My Problems with Mastodon
Even with growing pains accommodating an influx of new users, Lemmy has made it clear that a federated social media site can be nearly as good as the original thing. I joined Lemmy, and it exceeded my expectations for a Reddit alternative run by an independent team.
These expectations were originally pretty low when Mastodon, the popular federated Twitter alternative, was the only federated social media I had experience with. After using Lemmy, Mastodon seems to be missing basic features. I initially believed these were just shortcomings of federated social media.
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Likes aren’t counted by users outside your instance, and replies don’t seem to be counted at all (beyond 0, 1, 1+), leading to posts that look like they have way more boosts (retweets) than likes or replies:
This incentivizes people to just gravitate toward the biggest instance more than people already do. My guess is that self-hosting a mastodon instance would also not be ideal, since the only likes you’ll see are your own.
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There’s really only one effective ways to find popular or ‘trending’ posts. There’s the explore tab which has ‘posts’, and ‘tags’ sections.
The ‘posts’ section shows some trending posts across your instance and all the instances that it’s federated with, this is the one I use it the most.
The ‘tags’ section is a lot like the trending tab on Twitter, but it’s reserved just for hashtags, which I guess isn’t a huge deal, but it feels like a downgrade. However, I do like the trend line it shows next to each tag!
The ‘Local’ and ‘Federated’ tabs are a live feed of post from your home instance and all the other instances, respectively. I feel these are pretty useless and definitely don’t warrant their own tabs. Having a local trending tab for seeing popular posts on your instance would be more interesting.
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The search bar basically doesn’t work, is this just me???
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This one is more minor and more specific to a Twitter alternative, but when looking at a user’s follows, you’ll only see the one’s on your home instance but for some reason this rule doesn’t apply to followers.
From what I’ve heard, a lot of these issues are intentional in order to create a healthier social media experience. Things like less focus on likes, reduces a hivemind mentality, addiction, things like that (I couldn’t find a source for this, if anyone has one confirming or disproving this please lmk).
Why this is a Problem
Mastodon seems to have two goals: To be an example of how a federated alternative to Twitter can work well, and to be a healthier social media experience. It’s not obvious, but I think these goals conflict with each other. A lot of the features that are removed in the pursuit of a healthier social media will be perceived as the shortcomings of federation as a concept.
In my eyes, Mastodon’s one main goal should be proving federated social media as a whole to the public, by being a seamless, familiar, full-featured alternative to Twitter. For me, Lemmy has done that for Reddit, upvotes are counted normally, you can see trending posts locally and globally same with communities, and the search function works! All its shortcomings aren’t design flaws, and I fully expect them to be fixed down the road as it matures.
As annoying as Jack Dorsey is, I have high hopes for BlueSky.
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I’m on kbin. Much better than lemmy.
My issue with Kbin is that it’s missing some of the communities from Lemmy. For example, [email protected] isn’t available on Kbin and I can’t add it. Also, it annoys me seeing empty image placeholders on every post. Last time that I used Kbin, it also kept showing error messages every couple minutes. Kbin just isn’t ready for mainstream adoption. Lemmy is.
Uh… You should be able to add it. You might need to search on:
@[email protected]. Which is the whole point of federation, right?There is a 20-character limit. I tried.
Update: There is actually a 25 limit character is on the name:
#[Assert\Length(min: 2, max: 25)]However I did notice it’s just here on kbin.social: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]
owh? Let me try to increase that…
how do i remove random posts that appear on the side on kbin?
I don’t have your issues with it. I have a ton of interactions on Mastodon and everything is clear.
The problem people have with mastodon is how they see it. You wrote all your rant about mastodon being a copy of Twitter with the Twitter terminology. Mastodon is not Twitter.
I did the same mistake at the beginning. I thought it was a federate Twitter. It made it empty and frustrating to use. I didn’t understand what people do there.
I give it a second try. This time, I took another way to understand it. Instead of comparing to Twitter and thinking at a federated Twitter, I took it like a new experience.
After that, I discover the philosophy behind mastodon and it’s completely different. It’s not Twitter or a Twitter like. People are nice and really active.
The number of reply doesn’t matter that much. What is important are the boosts. People need to find groups boosting the toots. You need to mention the group when you toot and you need to follow groups. The second is hashtags to follow and search for. But hashtags aren’t the primary thing to follow.
Then, you begin to find accounts to follow. But keep in mind the philosophy is different and you won’t use it as Twitter.
