I switched last year and haven't looked back! For me at least, Mastodon has been a much better experience than Twitter ever was.
And yet you still can't follow threads on their app, so on Tusky I'll stay
How they still don't have it I don't understand.
I've reinstalled it to take a shniff and I'm impressed so far, very clean and functional.
You don't need to use the official Mastodon apps, they're not the best way to use Mastodon. The official apps only arrived last year, and they were intended as "Fisher Price My First Mastodon" things with a restricted set of features.
Third party apps have been around longer than official ones, and include way more features. You can sign in with the same account on all apps.
:android: On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot
:apple_inc: On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona
You can also use kbin to read, comment and boost mastodon 'toots'. That's what I do anyway.
Any way to get the iOS apps to open Mastodon links by default?
Ivory can do this via its Safari extension, and it does support Universal Links for select instances. It’s difficult to implement Universal Links for the fediverse because each instance would have to add an association file to their servers, and even if all instances add this, there’s a limit to how many domains you can support in an app
Ivory can do this via its Safari extension, and it does support Universal Links for select instances. It’s difficult to implement Universal Links for the fediverse because each instance would have to add an association file to their servers. Even if all instances add this file to their servers, there’s a limit to how many domains you can support in an app.
Is this what everyone is using now?
I was using Megalodon, Tusky, and the original app, but I've skipping a few updates of all of them.
I use fedilabs, don't know if the other apps have caught up (hope they did) but the timeline function where you can add timelines from whatever instance you like and also have tags as timelines is so OP.
Since I spend most of my time browsing other instance timelines that feature is a must.
Just for me to understand this as I'm pretty new. Each instance has their own "timeline" aka homepage or feed with all content (people you follow, tags etc.), and you either have to access each instance separately or use something like the app you mentioned?
Each instance has a "local" feed of posts from that instance. Same as how local works on Lemmy.
You also have your "home" feed (like our Subscribed, it's for posts from people you follow) and a "federated" feed (like our All, everything your instance knows about).
I mostly use Mastodon on desktop and I can pin columns with my fave hashtags in as their own separate feed, which is nice.
Thanks, that helps!! The separate timeliness ads actuly pretty awesome. Basically a curated list of topics/people instead of everything being thrown at you like Twitter.
Don’t forget, you can follow hashtags too! So if you want to see toots (posts) regarding a topic that interests you, just follow a hashtag like #ukrainewar, or #linux for example. That’s also a good way to to find people to follow.
Yes! I saw that, that's great. Missed it initially, as it is not possible viel the official mobile app. And when using Tusky I accidentally "muted" my tags, so they were shown as filtered in the homepage. So many possibilities!
Yeah, the Fediverse is awesome!
I honestly have no idea how Twitter works so will just have to take your word for it lol. Loving Mastodon though, I've had two accounts since November, both on small niche instances and both have nice active feeds and as much conversation as I want :)
Good to hear fedilab is still one of the better ones. Haven't used any much lately but I'll just stick with it
The official one lacks lists, local, world.. how is anyone supposed to find people to follow?
I believe that much like Lemmy, there's an "all" button that gives you everything from everywhere.
I still use and love Tusky
I'm mostly on Trunks.. and I occasionally glance at Megalodon. Both have been light on updates lately (maybe I'm just spoiled by the crazy pace of development on Connect for Lemmy right now).
Based on their Mastodon posts, it looks like the Megalodon dev has been hard at work re-basing their app on the new official Mastodon app version. Still no public release of that to use that I'm aware of.
Is it possible to view Matsodon from Lemmy platforms?
In my cursory research, it seems to be possible to view mastodon through Kbin. And possible to view Lemmy through Mastodon.
Lemmy doesn't have support for following user accounts, only communities.
All the platforms use the same backend. So there's no reason full mastodon interoperability couldn't be added to Lemmy in the future.
mastodon.world is also maintained by Ruud, same Admin as lemmy.world
I'm waiting on my blue sky invite
To be honest I'm not seeing the appeal of a centralized Twitter clone.
Same, it could easily go the enshitification route once they gather enough momentum to become the dominant micro-blogging site.
