As a new user, I’m enjoying Mastodon’s vibe so far but the one thing that is a letdown is the trending hashtags. I’ve been checking them regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seems like they’re pretty much always like this.
Even on days with big news stories, people on Mastodon are only talking about what day of the week it is like company employees on some internal message board?
Is there anything that can be done to liven them up a bit?
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Pretty much my experience.
Speaking of dullness why isn’t there a like, comment or retweet counter? Just started trying to check out Mastodon.
there is, idk what’s going on in your end
Are you signed in to an instance, or viewing without signing in? Apparently (and this may be a case by case situation), those stats aren’t shown when one isn’t signed in.
I can see them when signed in & I’ve clicked on a post though, mainly the favorites (likes) & boosts (retweets), whereas comment counts are sorta visible before clicking a post to view replies. I say sorta as if a post has multiple replies it just shows as reply icon 1+ instead of the exact count.
tbh I really like mastodon but the userbase is incredibly boring
I disagree, actually. Scrolling through the posts on my local instance, I see lots of interesting posts and witty commentary on current issues.
It’s just that the trending hashtags don’t seem to reflect that at all.
witty commentary on current issues
Am I the only one who doesn’t enjoy the twitter-takes? Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with most of the takes. It’s just that it all feels like they’re trying to one-up each other with the cleverest gotcha and it makes me roll my eyes. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for a twitter/mastodon style community
Big, noisy rooms promote this kind of behaviours. It’s also why comment chains on big Reddit subreddits degrade into memes, injokes, and other flavours of referential humour.
It’s all about being punchy and popular for Internet points, because otherwise no one is ever even going to read your words. They’ll just be buried in the noise.
I think the issue is that people nowadays have come to expect a certain degree of individualized feeds and discovery features.
There is probably plenty of content on mastodon that would be of interest to any given user, but the discoverability is kind of lacking - especially if you are used to Twitter’s algorithmic feed.
Search on hashtags. That alone gave me loads of useful and interesting content (to the point I had to make lists to separate them out into columns). Also look for community aggregation accounts. That’s a bot account that automatically boosts any post that mentions it. So if you’re interested in, say, progrock and there’s a @progrock@some.instance community aggregation account, every time you post something on progressive rock, you mention @progrock@some.instance and your post is seen by everybody who subscribes to @progrock@some.instance.
There have been a lot of creative ways people have come up with to make finding content easy. Start with the hashtags and you’ll find the aggregation accounts in no time.
@Kovu @aleph “You don’t know how to cook em!” /jk But really it all depends on what you interested in and if people even use # … do you know how many people joined due twitter fkups recently? Do you know how many use tweeter to mastodon conversion thingy to find old pals and use it as a message board instead you know… SEARCHING VIA # ? so yeah it can be boring if people don’t use # and only advanced users speak and search things. REally look at local feed and not only in eng! Translate it!
I used to feel that way on Mastodon myself! Being immersed in mundane content felt more like Facebook w/strangers (kind strangers, at least!) instead of what I’d want from a Twitter alternative (fluid breaking news discussions, humour, even “viral” content). What helped me is aggressively following hashtags and users who post stuff I care about, cuz the Mastodon experience relies heavily on follows compared to Twitter — now my feeds are much more active and focused on stuff I care about.
It isn’t perfect though, and there’s much I miss about Twitter’s content/follow recommendation system. Like obviously we shouldn’t repeat the ultra-unethical aspects of that system (privileging “angertainment,” conflict, false information, hate content, etc). But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.
But I wish its good aspects (ease of finding other users who discuss what you like, democratizing who gets a “voice” in public discourse, allowing users to directly confront public figures/institutions when needed, etc) could be replicated on Mastodon somehow.
Besides that last point (as that depends entirely on getting those in the space to begin with), I think the first two come down to the Mastodon culture needing to shift a little to be less…Hesitant? That may not be the best word for it, but some of the discoverability and openness of discussion may be related to this culture of hesitancy to connect & post from some who have faced the brunt of bullshit & harassment on corporate social media.
