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Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

I must be one of those tiny dots just floating in nothingness because my BSKY feed is a dead zone. I've posted, I've replied, I've liked and tried to be an active participant but nothing seems to stick. There's only so many posts I can publish "for myself" before I lose interest.

Contrast this with early Twitter where everyone was just super excited, and eager to follow new people. I don't get it, shouldn't a new social network be full of people looking to create new... social networks?

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The account with your handle is following only a handful of people, and is broadcasting content rather than engaging in a conversation. Consider the reverse.

This is it, the typical model of throwing things out into the ether and hoping they go viral is less effective here. It's easier to build an audience by thoughtfully engaging in discourse rather than trying to advertise yourself as some kind of thought leader

At the moment, BSKY has an enormous “rich get richer” problem caused by starter packs. If you get into starter packs made by influential people, you will get an infinite number of followers for free. If you’re bootstrapping your presence from scratch, you will be almost completely undiscoverable.

Did you try Mastodon? Many have a better experience there.

Mastadon has a massive problem with furries, people with loli anime-avatars or people who fit the «purple haired» stereotype.

It’s very off-putting and alienating for normal people.

These are also "normal people", they just choose to express themselves differently.

Maybe you should get over it?

No, nothing about furries is "normal". Get over it.

Nobody important or relevant enough is moving to Mastodon.

One can engage on multiple platforms. Don't have to leave something else to use Mastodon.

> One can engage on multiple platforms. Don't have to leave something else to use Mastodon.

Sure, and those who have a technically savvy audience can use Mastodon can post on multiple platforms.

In this instance of bad changes X has made, the majority of those who are moving away from X this time round are more likely not going to engage on Mastodon as a second platform.

Too much hassle for them.

They are more likely to engage on platforms that have more engagement, like Bluesky or Threads.

I cannot see artists, journalists, etc going to Mastodon when X makes changes to their platform time and time again.

If it always remains so, I'm never leaving.

If you have a problem with too many furry posts I have bad news for you about Bluesky

I used to see a lot of furry accounts in the Discover feed, but I mute them when I see them, and now I rarely see them any more. I don't have anything against furries, but it's not content I'm interested in. This is more a comment that Bluesky does seem to have an algorithm (at least in the Discover feed) that is sensitive to what you do or don't show interest in. Or it could just be that a lot more people have joined recently, so the furry stuff just isn't as prevalent.

Discover has a separate "show more/less like this" button too.

Every feed on the site is its own algorithm, and most are made by third-parties. Some of the more interesting ones have fallen over and broken a little as the volume of posts has increased. The various "catch up" feeds that show the most popular recent posts give a good impression of what's happening site wide (minus any blocks/mutes).

> I don't have anything against furries

If so, you're probably looking for the "show less of this" feature rather than muting?

Bluesky is trying to differentiate itself with moderation tools -- people have created lists of furry accounts so you can bulk-ignore. But yeah I haven't found my "people" there yet, most of the activity is people I wouldn't choose to interact with.

Twitter and Bluesky are also full of furries. Frankly, if your social network lacks furries, it is probably in trouble; they seem to be a viability indicator.

(Not that it’s a guarantee of anything; notably, SecondLife is essentially _only_ furries.)

Mastodon’s only algorithm is newest-on-top, so your complaint is that the people you’re following seem strange to you. Uh, follow other people then.

This was my experience trying to find and instance to join. And as a result I didn't join any.

I'm pretty sure most "normal" people would react in a similar fashion, which kind of makes this a notable catch-22 for wider Mastadon-adaption.

It strongly depends on the instance. You don't have to read the global timeline.

The tough thing is that for the vast majority of end users, the interface that they see is the software or service. So if their instance has a bunch of disgusting pornography, as far as they’re concerned, mastodon has a bunch of disgusting pornography. For a lot of folks, the browser/server abstraction for regular websites and how that differs from native apps is about as far as they’re willing to go in their understanding of Internet architecture and for many, it’s too far. Requiring people understand that not all mastodon is mastodon despite it being kind of the same, in order to avoid explicit hentai, is a non-starter. My grandparents are dead, but they would probably take their computer out back and set it on fire if that shit flashed up on their screen. They sure wouldn’t have used it as an opportunity to get all of the base knowledge they needed to even realize they had to instance shop. Facebook is just riiiiight over there.

Not really, posting to mastodon.social is shouting into a void.

Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to register on another instance, but AFAICT there's no way to link the accounts?

> no way to link the accounts?

What's the goal? Why not just mention other account in bio?

https://fedi.tips/using-multiple-accounts-on-mastodon-and-th...

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