I don't think it's centralized.It is federated, similar to mastodon.
It uses the AT protocol (proprietary to Bluesky) vs the ActivityPub like Mastodon/Lemmy/the Fediverse. Not sure it will be compatible.
I didn't know this.Thanks!
not yet, it’s just one invite-only server currently
I tried it. It was awful.
The mastodon app on f-droid is marked as "promotes anti-features" with a description "This app promotes or depends entirely on a non-free network service" and I wonder why that would be, since there's also Tusky, Fedilab, Husky, and some others, none of which have a warning like that.
I just deactivated both of my Twitter accounta. Done with the bs, I'll use mastadon for a while (and Lemmy).
Might have to give it a go, see how well they integrated the updated material design. So many apps still don't support adaptive icons and proper colors.
I guess it depends on your interests. As for me, Twitter became such a cesspool they I don't want to even browse it. Mastodon on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air as I can find all my interests in there.
I hate Material U design. It is really like the Superflat design for 2020s with rounded corners and it looks really tedious.
I'm not gonna lie I miss skeumprphism from the 2000's, I know a lot of people thought it was tacky but it had more character than this flat, low-effort boring shit. This new flat stuff from the mid-2010's makes it look like these companies got halfway through product design and quit.
Na, there is a nice middle ground. I would rather have flat over the Skeumorphism if I had to pick between the two though. I thought it was hideous then, and I think it still is now lol.
Word.
Btw is there another Android app for Lemmy other than Jerboa? It feels like one of the biggest victim of the Material You template's drawbacks.
Liftoff has a good UI but doesn't do federation as well as jerboa, not by a long shot.
Connect for Lemmy is a good Sync clone until the official Sync app releases
Someone created this sheet that tracks all Lemmy/Kbin apps.
There's the webapp wefwef.app that seem very popular. I'm currently using Connect for Lemmy and it seems to work pretty well. I found a list of clients somewhere that I was planning to go through but that browser tab seems to have been eaten by the Wumpus (not the discord one).
There are less Android clients than iPhone clients? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔That doesn't 🤔🤔🤔seem correct.
But 1.4M (active?) users since the twitter "exodus" doesn't seem bad. That probably means ~2M joined and 1M stayed.
The app isnt open source eh? I dont see it on fdroid.
Mastodon is just so empty as a platform. I hope for its success but I am not seeing it at this point the way we are with Lemmy.
This is a strange take - Mastodon makes up ~80% of the Fediverse, whereas Lemmy makes up like 3% or something.
Mastodon is the entire reason the Fediverse as a whole ended up taking off - for most people, it is the only thing they are aware of.
According to fediverse observer Lemmy hit 2.2 million users to mastodons 8 million, so it's up to like 17% now!
Not accurate unfortunately as the vast majority are bots. It's more along the lines of 300k to 500k currently.
What is the evidence that these are bots?
It was obvious - the instances are not shown on sources like fedidb.org anymore, but if you went to the instances which were growing fastest, all the accounts on there had gibberish names with almost no user activity.
It would be great if Lemmy actually had 2 million users, but it just doesn't, sorry. :(
I think the reality is just that microblogging is always going to be devoid of content when compared to a messageboard system like lemmy or reddit
Microblogging success seems to come from very popular users with many followers, such as celebrities, athletes, institutions, etc. Without these, Twitter would also feel empty.
I Iiterally cannot keep up with my feed. You have to build a network there. It is not spoonfed to you.
Which it should be if you want it to.
Nah, man. I get things and people I like spoonfed now by active boosters. The more you interact and add to your network the better it gets.
I really don't get how people don't understand that for mass adoption you need as little fucking friction as possible, lol. What you are doing is just gatekeeping. My experience with Mastodon:
The home feed is completely empty at first. I can go to some recommendations which are (I think) based on my home instance. I have no idea what those people even talk about so I just follow them to be able to check the platform out at all.
Looking at the "Trending Topics" (or whatever) tab shows stupid hashtags like #silentsunday or #photomonday. I don't really care about those and they don't even matter for my home instance infosec.exchange. So how do I even find any topics I really care about? It's so much work.