There’s also the other side to this of an air of proactive rule/norm enforcement that itself makes folks uncertain of what’s okay to post or which way to post in some instances, which may be a misreading of the instance/space but sometimes it isn’t and though well-intended, doesn’t help a ton either.
There are a few of us out there being weird. But it is very tech-heavy right now, as was Twitter at first.
Most are twitter mirroring bots, which means it’s OK to follow but there will not be much engagement.
The ones in the spreadsheet aren’t just mirrors though.
Thank you so mucch!!! This honestly helped me alot with finding news. Didn’t even know press.coop even existed.
Happy to help!
Thanks for this, I was curious if certain news outlets were on Mastodon yet. Helps me a lot!
Thank you, I found this list very helpful! I’m also relatively new to Mastodon and still trying to figure out how all of it works. For some reason my mobile client puts #catsofmastodon first and foremost, making it my current cute pictures/ dopamine app ;)
That second link is great, thank you. From Twitter I learned that it’s much better to follow a few specific journalists rather than the news agencies themselves.
Does anyone know if mastadon people can be followed from a lemmy account? I think I saw a way but having trouble finding the post now
@hashtaggames@oldfriends.live is an account that hosts #HashtagGames everyday. It’s quite fun activity.
The hashtags are also kinda useless in another way. For example, if you follow the hashtag “#music,” (or any music-related hashtag, really) your feed will be filled with bots that just post YouTube links. You can go through and block these accounts as you see them, but there’s so few people using the hashtag in a non-spammy way that you might as well just not follow the hashtag in the first place.
I had the same experience with #comics it’s just bots posting comic book covers. Makes it much harder to find stuff you want with the bots if there’s no algorithm
Bot accounts are supposed to register as such, and you can ignore them. As in ignore all bot accounts. If there’s a bot account that’s not flagged as one, you can complain to the instance admin.
That would be ideal, but I couldn’t find that setting anywhere
I hear you. I just described Mastodon to my partner the other day as better than Twitter for my serious side but there is not a lot of light hearted fun to be had here :D and the breaking news aspect of twitter is also nowhere to be found, sadly. It’s still very niche and stuff like that doesn’t help
You’re kinda not wrong, and definitely not wrong about the breaking news part, but I’ve found a lot of lighthearted goofing about to do on there, partly from following silly bot accounts & boosting them, and partly from the more relaxed & imo better curated all/other server feeds of smaller instances.
On the larger instances it’s harder to find this good middle ground, especially if you go in without anyone in mind to follow. The other weird quirk to all this is that by default Mastodon is more private than spaces like Twitter, so people have to actively choose to tag their posts and enable features that might help others find them. Also, if you don’t have many remote followers, your posts won’t federate to as many other instances, and similarly, if someone limits who can follow them their posts (which may be fun & great) won’t travel as far. The latter isn’t a default enabled setting or anything, btw, but I think it may have a subtle effect on the general vibes of the space.
When that weird ass Wagner rebellion went down a few weeks ago, I followed the #wagner, #Prigozhin, and #russia hashtags and the news was just as up to the minute as anything on Twitter was. After the rebellion fizzled out, I just unfollowed the hashtags. I also happened to find some reliable accounts to follow that were knowledgeable about that part of the world.
I’m not even sure that any of those hashtags showed up in the ‘trending tags’ part of my app, though.
Another #wednesday another day of work, can‘t wait for #friday to come around!
-Mastodon user probably
The worst is the “good night” posts, I find it so cringey.
Posts like: “Can’t keep these sleepy eyes open, sweet dreams everyone”. It seems like mastodon is for people that love small talk.
That really synthetises why I dislike microblogging so much: It’s a bunch of people throwing small-talk and rage bait everywhere, all the time.
Considering a lot of people are really bad at conservation in every possible way, it also makes sense why microblogging is so much more popular than forum-like platforms.
