From news, to shitposting, to memes, to more shitposting, Lemmy feels vibrant, active, lighthearted, fun and even powerful. Mastodon feels like a fucking funeral.
Just guessing here, but Lemmy is generally content focused, where it feels like mastodon and twitter have more of a focus on the interaction between users. This would mean that Mastodon needs a lot of active users to function, where a lemmy community can be largely carried by just a few really active posters.
It’s harder to find the good stuff on Mastodon because you have to follow individuals or novelty accounts.
I think that is the biggest issue with Mastodon and federation in general: Limited discoverability. I’ve spoken to a few artists that still post on Twitter. They won’t join Mastodon, because it is so hard to develop consistent reach.
I still don’t know how to find people with similar interests on mastodon. There may be lots of interesting stuff happening there but how would I know? Plus posting on there feels like shouting into the void since I only have a handful of followers.
Also I don’t want to follow randos who sometimes post about cool things, sometimes post the $50 hamburger they ate, and sometimes post unfiltered rampant misogyny, I want to follow cool ideas and topics directly.
If you’re interested, follow hash tags not people. Well, you can follow people too if you find someone you vibe with. Also following groups can help … until someone forgets what ‘reply all’ means.
Lemmy naturally concentrates unconnected users with similar interests thanks to reddit-style communities. Mastodon follows the Twitter style where you have to find and follow individual users to get their microblog content, and its harder to isolate certai ln topics or interests except acorss the entire service via hashtags.
Lemmy has fewer users but they as a whole generate more active content than Mastodon does thanks to community specialization, since the Twitter style posts require some critical mass of users following to generate interesting discussion (something that basically never happens unless you’re already a celebrity)To add to this, on Lemmy I often find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with a user depending on the topic and community. It adds a layer of additional context and nuance to that user. If I was just to follow the user vs. community, however, I may get the impression that the user is not worth following if I happen to run across them on a topic that we have disagreements on.
I’ve had times where i’ll have a negative interaction with someone on lemmy and see them later in another thread and they’re cool again. On Mastodon if you have a single bad experience you’ve probably already blocked each other and that chance to reconcile never comes up again.
Try following George Takei, Star Trek Minus Context, and/or the various cat accounts, e.g Cats of Yore.
I honestly think the tiny fraction of MAU might be the reason. Something like once you exceed a Dunbar Number of contacts in a community it starts to go downhill.
Quality is higher when people want to be somewhere specific based on content or types of users and not because of the number of users.
Quality goes down when people are somewhere because everyone else is there.
The latter tends to have a higher proportion of malicious trolls and other people who crave conflict because they need a large enough crowd to get away with those kind of behaviors.
because everyone else is there.
There are at least 10 bigger social networks, so we’re probably good for at least another year.
The twitter format makes it feel like everyone is speaking from a soap box at all times, and people aren’t their best selves from a soap box.
With how block-heavy everyone is it feels less like a soapbox more like you’re shouting into an empty parking lot.
They don’t have beans on Mastodon.
They do have jeans tho
That is unfortunate.
Lemmy is and will forever remain pants optional.
Up/downvotes help us all essentially be eachothers “algorithm” so its easier to find interesting stuff. Also comment sections are the best part of Lemmy style websites while mastodon is a mess to follow because the default app doesnt even have threaded replies, theres no downvotes, and you cant subscribe to a post to get notifications or come back to it later and posts dont appear on google searches so a post doesn’t get any use after a day or two. Lemmy posts bring me benefits months/years after theyre made because they appear when I google for information
Mastodon having a way bigger algorithm curve before you start seeing interesting stuff remains throughout.
I think it’s the gamification. Mastodon degamifies Twitter in a way Lemmy can’t really do with the classic Reddit system.
Votes go up, votes go down, you can see people winning and losing here. It’s fun, even if it’s in a bad way.
I like how votes have no sway in moderating and discoverability. It keeps people honest instead of just trying to game the system.
I think you’re just in a weird corner of mastodon? My mastodon feed is way more popping than on here.
Plausible
I’m always surprised at the lack of interactions on Mastadon. Most toots seem to never get a single like or comment, even from users with lots of followers. Always makes me feel like I’m missing something.
Mastodon just doesn’t have any users compared to Lemmy I guess.
Maybe it is the…
Because Twitter-like services are not fun… I never thought they were fun. :)
They were fun after Tumblr shut down if you know what I mean.
The difference is mastadon is how interesting your friends are. Lenny is how interesting the entire lemmy populous is.