I'm very technically inclined and I went in with an open mind and am now following quite a few people and have even found properly nice profiles like bellingcat. But that was way too much friction - there should be less, and I'm not talking for me.
Anyway, I never really used or liked Twitter and Mastodon seems the same. There's just too many uninformed opinions and people fishing for likes. I don't care about that, I want proper discussions even if I, IMO completely undeservedly, get downvoted ;) I like Lemmy way more for that.
Is it really harder than with lemmy? In mastodon, basically:
Subscribed = home feed
Local = local
Global = all
If you join a big enough instance, the local and global timeline will have plenty of posts. Possibly, what you're looking for is 'algorithms' that recommend juicy things (for you). But this is usually something favoured by for-profit sites, which want to push certain things and not others to increase the time people spend on the app and therefore maximize their ad-based profit.
I really don’t get how people don’t understand that for mass adoption you need as little fucking friction as possible.
A big factor is that most fediverse instances aren't really looking for mass-adoption. Since these things are usually run by volunteers that have to pay for hosting with their own money or donations, and not a for-profit corporation, there's no real incentive to advertise and get as many people as possible to a single instance. The ideal is that smaller instances federate together, there's no centralized "fediverse" interest that wants to get them all.
Ideally, we'd want a web that is less corporate and more federated, but if no one is currently able to give the time and money to pursue this more aggressively, it will not happen. That's not really gatekeeping. In theory you could fork mastodon, improve it to make it easier for people, market it and sustain the hosting and moderation costs. But when you complain about how nobody is doing it already and call it gatekeeping, it's not really fair.
A lot of the fediverse is also composed of 'beta' software that will probably improve with time, but these improvements are based on people that work on it on their free time.
Yes, there's an inherent difficulty in competing with big corporations, but this is an open problem so far. Yes, if meta or some for-profit company join the fediverse and use their large budgets to make them very attractive for mass-consumption, it will grab most of the users. This is the whole embrace, extend, extinguish problem that has supported other closed system that dominate the market. How to fix that is a larger problem.
Yeah, that's nice and all. But for people that just passively consumed Twitter, Mastodon requires way too much work to get a decent feed set up. I've tried multiple times, but I've always given up after a while. I don't want to put effort into my doomscrolling.
I find lemmy a lot more "content-friendly". After just 2 weeks of using it, my feed is almost back to where my reddit feed was. It's awesome.
If you're looking for the exact same celebrities you followed on Twitter, you're going to be let down.
If you follow hashtags instead, there's a lot to like. In a sense, Mastodon almost seems more Reddit/Lemmy-like, in the fact that content is more discoverable by topic instead of person.
I mean all your can do is engage with the community and actually work to get it up to what you want. I've commented more in the last 3 days then I did in 8 years on Reddit cause I want it to thrive
Same, plus it's nice that people aren't hyper aggressive like Reddit was, nearly every time I commented someone told me to kill myself/ called me an idiot.
weird, i've gotten the opposite impression! i joined mastodon and lemmy at the same time, and i'm finding that mastodon feels a lot more lively to me so far. granted, i haven't used twitter in years, so i haven't been comparing the two in my mind.
You need to start following people and hashtags.There is no algorythm filling your timeline.
My masto feed is really active, but I've also been there for a couple of years and migrated instances at least twice.
How did you migrate between instance?
I would say it's still not at the level where you have a nomadic identity. However, it's better than it is for lemmy (which would involve using an external script to recreate your followed and blocked communities).
So migrating in mastodon is basically recreating your followers (all the people that follow you) in the old account, without external tools. To do this you log in to the new instance, and in account settings there's an option "move from a different account". Then log in to the old instance, and choose "move to a different account".
Then allow it some time to complete this in the background. You can additionally use the export/import options to transfer your follows, lists, blocks, bookmarks, etc. This will probably re-request the people who you follow, so people usually leave a message in both the new and old accounts about how I'm migrating so that they know it's the same person.
I switched last year and haven't looked back! For me at least, Mastodon has been a much better experience than Twitter ever was.
And yet you still can't follow threads on their app, so on Tusky I'll stay
How they still don't have it I don't understand.