It‘s kinda why I never warmed up to Twitter, it feels more focused on everyone posting their random thoughts on daily life and building up some public persona.
Anyway, I do enjoy their comments sometimes showing up in threads around here so it‘s not all bad.
Yeah same, it feels like being in a group chat with strangers. I’m glad it’s an option for those that want it though.
It’s funny how you can often tell a comment came from Mastodon because the way people type is just different somehow
mastodon users always type like they got that puffed out chest looking down at you
To be fair, I’ve seen so many like them on Twitter
And every morning (or like at 5-6 am when I was going to bed), the (not personalized) Germany trends were full of stuff like “Good morning”, “Hello”, and the names of individual people.
tbf, that’s just microblogging in a nutshell
Because there’s no algorithm so most content avoids clickbait and is spread organically.
Also, Mastodon (and the Fediverse) tends to skew older, smarter, and more technically inclined.
Edit: https://hashtags.fyi/ has a lot more variety, though.
“Also, Mastodon (and the Fediverse) tends to skew older, smarter, and more technically inclined.”
Get off my lawn *grumbles* *cocks shotgun*
*shots cockgun*
What now? 🤨
So you’re saying I act like an old grumpy man but at a young age?
@Tag365 Exactly
…and we see the result of that, an incredibly boring community. No wonder so many people leave. Without an algo, it’s simply awful. That’s why Lemmy is already 10x more interesting with basic rating algo systems.
I mean to each their own but I don’t think it’s boring.
But Lemmy and Mastodon are essentially the same thing in that they both make up the Fediverse.
Weird. I have exactly the opposite experience with Mastodon. Without the algorithm it’s been great. I get the content I look for instead of the content some ragebait-mongering corporate entity thinks I need to see so that I stick around and click their ads.
I get more useful and/or interesting content on Mastodon than I ever got on Twitter before I ditched it.
Would like to see your feed because after months of tweaking and following hash tags, my feed is still boring.
Define “boring” here? If you mean “as full of shitposts and memes as Twitter and/or Reddit” then yes, you’re going to be bored on Mastodon. Since, however, I found those very posts boring as all shit on Twitter/Reddit, my feed suits me. A few hundred posts a day on topics that interest me, with about … say … 50% of them being somewhat insightful and/or thought-provoking. (The equivalent on Twitter was “however many posts the algorithm could shovel into my heap per day with about 0.01% of them being even slightly interesting”. For Reddit it was so low I never bothered with an account.)
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For a long while, before the twitter implosion, hardly anyone used them at all. My thought is it just never caught on for the most part. With the ability to follow tags now and more twitter migratees it seems to be more common to see them but still doesn’t seem as much of a standard practice as with other sites.
Because mastodon doesn’t have an algo that promotes division and controversial topics. These hashtags are what normal, everyday people talk about. Drama isn’t its strongest side.
yeah sounds like boring shit. I get that already from talking to actual people, not virtue signalling boomers on mastodon
the lack of algo reduces the quality of content to this garbage, but this is the same people who think more content is bad as well. I don’t want some breaking or interesting post to be hidden by some random person posting completely meaningless garbage
The amount of people on Mastodon who are like “ahh finally, nothing interesting to look at now that I left Twitter, I am at peace and can just scroll through pictures of someone’s dinner and obscure academic naval gazing :)” is so high
You sound like you might enjoy TikTok more.
Yeah it’s either useless boring small talk on Mastodon, or zoomer tik tok. Absolutely no middle.
*useless only if you have no interests. There’s plenty of people talking hobbies and interests. If you’re just shooting shit, I agree, it’s boring. And no, there’s no middle. Maybe Instagram is the middleground?
It’s boring and shitty. It’s hard to find interesting stuff. Good luck finding trending/newsworthy events.
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Are you saying that Lemmy does have those algorithms? Because this shit is never boring lol so many instances I never wanted to see or know existed…
Slightly related: how many freaking instances of “yiff” shit do we need!? I couldn’t believe I was STILL seeing it after I blocked like 7 separate instances lol
Lemmy ““promotes”” upvoted stuff.
