodon, I’m interested in topics not in people so the format just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

        I’ve had very limited success with following hashtags, it sounds like a neat idea, but I’ve not found enough hashtags that I’m interested in with enough activity to make it worthwhile.

        The nature of it also makes it more superficial - it’s short comments and posts on a topic rather than more in depth discussion.

        In the end, I think mastodon is a really neat replacement for twitter - but I never had a twitter account for a reason, and those reasons are still there with mastodon, for me at least.

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• qaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Agreed. I love decentralized social media, but I never liked Twitter and never really could adjust to Mastodon either.

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