I've reinstalled it to take a shniff and I'm impressed so far, very clean and functional.
You don't need to use the official Mastodon apps, they're not the best way to use Mastodon. The official apps only arrived last year, and they were intended as "Fisher Price My First Mastodon" things with a restricted set of features.
Third party apps have been around longer than official ones, and include way more features. You can sign in with the same account on all apps.
:android: On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot
:apple_inc: On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona
As per Feditips: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110644814293019308
You can also use kbin to read, comment and boost mastodon 'toots'. That's what I do anyway.
Any way to get the iOS apps to open Mastodon links by default?
Ivory can do this via its Safari extension, and it does support Universal Links for select instances. It’s difficult to implement Universal Links for the fediverse because each instance would have to add an association file to their servers, and even if all instances add this, there’s a limit to how many domains you can support in an app
Ivory can do this via its Safari extension, and it does support Universal Links for select instances. It’s difficult to implement Universal Links for the fediverse because each instance would have to add an association file to their servers. Even if all instances add this file to their servers, there’s a limit to how many domains you can support in an app.
Is this what everyone is using now? I was using Megalodon, Tusky, and the original app, but I've skipping a few updates of all of them.
I use fedilabs, don't know if the other apps have caught up (hope they did) but the timeline function where you can add timelines from whatever instance you like and also have tags as timelines is so OP.
Since I spend most of my time browsing other instance timelines that feature is a must.
Just for me to understand this as I'm pretty new. Each instance has their own "timeline" aka homepage or feed with all content (people you follow, tags etc.), and you either have to access each instance separately or use something like the app you mentioned?
Each instance has a "local" feed of posts from that instance. Same as how local works on Lemmy.
You also have your "home" feed (like our Subscribed, it's for posts from people you follow) and a "federated" feed (like our All, everything your instance knows about).
I mostly use Mastodon on desktop and I can pin columns with my fave hashtags in as their own separate feed, which is nice.
Thanks, that helps!! The separate timeliness ads actuly pretty awesome. Basically a curated list of topics/people instead of everything being thrown at you like Twitter.
Don’t forget, you can follow hashtags too! So if you want to see toots (posts) regarding a topic that interests you, just follow a hashtag like #ukrainewar, or #linux for example. That’s also a good way to to find people to follow.
Yes! I saw that, that's great. Missed it initially, as it is not possible viel the official mobile app. And when using Tusky I accidentally "muted" my tags, so they were shown as filtered in the homepage. So many possibilities!
Yeah, the Fediverse is awesome!
I honestly have no idea how Twitter works so will just have to take your word for it lol. Loving Mastodon though, I've had two accounts since November, both on small niche instances and both have nice active feeds and as much conversation as I want :)
Good to hear fedilab is still one of the better ones. Haven't used any much lately but I'll just stick with it
The official one lacks lists, local, world.. how is anyone supposed to find people to follow?
I believe that much like Lemmy, there's an "all" button that gives you everything from everywhere.
I still use and love Tusky
I'm mostly on Trunks.. and I occasionally glance at Megalodon. Both have been light on updates lately (maybe I'm just spoiled by the crazy pace of development on Connect for Lemmy right now).
Based on their Mastodon posts, it looks like the Megalodon dev has been hard at work re-basing their app on the new official Mastodon app version. Still no public release of that to use that I'm aware of.
Is it possible to view Matsodon from Lemmy platforms?
In my cursory research, it seems to be possible to view mastodon through Kbin. And possible to view Lemmy through Mastodon.
Lemmy doesn't have support for following user accounts, only communities.
All the platforms use the same backend. So there's no reason full mastodon interoperability couldn't be added to Lemmy in the future.
Aside from Mastodon.Social are there any other decent instances? I'm considering joining one; I liked Twitter before Elon bought it and miss it.
Of course Im staying on Lemmy as well. :)
There's a ton of established instances that have been around for awhile
See: https://joinmastodon.org/
Thank you, I ended up joining Fosstodon 😘
mastodon.world is also maintained by Ruud, same Admin as lemmy.world
I'm waiting on my blue sky invite
To be honest I'm not seeing the appeal of a centralized Twitter clone.
