Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media — in a Good Way
Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media — in a Good Way
A comment on a Hacker News thread inspired me to contemplate why Mastodon is everything we loved about social media before…
In many ways, Mastodon feels like rewinding the clock on social media back to the early days of Twitter and Facebook. On the consume side, that means that your home feed has no algorithm (this can be disorienting at first).
Practically, it means that you see only what you want to see and only see it linearly. You never wonder “why am I seeing this and how do I make it go away?”. Content can only enter your home feed via your followed tags or handles and the feed is linear like the early days of social media.
The problem is that #10 in this article is why 99% of people won’t leave Xitter for Mastodon. Most of the people with lots of followers on X aren’t on Mastodon. It’s really that simple. Some “influencers” need to be convinced to open up Mastodon accounts and advertise exclusive content on there for their followers. Until then, we will be stuck with a handful of journalists, Flipboard, and Stephen Fry.
Preach. I hate the "bubble" that curated / sponsored feeds try to wrap everyone inside of.
Most people used Twitter and Facebook not as a social network but as a pastime. They didn't create or post anything, but simply lurked and browsed random stuff on the platform to amuse themselves and keep up with trends. The random content in feeds that articles like these complain about were rather the main feature of those platforms for many. And this is a feature Mastodon fails to provide for its own good.
You never wonder “why am I seeing this and how do I make it go away?”
I actually find myself wondering this a lot. Mastodon doesn't allow people to add comments to things they're reposting, so you're left guessing as to why they elected to insert something from an unfamiliar account into your timeline.
Mastodon is also short on tools for discovering interesting new posts and accounts that aren't already on your radar. In this regard I agree that it's behind the times. Threads handles this much better, giving you a classic chronological feed of people you're following plus an algorithmic feed that shows you things that are popular with people like you.
Mastodon will never “show me only what I want” without the content being there. I mostly used Twitter to keep up with pro wrestling. All of the wrestlers, journalists, and most of the fans are still all there. I just have to wait until Twitter gets bad enough that even they all end up moving off.
Fuck advertising. Sorry not sorry. I actively try to avoid products advertised ...it's not really possible but I try. Fuck advertising...I blame Pepsi