This post was at the top of Mastodon’s explore page yesterday: https://mas.to/@kissane/110793942888550843
I feel it perfectly encapsulates the issues I see others and I face with Mastodon. Since it was #1 trending, it probably resonated with many more too.
The technical issues can eventually solved. The cultural ones? That’s the big question.
Lemmy seems far more approachable. It has its issues, but at least it has a working search.
Essentially the main issue I have with Mastodon is that it’s UI is confusing AF.
I don’t have any issues with it. I use Ice Cubes, it’s awesome.
Hello, have you tried Akkoma or Firefish?
Agree with this comment: Firefish is much better than the current state of Mastodon, especially since all the complaints you have are basically being wont-fixed by the current dev team.
Is anyone actually on Firefish though? The issue with these platforms is that they don’t really become usable until they have a decent userbase.
Just joined, I like the features it has so far
Firefish user here. While I do agree with the statement, I’d like to add that Firefish integrated really well in “twitter-verse”. You can see post from Mastodon, Misskey, Akkoma/Pleroma and other platforms. So the small userbase isn’t much of a problem.
I, personally, find Misskey/Firefish a much better alternative to Twitter than mastodon. It has everything you’d expect: Nice and clean UI, “quoted retweets” ability, working search functionality, post reactions and much more.
However you still need to go to an accounts instance to see its subscriptions/subscribes. But I guess it will be fixed in future
Firefish is federated so you’re not limited to content and people on Firefish. You can see Mastodon (and Akkoma, and Lemmy, etc etc) content inside Firefish.
Is anyone actually on Firefish though?
I’m on Firefish (still getting used to the name) - I signed up Mastodon initially but I couldn’t get into it. Being on Lemmy helped me get my head around the Fediverse but, after I signed up to Calckey, I haven’t gone back to Mastodon. Finding enough content is tricky but all the various extra features (like Antenna) really help.
I’ve found enough interesting people to follow (along with Mastodon users, of course) that I’m happy, but that’s entirely a personal and very subjective opinion.
I self host a calckey instance (what firefish was called before a week ago and I’m too busy to update atm) and it integrates just fine with everything else in the fediverse. The cool thing about the fediverse is that user numbers don’t matter because it all ties in together.
Calckey/Firefish (forked from the Japanese software Misskey, so I assume that one is similar) is basically Mastodon but cool. It fixes many of your problems. While it’s not yet perfect (same issue with followers from other servers), there seems to be more going on.
As annoying as Jack Dorsey is, I have high hopes for BlueSky.
As long as he doesn’t submit that protocol as ActivityPub 2.0 or whatever, it’s not compatible with the wider fediverse, so not interesting.
As long as he doesn’t submit that protocol as ActivityPub 2.0 or whatever, it’s not compatible with the wider fediverse, so not interesting.
If they get their act together and publish a real protocol / standard that a developer can read, implement, and then have a server capable of federating, then activitypub 1.0 can diaf and we can all praise our new activitypub 2.0 overlords.
I only found firefish the other day but 'like Mastodon but cool" is a perfect way to describe it.
I’d be surprised if he did submit it as activitypub, he’s already called it ATProtocol
He cannot just call something the name of an industry standard but he can submit his to the W3C who then can decide whether to adopt it or not
So users viewing this post on another instance will see the same exact comments and upvotes?
My understanding is yes, but only if the instances have federated with each other.
Indeed, at least that’s the idea. Viewing and posting from kbin.social.
Hello from feddit.de 👋
Hello from kbin.social 👋
Yes, on my instance for example your comment has 10 upvotes and 7 replies - the same counts are reflected on the origin instance
lemmy.world.That’s the idea, but in practice since the data exists independently on each server, it takes network time and computational time for them to align. In practice I expect comments to function as you expect, and upvotes to be slightly off depending on which instance you’re viewing from.
Things get a bit more weird when an instance gets defederated from another instance. My understanding here is that if you have instance A defederate from instance B, but instance B was listening to some of instance A’s communities, that instance B will have an independent replica of that community that doesn’t sync (this happened when beehaw defederated from open registration instances like lemmy.world).
Hi from lemm.ee👋
It’s aboot time something worked so well innit?
-lemmy.ca
Hello from zerobytes.monster 👋
sh.itjust.works user here :)
My Mastodon search has never worked either, Lemmy is a much better Reddit alternative than Mastodon is a Twitter alternative
Try firefish
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This is a feature, not a bug. Clout-chasing is what kills corporate/surveillance social media. Get over fantasy Internet points and start providing and consuming actual content.
