Submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/09/mastodon-actually-has-407k-more-monthly-users-than-it-thought/
I like Lemmy a lot, and I liked Reddit before. I never really liked Twitter, just followed some NASA accounts that told what certain probes/landers/rovers were doing. I’m interested in Mastodon because federated platforms seem to sustainably fill the gap the big 5 are trying to enlarge. What kind of content are you guys getting from there?
Lemmy was kind of jarring at first, but extensions like the universal link switcher help a lot. Any stuff like that to help onboarding Mastodon? Thx folks.
Cats. Mastodon has a lot of cats. It’s great.
I follow hashtags on Mastodon sort of like how I follow communities on Lemmy, but instead of “content” I get quick thoughts from people. It’s different but, as someone who also didn’t use Twitter, it’s nice to have a space where the barrier to engagement is a bit lower; you need a thought, not a link or discussion, and sometimes that’s enough to prompt engagement.
It’s more a question of culture imo, not necessarily site design. I’ve seen a few communities use reddit for microblogging (posting quick half formed thoughts in self post). No reason lemmy couldn’t do the same.
What kind of content are you guys getting from there? For me it’s probably best described as “background chatter”, so mostly a bunch of different news sites that aren’t important enough for me to go into my RSS feed, bots posting notifications and random thoughts from bloggers.
Any stuff like that to help onboarding Mastodon? There’s obviously those that help you to stay on your home instance as well, but the big one for me is StreetPass for Mastodon, which finds and collects Mastodon accounts as you browse the web. That way you can organically build without much effort. You’d be surprised how many accounts from news sites, open source projects and people with blogs you can find that way.
Streetpass is such a fantastic idea, I had no clue it was a thing but it might actually be the thing that manages to get me into microblogging
For what it’s worth, here’s an account that reposts everything NASA puts out: social.beachcom.org/@nasa
What’s the universal link switcher?
I’m a little confused. What’s the point of this?
Thank you, sir or madam
I was for a long time unable to understand the appeal of the structure of Twitter/Mastodon.
Recently I have become an active Mastodon reader (reader; I have made no public posts). I realize now that it is basically an RSS reader: you follow sources (people/organizations) you are interested in and get to read those in reverse-chronological order. If you aren’t an organization, celebrity, journalist, activist, politician or otherwise someone whose thoughts people in the outside world would care about, then there is no real point in ever posting anything there; people will not read it anyway because they aren’t following you. This is unlike the discussion-forum structure of Reddit/Lemmy where ordinary people are meant to participate.
Yeah, I treated Twitter as a RSS platform where I could follow subject matter experts like scientists and writers and artists I liked.
I also used it to follow people and groups that weren’t like me so i could learn. Like, “disability twitter” opened my eyes to some things I took for granted, because you had regular people dealing with those things just talking back and forth about it. If I shut my mouth and just listened, it opened up a whole new world.
For small-time creators making either art or science, Twitter was a good platform to get little chunks of info out to your followers. I don’t know that Mastodon fills those shoes yet, but I hope it will.
It’s not necessarily as one-sided as newsfeeds. Regular people can still publish and have a small audience of their own. That’s why Twitter, Mastodon etc. are classified as microblogging platforms.
Universal link switcher? What is that
What other stuff am i missing from the lemmy experience
For me, it’s mostly to connect with autiste. It’s great and people are mostly nice.
The keys are hashtags and groups. You need to follow both to create your algorithm.
What kind of content are you guys getting from there?
I don’t go on there a lot, but…it’s micro-blogging. People post their opinions, projects they’re working on, pictures of their cat, etc. Blog stuff.
thanks for telling me about universal link switcher
Hey, thanks a lot everyone! Got something to start up this week :-)
I never really liked Twitter, just followed some NASA accounts that told what certain probes/landers/rovers were doing.
Same. I really like the functionality of tumblr, but I think I’m outside of their target demographic.
Hey, thanks a lot everyone! Got something to start up this week :-)
The only thing I use it for so far is to follow ARS Technica as they don’t have a mobile app, so I just subscribe to their news feed through Mastadon. I was never a Twitter user really so I only do it to support the platform.
Since the protest, I’ve really cut back on social media anyway so that’s good. But Lemmy fits as much as I need this stuff.
I never really liked Twitter, either, and joined Mastodon in 2019 for fun. I’m very active in it, now, as I have spent the time curating the stuff I want to see. I interact with watercolor artists, green technology enthusiasts, “good news” orgs, sustainability advocates, and travel photographers. It takes a bit of work to set up, first, but the biggest thing is to search keywords as hashtags and follow everyone you think you might like and interact often with them. You can always unfollow, later.
