With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!
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The lack of an algorithm is the biggest advantage and the biggest disadvantage - it makes it hard to discover new content and people to follow. I know people are working on "starter packs" for Mastodon like they have on BlueSky, which I think will help.
But I wonder if we could find other ways to make discovery easier - a "followed by people you follow" or "favorited by people you follow" feed, or something. Also, I wonder if the interface shouldn't suggest boosting a post when you favorite it... We need more people boosting more stuff, with no algorithm.
You have to follow 200+ people to get a decently full feed on Mastodon, and everyone has to boost a lot. Reducing the effort required to do those things would increase engagement on Mastodon, I'm pretty sure.
@marymessall @taylorlorenz too many fedi users are married to the "reverse chronological" algorithm. They yes, "algorithms" are often bad in capitalist social media. A big problem there is that the user cannot control the algorithm.
Mastodon can give people a choice of algorithms. Allow them to build their own. ... -
@killick @jake4480 remember how MySpace worked, we could design out own little corner of the web with widgets and favorite friends? And then we took our info to meta and decorated our corner with pics of family and friends. And then we took our info and decorated and connected through tiktok or whatever and at some point we grow tired of having to grow new connections or learn new formats for something that doesn't grant us easy access or connection. Displaced again and again, then feeling concerned with whether our new server choice will disband when a moderator gets a new job. It's challenging to root into for an internet refugee. Still we persist, of course. I really do love the fediverse and am happy to have found my way within it. It's a pilgrimage of sorts, the journey not the destination or whatever. But every time I recommend it to someone I get stuck with what server to suggest they begin with. Mastodon.social is an often times blocked server by regular users of the fediverse.
@MamaLake @killick yeah, all of this is true too. Took a bit to set up here (didnt find it that tough, although maybe I'm tech minded and don't mind messing with things) and took probably a couple years here to really get going, but anything like this really does, is what people might forget. I was on Twitter 13 years. Walled gardens ain't great. I even paid my server admin here after being here just a couple years. I never gave Twitter a cent, and never wanted to. Coming here has really been eye opening and shifted my mindset in a lot of ways.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Honestly, network effect, and having to go to the effort of choosing a server.
I don't know how to solve these problems, but putting them out there so that someone smarter than I ca propose a solution.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz
Honestly, Mastodon is not a "product" and it doesn't push itself on the masses with any sort of commercialization, nor should it. It's a safe space for us weirdos who like to talk about all kinds of random things. I hope to keep my feed pretty much meme-free. -
@magpieluvseeds @T_X @taylorlorenz if you're in Canada, try mstdn.ca. I recommend anyone outside of the USA to get on a mastodon instance that is outside the control of the NSA.
@hfinyow @T_X @taylorlorenz very good advice. Even for those in the USA
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Taylor I wrote up my thoughts here and am working on an update to document the progress made on each: https://indieweb.social/@tchambers/114739709799083596
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@taylorlorenz
2 things:
People are lazy. Signing up to the #fediverse can be more difficult. Building not only a following, but finding people that make stuff you like is challenging here. It's not fed to you like on a #fyp algorithm.
People like short video formats. I was never big on twitter, and that's what this platform is akin to. Maybe #Loops will be good in the future, but for now it lacks content from point 1.@LittlePolarBear @taylorlorenz is currently growing a lot from tne hostile takeover in and of the USA. We’regetting there.
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@phocks @taylorlorenz LOL yes
Taylor Lorenz, Don't listen to them. Thank you for being here and spreading the word.
I have never had any Big Tech accounts and I really appreciate seeing leaders here.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz
maybe folks are just happy in their #silo ? #corporatecontrol #datamining #afraid2change? #propsoftfree #betheflow -
Taylor Lorenz, Don't listen to them. Thank you for being here and spreading the word.
I have never had any Big Tech accounts and I really appreciate seeing leaders here.
Personally, I think one factor keeping people away from mastodon is the huge corporate campaign pulling people to the big networks, and throwing shade on compute resources that are not them.
Maybe point out to people that fediverse is a way to opt out of big tech surveillance? But really, I haven't had a lot of success either. People just call me paranoid and make fun of me.
I have to say, I take no pleasure in being able to say I told you so.
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Personally, I think one factor keeping people away from mastodon is the huge corporate campaign pulling people to the big networks, and throwing shade on compute resources that are not them.
Maybe point out to people that fediverse is a way to opt out of big tech surveillance? But really, I haven't had a lot of success either. People just call me paranoid and make fun of me.
I have to say, I take no pleasure in being able to say I told you so.
It would have been so much nicer if they would have withdrawn from big tech earlier.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz You ought to be more active on social media.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz my most recent zany idea is a “temporary housing” instance. It’s open to anyone, but every user is hard banned 91 days after signup, except the mods. The intention is to make it so that you can shop for an instance from inside the ecosystem without having a big “default instance.” Everyone already on fedi knows that if you’re on that instance, you’re actively shopping for long-term housing, and can try to recruit you.
