Fediverse

I'll throw my -opinion- in the ring here because no one else is saying it the same way.

• Echoing what other people said, finding a server was hard especially as at the time I thought defederating seemed stupid (changed my mind somewhat now that I use Lemmy). Then once signed up discovery was/is a pain. How do I find good accounts when they aren't synced with the instance I am on? Fuck if I know, I never found an equivalent to lemmyverse.net for mastodon.
• Now into the big problem I had: federation was a pain. It was my first interaction with a federated service that isn't email and it was confusing and annoying. Finally find an account you like? Well you either can't see any of their posts or the few you can have 1 reply and 5 likes. Eventually you realise you have to click onto the account's instance to see everything and they have 100 replies and 500 likes (made-up numbers, obviously) but guess what you can't interact with any of them because you are no longer on your instance. It basically forced me to browse logged out for 99% of my browsing, constantly following links between websites. I have not had quite the same trouble with Lemmy because despite having some similar problems, it has been a LOT quicker to sync especially once you point your instance to another.
• The lack of algorithm or fine control of my feed was off-putting. I still hate that Facebook and other platforms make it hard or impossible to sort chronologically, but having only chronological makes for a potential to miss out on massive amounts of stuff.
• And on a personal note, I think I'm just falling out of favour with the idea of a microblogging platform with strangers. If my friends used it things might be different.

I did try out Firefish and enjoyed that way more as it had a fun and engaging UI and lots of extra features, but it holds the same federation and discovery issues.

i posted in another thread how i think content discovery stinks on mastodon. bluesky is much better at it. mastodon feeds are a wall of noise

I've been engaging with Lemmy more than Mastodon. Lemmy allows for more interactions through discussions. To me, it seems like Mastodon is slower to get interactions (for context, I have accounts on three different instances and used to post dark/gothic/satirical/surrealist poetry written by me daily, but I haven't posted in days because no one seems to be really engaging with it). Mastodon has a lot of potential, but I think few are really committed to stick to the fediverse and all its potential.

As for why people don't come back, maybe they're confused about which instance to use since there are thousands of different instances for different purposes, I'm not exactly sure.

Mastodon has a horrible UI and UX, at least in my opinion. I've found Misskey and its forks to be better.

It's not dead but it has one big and massive issue that prevents mass adoption - discovery. If I can't just write the name of my friends in search and find them no matter where they made their account - for an ordinary user, or one that comes from centralized services, this seems extremely alien and hostile.

And in the end, if you can't find your friends, you want to interact with, what is the point of using the service?

Luckily, Mastodon is working on a discorvery protocol that should offer a way to find people across the board, which will hopefully make the Fediverse "appear" centralized to the average Joe while maintaining all the benefits of decentralization to the advanced users.

I use mastodon every day and I'm glad it's not dominate. It's not a vc funded a shit hole looking for a growth market. I use mastodon because not every one is there, is a nice little niche place where I can play with my friends in peace

Because it doesn't have $100s of millions to throw at marketing, or the name dropping of Twitter creators behind it.

It is what it is. You can either be alright with being small, or hurl money into it, but the people who hurl money into things tend to want it back at some point, and that means becoming a shitty business.

I'll say it again, the name sucks. It's not cute, it sounds like mastrubate compared to twitter, it just is not catchy.

TicTic, snapchat, the apps that make it have a stupid catchy name, mastadon ain't it.

Personally, I just don't enjoy that Twitter-like format. I never used Twitter so I find it... Awkward? To me its kinda like a platformer with bad controls, everything else about the game might be great but if it doesnt feel satisfying to play, I'll skip.

I still have my account and Megalodon on my phone but I just can't get into it.

Because Threads and BlueSky form effective competition with Twitter.

Also, short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks. It's become obvious. That Twitter was mostly algorithm hype and FOMO.

Mastodon tries to be healthier but I'm not convinced that microblogs in general are that useful, especially to a techie audience who knows RSS and other publishing formats.

On the feature side, according to Mastodons recent 4.3 release post development is only 4 full time employees and a budget of under $500k annually. That is basically nothing in the realm of social media companies.

Improving Mastodons features requires money and resources, but Mastodons users are unwilling to pay for instances and unwillingly to fund development. Hell, the .world folks host a bunch of instances for collectively hundreds of thousands of users and they take in about $1k a month in donations. I’m surprised that even covers hosting costs.

So…it’s no wonder that it isn’t going to be as polished as other social media in ways that would reduce the attrition.

I think a better title & question would be, "Why is Mastodon struggling to thrive?"

It's surviving no problem, but it's not thriving for a multitude of reasons. Some are pretty well covered across comments here & in the linked discussion, and are more or less reiterations of prior discussions on the matter.

Ultimately I think as much as many of those reasons are correct, the biggest reason is the same as ever: network effects. All the jank and technical details could be endured and adjusted to if there was sufficient value to be had in doing so, i.e. following accounts of interest/entertainment, connecting with friends, etc. That's proven to varying degrees by those that have stuck with Mastodon. In turn, however, it's also clear by how many bounce off that for many there's still insufficient value to be found across Mastodon instances to justify dealing with all the rough edges.

