ok i browsed a little, posted some , and followed some people so i want to talk about my first impression about mastodon, and about the QOTO instance.
firstly i want to say that i never used twitter or any other microblogging platform so the format is new to me.
the main thing i want to talk about is that starting out is hard, the federated timeline is full of things which range from uninteresting to offensive and finding anything that interests me is like finding a needle in a haystack.
the local timeline isn't much better though i imagine that if i created my account on a smaller more theme focused instance that wouldn't be the case.
i hope that as i follow more people add them to lists and groups my home timeline will be full of interesting things so that i won't need to browse the federated or local timeline.
however i am not certain this
will be the case.
i imagine that if i was introduced to mastodon by a friend i would have a easier time.
i think that the experience could have been better, if i could browse posts by instance or the search was better. i still will use the fediverse as i believe in the idea but i am unsure about mastodon.
I believe something should be done to facilitate new users finding content, ideally it would be a full featured search engine, so that new users could easily find what they want. but even a tab showing trending topics or chronologically show all posts that match certain criteria would help.
#fediverse #mastodon #qoto
@canwolf sorry i must have misunderstood your post, but are you saying that i shouldn't look for interactions in a social media platform? if i want to interact with other people i NEED either followers or to be following people.
i can't control who follows me so the solution is to follow people,
if i want to find people to follow there are only so many ways to do that,
i could look for interesting people in other sites, the problem with this option is that i have yet to see someone link to their mastodon on a blog or youtube video or reddits post or anywhere, so this option is inviable.
that leaves me with only in-site options the search bar as i mentioned could use some improvements, and the public timelines are horrible. so something needs to change.
@eldritch_cookie yes, you understood quite right. You SHOULD generally NOT use search on a social network site to find friends or followers or whom to follow. It should happen naturally and generally should not depend on the platform/site you are using.
The urgent desire to find someone you don't know, as I think, is more a marketing invention. And even more - to press the "follow" button so the whole world knows that you two are interconnected. Some kind of exhibitionism.
Instead of searching you should come to a place with people who have similar interests and talk and interact to them. Like ancient Greeks who (if they were not slaves and had time) came to the central town square (called "forum") to socialise.
@eldritch_cookie It's possible you might be better suited to a smaller instance, or an instance that censors others more aggressively. Maybe even different software like MissKey or Friendica. All are legitimate choices, and if you're not happy definitely check out alternatives. It's part of what makes the fediverse so cool.
I agree with you though that getting started can be hard. Search is actually that way deliberately. It's supposed to prevent dog piling.
This resource may help you at least familiarize yourself with the general landscape https://github.com/joyeusenoelle/GuideToMastodon/
@eldritch_cookie Also this if you're looking for people to follow https://communitywiki.org/trunk
@b6hydra thanks for the links, also i think you are right i probably will be happier in another software, i had lots of good interactions with friendly people but the federated timeline is just so bad.
And i think i have a mismatch with mastodon, although i like the idea of following some people and seeing all their posts ,
i find it increasingly obvious that i don't like it being the default way of interacting with people.
i am already liking the fediverse as i will still be able to interact with the cool people i am following even if i switch to friendica or hubzilla,
actually hubzilla seems to be the most full featured fediverse galaxy it's a shame that it seems like all hubs are in languages i don't know. so i will probably go use friendica.
now that i think about it most people in the fediverse are using mastodon. well at least people can switch easily.
@eldritch_cookie Mastodon is definitely popular but if it's not for you that's ok.
Hubzilla does have a ton of features. I found it to be overkill for my needs, still a cool project though. The developers don't like to invite comparisons but if I had to, I'd say friendica and hubzilla are more like facebook (macro-blogging) while mastodon is obviously like twitter (micro-blogging). It also depends how you use it of course. There's also diaspora which uses it's own protocol and doesn't federate with mastodon.
Tbh the federated timeline isn't great anywhere in my experience. It's every post from every person that is being followed by someone on your home server. It's inevitable that a lot of the content won't interest you unless you're on a small niche server yourself.
Anyway glad I could help with the links. Hope you're able to settle in somewhere you like.
@eldritch_cookie seems like you make yourself use the mastodon service. That's not how it should be. I think it is (like most social networks) for writing, not for reading. You just post what you want to make available to the others. Like on a site or a blog. And only subscribe to those who posted a link to their blog somewhere else where you found it by accident. The whole concept of "searching" for something is strange (if you don't have a problem to solve, which you don't). You come to a thing when you need it. I don't think you often use google to find someone's personal thematical blog or tweeter, do you?