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The fedi is slowly becoming a NORC (naturally occurring retirement community)
Only facebook has an older userbase.
And being more old than young that isn't a personal problem. But I wish there was more interest in making it a place younger people would care about. And that would mean listening to them.
@futurebird @Phosphenes @bovaz @aurochs
I suspect that there are teens around here, but I think there are reasons they may not want to admit their ages, so it will be hard to tell how many there are.
I occasionally search the hashtags for things my middle schooler is interested in and find fan art.
To have the best chance of finding posts for a hashtag I search on mastodon.social as I think they've got the best visibility into the overall network.
Some of the fan art associated with these topics, seem plausibly produced by middle or high school students.
dandysworld - popular roblox game
madoka / madokamagica - surrealist anime about magical teen girls.
oc - making up and drawing original characters (OCs are so popular freelance art teachers on outschool often have classes about making OCs)
projectsekai - mobile rhythm game with vocaloid music and a
story.The reason I think teens are keeping quiet about their age, is they've frequently been warned of the threat of internet child molesters and are also aware of the current government fondness for age based legal restrictions.
(AKA "Roblox sucks now", an opinion I suspect was caused by Roblox's new mandatory age verification for access to chat)
A lot of Fedi does have the old internet culture of not revealing details of your age, sex, location, and I suspect that's a desirable feature among teens who are getting chased off the corporate controlled parts of the internet.
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@bitpickup @NickGates @futurebird @taylorlorenz Yes. That's why I block when needed. And I've also started posting on Bluesky as an alternative option. I left Threads in 2025 because the harassment towards Blacks was intolerable.
I left #Threads in 2025 because the harassment towards Blacks was intolerable.
On threads inside threads?whoopsy, well threads is blocked over here so it's not part of the #fediVerse!
Ohh no, wait!fediWikiHistory wrote:
It was threads that harbored the tribal racists dumbf**king goones in the fedi, that's why we defederated them, together with asocial. truths and gab'em by the di***ks!
So we are the good guys and they are long gone ..What a relieve!
btw
I'm also on friendica, like to say "here I am on friendica", but this server hasn't activated bluesky, at least yet, and now that it's so ICY over there it probably never will.
Isn't there a black bluesky node, like the first real decentralized independent bluesky node?@bitpickup @futurebird @NickGates @taylorlorenz
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz I still think the biggest problem for Mastodon is that no big accounts promote it on the platforms they already use. I see so many YouTube videos where people link to their accounts on X, TikTok, Instagram etc. If those creators came to Mastodon and also directed their audiences to Mastodon, it would bring a lot more people to the platform. We need more big accounts here which would bring their followers to Mastodon.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz There needs to be cooperation between PeerTube, pixelfed, and mastodon dev. A user should be able to:
1) download one app
2) choose from a short list of servers with an “advanced” button for more
3) be registered in a minute
4) able to upload and view videos, photos, and toots immediately
Right now the fediverse is too fragmented. Even an expert user can’t figure out how to use their existing mastodon account to comment or like a PeerTube video. -
I left #Threads in 2025 because the harassment towards Blacks was intolerable.
On threads inside threads?whoopsy, well threads is blocked over here so it's not part of the #fediVerse!
Ohh no, wait!fediWikiHistory wrote:
It was threads that harbored the tribal racists dumbf**king goones in the fedi, that's why we defederated them, together with asocial. truths and gab'em by the di***ks!
So we are the good guys and they are long gone ..What a relieve!
btw
I'm also on friendica, like to say "here I am on friendica", but this server hasn't activated bluesky, at least yet, and now that it's so ICY over there it probably never will.
Isn't there a black bluesky node, like the first real decentralized independent bluesky node?@bitpickup @futurebird @NickGates @taylorlorenz
@jesuisatire @bitpickup @taylorlorenz @futurebird @NickGates MAGA infiltrated. I felt safer here on Mastodon,where there's no algorithm and I can block.
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@taylorlorenz Lots of people have said that the concept of federation is challenging to newbies, and I think that better migration tools (that allow you to discover *and* move to servers easily) is going to be critical to fixing that challenge. After that, we need to figure out a better way to communicate the incentives to being on particular instances. The big servers are actually helping but I share the hesitation to make them the default, so let's make it more obvious why you'd want to move.
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With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!! I love this app and I really think the decentralized model is the best for social media.
Still, people don’t want to join! What do you think Mastodon’s biggest barriers are to courting new users? What could be done to improve the product and grow the user base in a positive way?
@taylorlorenz Search is broken and needs to be fixed. Client-side, private, personal algorithm tuning would be nice too. #Mastodon #FeatureRequest