Good for Mastodon.
Honestly quality of Mastodon interactions is much superior to Twitter or Threads. People are just nicer and more real on fediverse. Maybe a bit of an barrier to entry is a good thing after all!
It’s shown itself with the latest kerfuffle… the discussions (apart from the occasional nutter) haven’t devolved into people calling each other nazis yet. In fact some have been positively educational.
The internet was a lot better 20 years ago because it was so split up and not as many people knew how to use it
The problem with Fediverse is that it removes the isolation and the lack of separate accounts makes removing yourself impossible
Basically, it’s 727 servers that weren’t taken into account before due to a connectivity error. I also wonder if Mastodon counts the alternatives, like Akkoma and Misskey for that regard, or if the increase is actually accounting for those only now. It’s unclear what the error was, Eugen doesn’t go into detail on the thread.
Bit unrelated, but who drew that? The elephant looks sooo cute!!
Thanks!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The adjustment also included a gain of 2.34 million registered users across an additional 727 servers that had not been counted due to the error.
The issue was impacting the metrics reported on Mastdon’s statistics aggregator on its joinmastodon.org/servers page, which had been undercounting users between Oct. 2 and Oct. 8.
The latest disruptive move by X owner Elon Musk has seen the company remove headlines from link previews on the platform for aesthetic reasons and to keep users on the site instead of clicking away.
The move has angered publishers, some of which suggested they would scale back on posting to X given the declining traffic the network was sending their way as of late.
Prior to that, Musk announced he was planning to charge all users a small fee to use X, though it’s unclear how serious his statements were as CEO Linda Yaccarino didn’t seem to be aware of his ideas when asked during an interview.
Later, Yaccarino told X debt holders that the company would introduce three tiers of payment plans for the network in an effort to grow revenues.
The original article contains 391 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Huh. So is there some Lemmy Instance somewhere that has like a quarter of the userbase on it that I don’t know about too?
New tech is fun. lol
Pretty sure your instance is defederated from a couple notable ones, so, yes :)
Even those “notables” still show up on the fediverse tracker, so they shouldn’t be going uncounted.
I only have the same issue with Mastadon that I do with Lemmy, I have no idea what instance to join. This one I’m apart of now for Lemmy I randomly joined when the admin said he’d accept reddit refugees who wanted to try out Lemmy.
If anyone has any suggestions for goof instances to pick I’d give Mastadon a try. Otherwise, it’s a nightmare for people like me (who’s been compared to Chidi from The Good Place in terms of my overthinking and decision making).
Instance is like ISP. It’s an important part of the infrastructure, and in principle it does matter, but for 90% of cases it doesn’t make much difference.
Unpopular opinion I know. But lots of people who would love Mastodon never sign up because there is such unreasonable emphasis on choosing an instance. Just pick a large stable one, then you can switch if you want later once you get to know the platform.
Regarding lemmy, some instances like lemmygrad, hexbear and in part lemmy.ml are quite against free speech, often removing comments from other instances in threads that are… Politically charged. I would definitely avoid those but can’t see much difference between the rest
It’s never really been an accurate measure… it’s a hard thing to do, since federation is so loose. The estimate varies between 10m and 14m users currently (I presume ‘active’ users is based on posts).
Mastodon is useless.
Does this include Gab?
Mastodon – more like Mastodong lol
Pleroma/Akkoma, Misskey, Kbin are better, and even as Twitter alternatives Bluesky and Threads are better
aeronmelon@lemm.ee 1 year ago
X (twitter): “Oh shit, most of our users are bots.”
Mastodon: “Oh shit, we have a bunch of extra users.”
Steeve@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Probably still bots, I’m the only real person on the internet
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
HELLO FELLOW MEAT BEING, I TOO AM DEFINITELY A SQUISHY SACK OF ORGANICS AND NOT A ROBOT.
nomecks@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Is anyone else in here Solopsistic, or is it just me?
Junkers_Klunker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s actually really comforting to know im not a human as i thought 😅
billiam0202@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’re not a person! You’re a good bug, Steeve!
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
Hi
~beep boop I’m a bot~
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But I’m not a bot, I was here to promote a movie on this new social media platform…
Wait a minute, that’s exactly what an advertising bot would do!
… Oh boy.
Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I am actually several bots sharing a single account!