If Mastodon had enough broadly appealing/interesting people/accounts across its instances, people might deal with the various technical and cultural rough spots the same way they deal with similar on other social networks they may complain about yet won't leave. There still aren't enough of those sorts on there for many though, so Mastodon simply survives but doesn't thrive.

Mastodon is my only presence on social media. I love it. I found (over time) a large community of people who share my different interests. I love the wokeness of it. I don’t miss my lefty mutuals who are somehow still on X/Meta. I love the absence of influencers, algorithms and nazis. I love discovery through following hashtags. I could go on and on. I’m fine with people hating it for all the reasons I love it. They would ruin the vibe if they moved there.

Mastodon is pretty different to its competitors. It looks similar to Twitter / Bluesky, but the way the social network functions is completely different.

It's designed to be anti-infuencer... One of the things I hate about most social media platforms is a few people get all the attention. There are a few reasons for this, but it's not really based on merit.

I think a lot of people joined Mastodon wanting a Twitter clone. It's obviously not and Bluesky is, so people moved there. The approach Mastodon takes is far from perfect, and may not work out in the long run. But it seems like it's worth at least trying something different.

i have a mastodon account but it’s completely useless for me.

the only thing i use twitter for is to follow updates and news from professional journalists and artists who are not on mastodon and likely will never be. if your job depends on twitter, switching to mastodon is not going to happen.

if i want to engage with random average people, i come here to lemmy.

I agree with top comment.

I'm Indonesian. Most of trending fediverse are Western related topics which It's not relevant to me.

There's one time when I randomly post about my country politics, and people on Mastodon just assume or comment using Western mindset.

Other than this Lemmy account, I mostly stick with hobby-related fediverse that mostly East Asian and Southeast Asian people (mostly Misskey instance)

Also, Indonesian is currently the highest user on Twitter, recently bypassed Brazil. People still use it as our local feed is... well localized. No Western-related discussion and much more comfy.

I think people are tired of the 140 character type social networks, the novelty has simply worn off. It's either self-promotion or "I had two eggs for breakfast lol" type of posts.

People who came to Mastodon, posted "Hello world!" and didn't bother to set a profile picture or add a description will always complain about the lack of discoverability, or the place being boring.

You literally have to put in work to set up your feed, follow hashtags, people and post yourself for it to be a network and not just a feed of things. And I think people struggle with this concept a lot.

I do understand that it's not for everyone. But it's not a problem with Mastodon, it's just a natural filter IMO. "You have to put at least this much effort to integrate". Low-effort things are usually just rage-bait.

1. You know all of those politicians and scientists people like to follow? Well, they're still on Xitter.

2. I remember their "official" app claimed it was a third party app on the stores, which probably put off a lot of potential users. Any phone users will be getting an app by some randos no matter what they pick, which is a big trust issue for many of us.

I have a Mastodon account and now on my fourth, fifth instance. I instance hop a lot, which helped me find my people.

I dont agree with a huge chunk of what was said in the post. But I understand where the white people in Bali reference comes from. I am an Asian woman in tech and took me awhile to find people that I can actually connect with. What I like about Mastodon is the fact that I can find niche topics that I wont see in other social media. Also, want to flag that I no longer have accounts in proprietary social media since 2017 which probably helped my drive to find an online community.

In saying so, I have faced some crazy level of stalking (one person only so I guess its isolated?) to the point that this person messaged me on Linkedin and emailed me to tell me I was being impersonated on Mastodon. Because he didnt believe that I am myself??? He went on saying, Hi Miss, I saw youre being impersonated blah blah.

But I also want to mention that I have met so many amazing people through Mastodon.

Its a weird space, but I am weird so I guess I belong there. Loo

Mastodon is not struggling.

1. Mastodon is not a single entity, if mastodon.art dies tomorrow I would just create a new Mastodon profile on another instance.
2. Yeah, Mastodon use surged in 2022 and 2023, and yeah most users didn't stay around, but compared to the numbers before 2022, Mastodon has s big bump of new users.

Looking at two surges of new users seeing the vast majority not stick around and missing that a sizable chunk still stayed is missing the point.

This article would never have been written if the user increase didn't have temporary surges, that result would be the same number of users, but less brand recognition.

Mastodon is also not driven by the same kind of metrics as a centralized system, plenty of people can just run their own instance just for the fun of it, they don't need constant growth.

So calm down, and take it slow.

Don't sell Mastodon short.

mastodon + opt in to bridgyfed is the way

Mastodon was around for a while, slowly being built up until 2022 when the big twitter surge happened. They had the perfect foundation to make it the next big thing and all they had to do was keep the people who joined, make it slightly easier to join, and develop a few features like quote posts.

• They banned and defederated everyone who wasn't in a very narrow sliver of political and technological opinions.