Mastodon “Trending” is just stuff that wasn’t talked about, suddenly being talked about. That’s why constantly popular things don’t appear on Trending, but things like “BigBoobFridayWhatever” (or equivalent) gets trending (people don’t use the hashtag for a week, and everyone use it for that day). I see how they thought it’s perfect for world-wide events, but it just end-up being a bunch of “weekly” stuff.
BigBoobFriday has to happen.
Needs more alliteration. #MassiveMammaryMonday
#TitularTitanticTittyTuesdays
I will make it happen.
Furries invade every tech space because they’re all programmers for some reason. Must have something to do with being bullied as a kid and/or never seeing boobs irl. I know because I like their porn but not their identity, I’d never wear a suit but a cat is fine too
I guess the reality is that I want at least SOME controversy. I don’t know why the only two choices have to be “fascism-enabling hellscape” or “nobody saying anything interesting ever.” There has to be at least some possible middle ground!
I agree. I want to see people’s opinions on the news of the day. By the way, I recommend following @BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to if you want a little controversy. He was one of my favorite posters from Twitter & has gone all-in on Mastodon.
I agree. The Trending algorithm needs improvement. Luckily, we can do that ourselves.
explain how
By creating a pull request in Github. (Don’t yet angry, that was supposed to be a lighthearted joke)
I can imagine some alpha-cunt Tate-esque grifter selling courses on how to “Just Shout at People” like it’s some sort of magic spell that mysteriously makes everything that you want happen.
Selling it like it’s the hidden secret sauce to the universe or whatever, rather than just being a dick to everyone.
Would the community even be any worse, I wonder? :)
i angy 😡
Wait, so the recent topics that occur suddenly on Twitter aren’t the normal things people talk about? So the hype on Twitter events are fake?
They are. But they’re also influenced by who talks about it, how many comments, replies, likes it has. How many people click on it. Etc.
On mastodon is just how many people used the hashtag in a short period of time.
I think as Mastodon gets more popular, we will see more interesting tags pop up
I think the #tuesday hashtag isn’t really what normal people talk about, but probably people gaming the system to get on a reliably trending hashtag.
If you have any specific hobbies / fandoms / communities you’re interested in, you could see if there are instances specific to those interests you could migrate your account to. The local feed and local hashtags are sometimes way more interesting if you’re on an instance you jive with.
ive noticed hashtags are not very popular likely due to them being overdone.
like lemmy, your mastadon exp is highly dependent upon your instance.
You’re right, it is.
However, I’m on a server (fosstodon.org) that has an active Local thread and plenty of users and the trending hashtags still look like this pretty much every day.
for hashtags id say its just not popular, they have fallen out of favor in a lot of groups on twitter as well, for example if you want to know about AI research, not a single AI researcher worth anything is posting with hashtags. You have to find and follow them.
Mastodon being even more indie is just reflecting this growing preference. Hashtags are tools of marketers thanks to twitter and fb, they won’t go away but thier cringe factor in casual social posts is likely to stick around for a bit.
Isn’t that a problem for Mastodon, then, since it’s far more reliant on hashtags to drive discoverability due to the lack of algorithm?
It’s fundamental to mastodon… you can subscribe to hashtags, you can search hashtags, but you can’t (usually) search posts directly. That works for the most part, but does limit discoverability slightly.
Groups seem to be the new hotness, though… there are some 3rd party implementations already but a proper implementation in the core is upcoming: https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap
maybe, communities and forums worked great for decades before hashtags became common. Some might say its a cope for cheap and poorly developed search algos soon to be replaced by much more sophisticated systems.
The UIs make adding hashtags difficult, and then Mastodon users (like me) say fOlLoW HaShTaGs.
The truth is that Mastodon needs better discovery tools built in.
The hashtags are near unreadable and almost never interesting. Please capitalize each word.
camelCaseForTheWin
#YouMeanPascalCaseNo?