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I’d like to see “trending” removed entirely from Mastodon. I don’t give a shit what people at large think is important or cool or funny or whatnot. I care what my social circle thinks is important or cool or funny or whatnot. And for that? I’ve got my feed. Get over algorithmically spoon-fed statements of what you should care about and, you know, interact. On social media.
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The search bar works, just not in the way any sane person would expect it to work. It’s badly designed, badly named, and badly implemented.
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This is an unfortunate side effect of distributed social media. Federation is already a huge bottleneck for the Fediverse. Adding social graph follows to the list of things being transmitted around willy-nilly is a bandwidth killer. Any social media that is truly distributed (read: not BlueSky) will have the same issue.
- is the reason many of us were on Twitter to begin with. I never kept to with friends there, but I really liked seeing breaking news, etc. It was useful and functional. Madstodon is not useful in this way, which breaks one of the key features many of us want in a Twitter replacement.
Sounds like I need to look at this Fish place instead.
Follow Deutsche Welle for news.
Big agree, Twitter I previously used to see “what’s happening” in the world outside my little bubble
That’s what makes threads like this so interesting to me. I never got into Twitter(despite many attempts literally since it was first released) but absolutely love Mastodon. And sometimes I read these threads and just think…what?
But in reality it just comes down to your individual use case and whether the specific thing that Mastodon is actually fits that use case.
Until this thread, for example, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a trending tab and I didn’t know there was a problem seeing people’s follows because it would never have occurred to me to look.
I use the advanced interface and, while I do follow people, very very rarely pull up the home feed. My columns are all crafting hashtags and my local feed because I’m on a crafting-focused server.
If you’re into following topics, Mastodon is a great time. If you’re into following people or you want to to kept up to date with the outside world then I can definitely understand not being a fan.
I think this disconnect here on Lemmy comes from why people use the platforms they did before (Reddit vs Twitter).
Reddit was always purely content focused, and I feel people trying out Mastodon from Lemmy are expecting the same thing - where Mastodon is about content, and not people you want to follow.
I also love Mastodon as well and I don’t think the issues people are posting about in here are issues at all either, as Mastodon being about directly connecting with people and a purely chronological feed is why I like it - if I want to search content relating to a topic, I browse Lemmy instances instead.
I tried following #ukraine on Mastodon, but I got spammed by repost bots so it just completely clogged my feed
If you wanted spoon-fed content, then yes, Twitter is the place for you! And you know what? It’s still there!
I left Twitter because of the spoon-fed content and the algorithmic attempts to “engage” me by fostering outrage and am happy that Mastodon thus far does not have this misfeature. If you want that misfeature Twitter is still there. So is BlueSky (eventually). So is Threads. So is Instagram. So is Facebook. There’s an embarrassment of choice for the pabulum crowd. Please don’t bring it here.
That’s me. Besides the ads/promotion/tracking shit pre-elon Twitter was doing pretty much exactly what I want from it. It was mostly for the parasocial relationships not for keeping up with actual friends. I’d get news and announcements straight from the source quickly and even with a verified checkmark to help ensure I wasn’t getting trolled. Now it’s trash.
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Seeing upvotes on posts is literally why you’re using Lemmy right now. Advertising / engagement driven media can exploit our desire to get feedback on what we say but getting feedback on what we say is not a new or novel phenomena, it’s a fundamental part of human nature and why we converse. It’s literally the exact same reason why doing a zoom presentation with cameras on, so that you can read body language, is better than cameras off, where you feel like you’re talking to an empty uncaring void.
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If you want to catch up with you family and friends go outside and talk to them or call them, or hell, set up your instance and only allow their posts to come through. The rest of the world users twitter to connect with the Twitterverse not their neighbours.
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I see no reason it would be any harder than Lemmy syncing upvotes acros ls thousands and thousands of comments.
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First, I don’t give a shit at all about the upvote counts (and even less of a shit about the downvote counts) on Lemmy. To the point I have them concealed. Second, so you’re saying a different piece of software with different goals does things differently? WOW WHAT AN OBSERVATION! YOU SHOULD GO APPLY FOR A NOBEL PRIZE, GOOD SIR!
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Please point to where I said “family”? (Hint: this is not possible.)
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You see no reason, ergo there is no reason, Q.E.D. You, sir, are also a consummate logician.
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It’s a different piece of software with the same user facing goals, fostering online discussion in community run communities centered around different topics.
