I like Lemmy a lot, and I liked Reddit before. I never really liked Twitter, just followed some NASA accounts that told what certain probes/landers/rovers were doing. I’m interested in Mastodon because federated platforms seem to sustainably fill the gap the big 5 are trying to enlarge. What kind of content are you guys getting from there?
Lemmy was kind of jarring at first, but extensions like the universal link switcher help a lot. Any stuff like that to help onboarding Mastodon? Thx folks.
link for reference https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher
If aomeone posts a direct link to another instance, you’ll be brought to the version of it on your own instance instead of moving sites. This means you stay signed in etc.
That’s a really cool script. Does it work for posts/comments that haven’t federated to your instance yet?
Universal link switcher? What is that
What other stuff am i missing from the lemmy experience
The only thing I use it for so far is to follow ARS Technica as they don’t have a mobile app, so I just subscribe to their news feed through Mastadon. I was never a Twitter user really so I only do it to support the platform.
Since the protest, I’ve really cut back on social media anyway so that’s good. But Lemmy fits as much as I need this stuff.
Cats. Mastodon has a lot of cats. It’s great.
I follow hashtags on Mastodon sort of like how I follow communities on Lemmy, but instead of “content” I get quick thoughts from people. It’s different but, as someone who also didn’t use Twitter, it’s nice to have a space where the barrier to engagement is a bit lower; you need a thought, not a link or discussion, and sometimes that’s enough to prompt engagement.
For what it’s worth, here’s an account that reposts everything NASA puts out: https://social.beachcom.org/@nasa
I was for a long time unable to understand the appeal of the structure of Twitter/Mastodon.
Recently I have become an active Mastodon reader (reader; I have made no public posts). I realize now that it is basically an RSS reader: you follow sources (people/organizations) you are interested in and get to read those in reverse-chronological order. If you aren’t an organization, celebrity, journalist, activist, politician or otherwise someone whose thoughts people in the outside world would care about, then there is no real point in ever posting anything there; people will not read it anyway because they aren’t following you. This is unlike the discussion-forum structure of Reddit/Lemmy where ordinary people are meant to participate.
Yeah, I treated Twitter as a RSS platform where I could follow subject matter experts like scientists and writers and artists I liked.
I also used it to follow people and groups that weren’t like me so i could learn. Like, “disability twitter” opened my eyes to some things I took for granted, because you had regular people dealing with those things just talking back and forth about it. If I shut my mouth and just listened, it opened up a whole new world.
For small-time creators making either art or science, Twitter was a good platform to get little chunks of info out to your followers. I don’t know that Mastodon fills those shoes yet, but I hope it will.
What kind of content are you guys getting from there?
For me it’s probably best described as “background chatter”, so mostly a bunch of different news sites that aren’t important enough for me to go into my RSS feed, bots posting notifications, and random thoughts from bloggers.
Any stuff like that to help onboarding Mastodon?
There are those that help you to stay on your home instance as well, but the big one for me is StreetPass for Mastodon, which finds and collects Mastodon accounts as you browse the web. That way you can organically build your network without much effort. You’d be surprised how many accounts from news sites, open source projects and people with blogs you can find that way.
I never really liked Twitter, either, and joined Mastodon in 2019 for fun. I’m very active in it, now, as I have spent the time curating the stuff I want to see. I interact with watercolor artists, green technology enthusiasts, “good news” orgs, sustainability advocates, and travel photographers. It takes a bit of work to set up, first, but the biggest thing is to search keywords as hashtags and follow everyone you think you might like and interact often with them. You can always unfollow, later.
