How do you not feel overwhelmed using Mastodon?

Comments

• natecox@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I guess I don’t understand the mastodon/twitter style feed, I’ve always found that I couldn’t seem to get a feed interesting enough to come back to.

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  • Today@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I agree. My brief Twitter usage was following bars, restaurants, and music venues to see happy hour specials and upcoming events.

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  • Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yeah I never cared for the format either.

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• some@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I felt the same way every time I tried to use Twitter as I feel every time I try to use Mastodon. It’s either way too much or way too little. I prefer everything about the reddit/lemmy/threadiverse style.

  How would we even be having this conversation on microblogging? A bunch of reposts, with or without comments, disconnected from each other… So much nicer to have a “subject” line and a page where every relevant comment is presented.

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• InfiniteHench@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I think the main idea is to look at some hashtags to find people to follow, then eventually wean off those hashtags if you want.

  Another key detail is that you can’t read it all. Not hashtags, not people. You’ll go nuts if you try. It’s about following people who are interesting, opening the app every once in a while to check in, then going on with your day.

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• dudenas@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It is complicated. I follow almost 500 accounts often producing 50 toots per hour. Nobody should spend that much time to catch up with all. My coping tools are:

  • Making lists, including one for important accounts I don’t want to miss. Sadly I cant find a way to get notifications for those.

  • Resisting FOMO. Remember, mastodon is people-centric, not content-centric like Lemmy. I don’t try to use it as news source or catch all hashtags I care of. Just treat it as a space to casually look what people are talking about.

  In general I think that backlash against algorithms went the wrong way. We poured the baby with the water. We should have resisted their harmful use, lack of transparency and user control, rather than the very idea. Controlling what content shows up first and setting your priorities is a good thing. Users should have this power, not corporations and not even admins.

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  • Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    In general I think that backlash against algorithms went the wrong way. We poured the baby with the water.

    I agree. As long as the microblogging side of the Fediverse has only a chronological feed I can’t see myself engaging with it. Mastodon just demands way too much work from the user for what the payoff is, at least to me.

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  • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Great comment, agree!

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• Transform2942@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because some accounts like to spam on certain hashtags, I had the best results with muting an account the second I thought it was annoying. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t want to see their posts on my timeline anymore, which is what mute accomplishes

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• Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I never liked Twitter and don’t like Mastodon. It’s just a fundamentally flawed platform. But I’m glad it exists for those people.

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• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I never really liked the microblog ecosystem in general, and some of these terrible design ideas are copied by the Twitter clones, such as how a conversation is presented in a way that is not actually in a chronological order making it hard to tell who is responding to what.

  It feels like it wasn’t intended for actual engagement and discussion. It’s made so you can blast your thoughts out into the net and then get the feel good brain chemicals seeing a number next to it go up. We certainly didn’t need an entirely new system for that, since there was already plenty of places to say stupid shit and seek validation.

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  • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yeah, I think I agree with you tbh

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• schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  When I was new to Mastodon, I followed everyone who might maybe have something interesting to say (e.g. open source projects that I’ve never used but found somewhat interesting).

  Right now I have 43 tabs open on my phone most of which are links from Mastodon I haven’t yet gotten around to reading… I think you can see why nowadays I tend to unfollow more things than I newly follow.

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• BeefPiano@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I put the noisy stuff in lists that don’t show up in my home feed. That way I can catch up on home, or open a topical feed when I’m looking to scroll more.

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  • lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This so much. Lists make content filtering so much easier, both foot organizing as well as for filtering.

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• jutty@blendit.bsd.cafe ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  basically I never follow any feed (be it Mastodon, RSS, Lemmy, newsletters, whatever) that is too high volume. If something is sending too much content I’ll just unsubscribe/unfollow. So for instance Lemmy communities for news are soo overwhelming, I’d rather sign up for a newsletter with a selection of five or so important news for the day.

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• ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  On all microblogging platforms, I just follow people and periodically pare it back to something manageable. The sweet spot for me is following 200 or so people where a handful post all the time (and are fun and smart) but most are just friendly people, experts who don’t have poster’s madness (but add a lot when they do post). And some bots here and there for weather or breaking news but I’m very selective there. (I only want breaking news alerts that are actionable like, “A natural disaster happened.” and not 20 posts a day about political drama.)

  That strategy has worked for me since the days of Twitter. It ensures there’s content for me to read when I’m playing with my phone but not so much that I’m unable to keep track of it all.

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• 4Robato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If you follow a generic hashtag it quickly becomes too much, what I do is follow people and very niche hashtags that I know it won’t bring that much content into the feed but that I’m interested in.

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• mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Using hashtags+ filters mostly.

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• cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  admittedly i do, which is one of the reasons i tend to like bsky more.

  don’t get me wrong, mastodon is fun but there’s just something about bsky that’s so easy to use.

  another reason why i like elk.zone

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• TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  [goes on mastadon]

  random opinions:

  Image

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• lupusblackfur@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t have anyone suggesting to me to follow hashtags. Just the indication that it’s a thing I can do if I want.

  Given the number of hashtags I see in some posts (esp heavy hashtag users (whom I hate cause the post becomes almost unreadable)) I can certainly see the number of posts returned for any given hashtag could be instantly overwhelming.

  I’ve never actually followed a hashtag so don’t have much to say about that… Other than perhaps that maybe has something to do with why I don’t feel overwhelmed on Mastodon. 🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️

  I just handpick and choose entities (people/news sources) to follow.

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• manmachine@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t follow tags, only browse them from time to time and follow people. Also filters and mutes really help.

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• kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I don’t think it is that much for me, I kinda like “infinite content” what I don’t like is being bombarded with content that is not in English or Spanish… Which I clearly specified within the Mastodon settings to be my preference… So I spend most of the time navigating through said hashtags feeds blocking users speaking in other languages 😑

  It seems that the hashtags feed doesn’t care about language preferences… Or the users posting don’t follow the language rules or whatever.

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  • J52@lemmy.nz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I use that to my advantage, being bilingual i follow ongoings in my country of origin plus locally where I’m living now.

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    • kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I am bilingual too, but I don’t understand the other languages that show in my feed but Spanish and English.

      I don’t have that issue with Lemmy, everything here is in English, and there used to be some Spanish communities (the instance might have died because it hasn’t showed up in my feed for so long).

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• Snoopy@tarte.nuage-libre.fr ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I create list/collumns and put users by their main topic as i would do in commumities. I also use hashtags to dicovers news content related to it but they often forgot to put it. 😅

  So i follow around 500 peoples. Maybe more.

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