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Please look up what a semantic argument is, and then realize you’re missing the point.
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Sooooo…
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You claimed something was impossible,
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I pointed to an instance of it being possible that we’re using right now
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you mocked me for being too logical? Ok.
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I mean, you’re not wrong. The “problems” of Mastodon are features. Avoiding an algorithm to suggest toots was done on purpose. It’s why likes are simply for the author, not really for others. Boost promote toots by increasing exposure.
Likes are not the same as likes on Twitter, nor should they really matter. The intent of Mastodon is not to promote some toots over others due to popularity which many times just creates feedback loops. It’s why you would see repetitive content on Reddit and if Lemmy gets remotely the same size, it’ll suffer the same way. Algorithms are problematic in that they tend to get abused.
Oh, so that explains why the ratio of favorites/boosts is so low on mastodon. I thought it was just a culture thing, where people rarely left likes on posts.
Turns out it was just a software quirk.
Mastodon doesn’t have Likes at all.
The star you’re referring to is Favorite. Those go into your Favorite list. So you can refer back to them more easily.
lol, and I was thinking I was supporting other’s users opinions.
You are in a way. Just not only that.
I don’t see it that way. There are separate options to Favourite or Bookmark a post. To me Bookmarking something is so you can refer to it later, although nothing is stopping you using Favourites that way.
Favourites get put on a list so you can refer to it later … and notify the poster that you’ve done so as a form of positive feedback.
Bookmarks get put on a list so you can refer to it later.
That’s the big difference.
Favourite and Bookmark are absolutely different things. They’re two different lists for you to use as you see fit.
Neither of them is a Like though. I’m not sure that fact is really debatable.I’ll have to disagree there. When you Favourite a post, the person that posted it gets a notification about the fact, while if you Bookmark something no notification is sent. In effect you are telling the person that you “Liked” their post.
Also, looking at the Explore section of Mastodon the following message is shown at the top of the feed:
These are posts from across the social web that are gaining traction today. Newer posts with more boosts and favorites are ranked higher.
So those Favourites are used by the algorithm to rank posts. Bookmarks are totally private and only used to save posts for your own use.
Lets try it this way. Would say your favourites things, include everything you like? Do you like some things that aren’t your favorite? Do you keep a list of everything you’ve ever liked? Would it be as big as the list of your favorite things?
Do you see the difference? It’s a mater of degree that separates them. They are not the same. That’s why they are two different words.
People will say stuff like “fave before replying” though. And most platforms with a like will be able to make you a list of everything you have liked.
So I think like maps to the little Mastodon star pretty well, even though it might not be meant to be used that way.
Your getting lost in lingual semantics. It’s just called “favourites” but it’s treated, at face value and at the code level, the same way other sites/systems treat the word “like”. That’s what matters. It could be called “Flibflabs” and still be a “like” replacement.
Oh god, Ive been using them wrong this whole time?!?!
I guess I am so used to other social media I had assumed it was a like button.
No, you haven’t. It started out this way, but now basically it’s the “tell the poster you acknowledge/like the post” but also there when you don’t want to boost the post to your timeline. You can still use it this way, but because the community (probably with one of the first twitter exoduses) started using it more like a like on twitter, they gave up and implemented bookmarks (I think might be private and not notify the poster you’ve bookmarked?)
Ofc, there are also some of the mastodon HOA that will still insist this, but then why do bookmarks exist…?
Anyway, just in general, you can tell by the up/down ratio and a lot of the comments that are getting upvoted in this thread that are posting things that are either just incorrect or at least misunderstand things how many people in this thread actually use mastodon, so I would take criticism with a grain of salt.
I think most people use the star button the same way you do, as an alternative to Twitter likes.
There’s a separate button for favoriting (bookmarking) a post. Where it is and what it looks like differs per app, but that’s probably what people use to actually favorite toots.
Although they differ from Twitter Likes, note that Mastodon Favorites are not private. For an example, I’ll refer to one of your toots:
https://mastodon.social/@justhach/110696151311920356Viewing it in the Mastodon web interface, I see an indication that 2 people marked it as a Favorite. I can then click to see those 2 usernames, listed here:
https://mastodon.social/@justhach/110696151311920356/favouritesSuch listings are limited though. For example, I’m viewing a toot that you boosted, and I see an indication that it has been marked as a Favorite by 816 users; but when I click to view their names, I see only 40 of them listed.
deleted by creator
Pretty sure that thing about likes, boosts, and favorites not showing up as a count is just a setting. I see full counts.