Same, it could easily go the enshitification route once they gather enough momentum to become the dominant micro-blogging site.
I don't think it's centralized.It is federated, similar to mastodon.
It uses the AT protocol (proprietary to Bluesky) vs the ActivityPub like Mastodon/Lemmy/the Fediverse. Not sure it will be compatible.
I didn't know this.Thanks!
not yet, it’s just one invite-only server currently
I tried it. It was awful.
The mastodon app on f-droid is marked as "promotes anti-features" with a description "This app promotes or depends entirely on a non-free network service" and I wonder why that would be, since there's also Tusky, Fedilab, Husky, and some others, none of which have a warning like that.
Apparently it calls
api.joinmastodon.org.Aaaah, that makes sense.
Is the version fdroid even updated??
I just deactivated both of my Twitter accounta. Done with the bs, I'll use mastadon for a while (and Lemmy).
Might have to give it a go, see how well they integrated the updated material design. So many apps still don't support adaptive icons and proper colors.
I guess it depends on your interests. As for me, Twitter became such a cesspool they I don't want to even browse it. Mastodon on the other hand, is a breath of fresh air as I can find all my interests in there.
I hate Material U design. It is really like the Superflat design for 2020s with rounded corners and it looks really tedious.
I'm not gonna lie I miss skeumprphism from the 2000's, I know a lot of people thought it was tacky but it had more character than this flat, low-effort boring shit. This new flat stuff from the mid-2010's makes it look like these companies got halfway through product design and quit.
Na, there is a nice middle ground. I would rather have flat over the Skeumorphism if I had to pick between the two though. I thought it was hideous then, and I think it still is now lol.
Word.
Btw is there another Android app for Lemmy other than Jerboa? It feels like one of the biggest victim of the Material You template's drawbacks.
Liftoff has a good UI but doesn't do federation as well as jerboa, not by a long shot.
Connect for Lemmy is a good Sync clone until the official Sync app releases
Someone created this sheet that tracks all Lemmy/Kbin apps.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1m_MWfu72TQWiCV5aEH_Kb9PCFcqlRQK5a0yWl-XUjZI/htmlview
Hosting it on Google Docs, I like the irony!
There's the webapp wefwef.app that seem very popular. I'm currently using Connect for Lemmy and it seems to work pretty well. I found a list of clients somewhere that I was planning to go through but that browser tab seems to have been eaten by the Wumpus (not the discord one).
There are less Android clients than iPhone clients? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔That doesn't 🤔🤔🤔seem correct.
But 1.4M (active?) users since the twitter "exodus" doesn't seem bad. That probably means ~2M joined and 1M stayed.
The app isnt open source eh? I dont see it on fdroid.
It is open source.
"is it on F-DROID" probably isn't a great way to tell whether something is open source
Mastodon is just so empty as a platform. I hope for its success but I am not seeing it at this point the way we are with Lemmy.
This is a strange take - Mastodon makes up ~80% of the Fediverse, whereas Lemmy makes up like 3% or something.
Mastodon is the entire reason the Fediverse as a whole ended up taking off - for most people, it is the only thing they are aware of.
According to fediverse observer Lemmy hit 2.2 million users to mastodons 8 million, so it's up to like 17% now!
Not accurate unfortunately as the vast majority are bots. It's more along the lines of 300k to 500k currently.
What is the evidence that these are bots?
It was obvious - the instances are not shown on sources like fedidb.org anymore, but if you went to the instances which were growing fastest, all the accounts on there had gibberish names with almost no user activity.
It would be great if Lemmy actually had 2 million users, but it just doesn't, sorry. :(
I think the reality is just that microblogging is always going to be devoid of content when compared to a messageboard system like lemmy or reddit
Microblogging success seems to come from very popular users with many followers, such as celebrities, athletes, institutions, etc. Without these, Twitter would also feel empty.
I Iiterally cannot keep up with my feed. You have to build a network there. It is not spoonfed to you.
Which it should be if you want it to.
Nah, man. I get things and people I like spoonfed now by active boosters. The more you interact and add to your network the better it gets.