Mastodon lost it's momentum, but had a second shot a year or two later. Threads joined the network offering a massive user base that could talk with Mastodon users. Then Bluesky blew up and that was bridged so Mastodon could talk with those people too. Mastodon may not have been the center of things anymore, but it could be fully integrated into the other two.

• Most servers defederated with threads and bridges.

There are other things that I'm sure play a roll as well. Luck, discoverability, easiness to join, people getting board, people looking at the next shiny thing, you name it. But it does look to be in many ways self inflicted.

I have an account that I use to read, but I've never posted on Mastodon. Decided to tweet after seeing this post and I see a privacy option called "Quiet Public - Fewer Algorithmic Fanfares".

Seriously, wtf is this? What does that even mean? If techie people like me can't figure out Mastodon then you can't expect the general public to do that. I'm not blaming this feature in particular, but Mastodon is quirky in all the wrong ways.

I thought this was about the band and panicked

@thenexusofprivacy So, I've just kinda got a stream of random tidbits here that'll hopefully sorta surmise my thoughts.

The good:

First off, it's shrunk but it's by no means dead. Things grow and shrink and grow again, if it was a straight line with no variation I'd assume it was fake.

Also, Mastodon is not all of activity pub. Threads has brought a lot if people onto the protocol, and while it's still in development it seems to be intended to work interoperably and the devs said they plan to let people migrate out and take their following/followers with them. I expect this to really supercharge the ecosystem.

The indifferent:

This isn't 2020 anymore, and there's more protocols out there. Nostr, in my opinion, is leagues better in the decentralization and user options/customizations department. AT (Bluesky) is leagues better in the end user was of use department. Both of those protocols are also much, much, lighter to host.

Activity pub also has it's advantages of course. Being the oldest and also being great for communities are two quite big ones.

Some people have chosen to either leave Activity Pub for those protocols, or joined the decentralized ecosystem directly into one of the other two. It's indifferent, though, because it's a decentralized ecosystem. All three can chat with each other, so Mastodon & Activity Pub may have shrunk - but the amount of people you can communicate with on them has risen exponentially thanks to bridges.

The ugly:

Federation is a mess. You can have a dozen friends on Activity Pub, a dozen on other protocols connected via bridges or threads and find you can only talk to two or three. That's a problem; most would give up before understanding why, and many more would likely figure out why and the decide it's not worth their time working around. After the Bluesky wave I've heard Mastodon be called some variation of "bickering fiefs" a couple dozen times.

There's also some toxicity within the space. Most people I've interacted with have been great, but it still rears it's head now and then. You can get nearly bullied off the platform if you suggest people be nice to Windows users. It was kinda funny to see that blog post shortly after I jokingly said "you guys would probably put a hit out on me if I said I was using Windows" in a similar thread. In a similar vein, while accessibility is great, I'd bet more people have left the protocol after being yelled at for not using alt text then there are users who rely on alt text.

My predictions:

I'd bet that all three protocols grow a lot in the future and that more platforms start integrating one or more of the three big protocols. It's a cheat code for new platforms to automatically have a bunch of content, and it's free platform software already built. Federation issues and fediverse specific toxicity issues will potentially be eternal septembered away. Most people won't care what OS you use and will want to be able to talk to their friends as apposed to having current federation. There might be a small splinter group of the older crowd using opt-in federation, but most of the ecosystem will change if it grows.

I'd also bet the three big protocols will continue to get closer. All three can already communicate, and heck, I, as an incompitant programmer, made a quick script that lets any Nostr client communicate with Mastodon &/or Bluesky. Throw some compitant devs at it and soon enough you probably won't even be able to tell at first glance what protocol the other person you're communicating with is on. Bluesky and Nostr in the mix bring Mastodon's ~800k monthly active users to like ~15 million. A more connected ecosystem make things better for everyone.

because its name is Mastodon, something that when people google it pulls up a band.

Also because it's trying to be a hot fresh new thing but it's literally named after an animal that's extinct.

If it had a catchier and more unique name it probably would have caught on more.

I stopped distro hopping and started hopping around Mastodon instances instead.

I currently have two active accounts. One is more established but the server goes down for days at a time.

The other is pretty robust but I'm still establishing myself there.

I echo the sentiment that there aren't a lot of Asian people on Mastodon. Although it seems that vivaldi.net is mostly Japanese people.

I made a Mastodon account during that blitz in '22. Yes, content wasn't there yet, but honestly, it was the interface for me. It's UI didn't feel simplistic enough to me as someone just getting started with it.

Lemmy may have faced a similar fate for me if it weren't for the smooth interface of Sync to be honest. I know many on here are leaps and bounds beyond my tech proficiency, but so many folks are still in the stone ages writing their passwords on post-it notes etc so to think that they'd adopt something like Mastodon over Twitter or Lemmy over Reddit seems like the bigger counterparts will always win just on sign-up flow and instant gratification.

I don't see the point. It's like twitter. Never saw the point of that either instead of lemmy or Reddit honestly