Ask HN: Daily users of Mastodon, what do you use it for? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Daily users of Mastodon, what do you use it for?

12 pointscgb22311 comments

I see a lot of discussion on HN about how we need decentralized social media, and how Twitter / Facebook / TikTok etc is the root of all evil.

But Mastodon has existed for a long time now, and at least in my techie social circle, it seems like nobody uses it at all.

To the folks who do use it, what purpose does it serve for you?

Who is actually using it every day? What for?

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I used it every day for a couple months earlier this year. There are lots of little differences. I thought it was a more interesting place to be yourself than it was to find interesting accounts to follow.

Twitter is really good at the latter. Especially if you are looking for people to THREAD you up some knowledge or if you like viral content.

But there's also that saying that goes something like: "Every day one person is picked to bear the shame of all of Twitter, and your goal is to not be selected as that person" --or something like that. It's not exactly a chill microblogging platform anymore, but Mastodon is.

So, while Twitter might be a good research or learning tool, and Mastodon could also be that _depending_, Mastodon is also kind of open to exploration without some of the pressures or distractions inherent in the Twitter model.

If you want to microblog in a chill way and build up some fun toots to look back on over time, it's probably a fantastic platform for that.

Personally I took a bit of a Mastodon hiatus to explore SL and OpenSimulator, both of which are also pretty interesting.

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E4t8y9k1Us (Video showing some interesting worldbuilding in OpenSimulator)

Memes, art, cat photos, catching up with other people's projects.

Find artists: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/art

Comics: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/comics

Cat pictures, etc.: https://mastodon.social/@gargron

More recommendations: https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/108521414258703203

If you would like, I'm [@karmanyaahm@social.linux.pizza](https://social.linux.pizza/@karmanyaahm) (you can see who I follow and whether they interest you)

As for using Mastodon, I would highly recommend getting an app like Tusky to have a proper 'all in one' experience.

> But Mastodon has existed for a long time now, and at least in my techie social circle, it seems like nobody uses it at all.

The honest truth is, little to no-one is using it, hence interaction there is extremely low.

It is not early days anymore and we have given it enough time to get more users to make it worthy of being able to recommend it to anyone who isn't a techie over something like Twitter at the very least. It really hasn't materialised as the so-called Twitter alternative that everyone here was talking about for years. [0]

If you have 94% of total users across all instances not using the platform, then to the average folk it doesn't look exactly great to use or a great pitch to convince others to use that instead of Twitter.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17788060

OSM community has it's own Mastodon instance set up.[1l It feels like a "small, closely knit" twitter, but we talk about OSM all day long. It's better than Twitter because it's easier to discover new tweets that's related to OSM

Also, one of my colleague is using Mastodon as his main social media. Even though his account is set up on different Mastodon served, i can easily follow him too. It feels like e-mail, where you can still get in touch to people that's hosted on different server.

Several years ago, i cant use Mastodon because it's still full of bugs and there's no active community. But for now, it's already usable for daily use.

[1] : https://en.osm.town/about

It seems like the Baraag and Pawoo (I think run by Pixiv) instances both host very... uh... vibrant pornographic, and sex positive art communities, and it is convenient for those users as Tumblr banned them all, Twitter patchily bans explicit content periodically (JP users get a much looser leash than EN it seems) and DeviantArt forbids anything more explicit than artistic nudes.

I don't use it, mainly because I'm unclear of what the implications of choosing an instance are. I have a wide range of interests and I worry I'll be siloed if I choose just one.

Choosing an instance limits you in two ways:

1. The rules of what you're allowed to post

2. The other instances that they choose to federate with (typically a block list that is public)

If you find yourself limited, common advice is to create more accounts (alts) to work around those limitations

I've also seen people host their own instance and get around the lack of federation (but you limit the visibility of your posts from organic traffic)

> The rules of what you're allowed to post

Additionally, most popular generic instances allow you to post anything except for ads, explicit hate, or nsfw without a warning.

Can someone post a link to anything on Mastodon? I have never seen it used and never even heard it mentioned outside of HN

Here you go, a pigeon and cat interacting through a window https://mastodon.art/@welshpixie/108961962539795706 :)

Thanks!

Who gets the analytics from people's page views, browsing etc?

I use it pretty much the same I use Twitter, just a bit more filtered (i.e. I subscribe to fewer news sources, fewer people who post a lot, even among the obviously smaller set of users)

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