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.
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.