I really don't get how people don't understand that for mass adoption you need as little fucking friction as possible, lol. What you are doing is just gatekeeping. My experience with Mastodon:
The home feed is completely empty at first. I can go to some recommendations which are (I think) based on my home instance. I have no idea what those people even talk about so I just follow them to be able to check the platform out at all.
Looking at the "Trending Topics" (or whatever) tab shows stupid hashtags like #silentsunday or #photomonday. I don't really care about those and they don't even matter for my home instance infosec.exchange. So how do I even find any topics I really care about? It's so much work.
I'm very technically inclined and I went in with an open mind and am now following quite a few people and have even found properly nice profiles like bellingcat. But that was way too much friction - there should be less, and I'm not talking for me.
Anyway, I never really used or liked Twitter and Mastodon seems the same. There's just too many uninformed opinions and people fishing for likes. I don't care about that, I want proper discussions even if I, IMO completely undeservedly, get downvoted ;) I like Lemmy way more for that.
Is it really harder than with lemmy? In mastodon, basically:
Subscribed = home feed
Local = local
Global = all
If you join a big enough instance, the local and global timeline will have plenty of posts. Possibly, what you're looking for is 'algorithms' that recommend juicy things (for you). But this is usually something favoured by for-profit sites, which want to push certain things and not others to increase the time people spend on the app and therefore maximize their ad-based profit.
A big factor is that most fediverse instances aren't really looking for mass-adoption. Since these things are usually run by volunteers that have to pay for hosting with their own money or donations, and not a for-profit corporation, there's no real incentive to advertise and get as many people as possible to a single instance. The ideal is that smaller instances federate together, there's no centralized "fediverse" interest that wants to get them all.
Ideally, we'd want a web that is less corporate and more federated, but if no one is currently able to give the time and money to pursue this more aggressively, it will not happen. That's not really gatekeeping. In theory you could fork mastodon, improve it to make it easier for people, market it and sustain the hosting and moderation costs. But when you complain about how nobody is doing it already and call it gatekeeping, it's not really fair.
A lot of the fediverse is also composed of 'beta' software that will probably improve with time, but these improvements are based on people that work on it on their free time.
Yes, there's an inherent difficulty in competing with big corporations, but this is an open problem so far. Yes, if meta or some for-profit company join the fediverse and use their large budgets to make them very attractive for mass-consumption, it will grab most of the users. This is the whole embrace, extend, extinguish problem that has supported other closed system that dominate the market. How to fix that is a larger problem.
Yeah, that's nice and all. But for people that just passively consumed Twitter, Mastodon requires way too much work to get a decent feed set up. I've tried multiple times, but I've always given up after a while. I don't want to put effort into my doomscrolling.
I find lemmy a lot more "content-friendly". After just 2 weeks of using it, my feed is almost back to where my reddit feed was. It's awesome.
If you're looking for the exact same celebrities you followed on Twitter, you're going to be let down.
If you follow hashtags instead, there's a lot to like. In a sense, Mastodon almost seems more Reddit/Lemmy-like, in the fact that content is more discoverable by topic instead of person.
I mean all your can do is engage with the community and actually work to get it up to what you want. I've commented more in the last 3 days then I did in 8 years on Reddit cause I want it to thrive
Same, plus it's nice that people aren't hyper aggressive like Reddit was, nearly every time I commented someone told me to kill myself/ called me an idiot.
weird, i've gotten the opposite impression! i joined mastodon and lemmy at the same time, and i'm finding that mastodon feels a lot more lively to me so far. granted, i haven't used twitter in years, so i haven't been comparing the two in my mind.
You need to start following people and hashtags.There is no algorythm filling your timeline.
My masto feed is really active, but I've also been there for a couple of years and migrated instances at least twice.
How did you migrate between instance?
I would say it's still not at the level where you have a nomadic identity. However, it's better than it is for lemmy (which would involve using an external script to recreate your followed and blocked communities).
So migrating in mastodon is basically recreating your followers (all the people that follow you) in the old account, without external tools. To do this you log in to the new instance, and in account settings there's an option "move from a different account". Then log in to the old instance, and choose "move to a different account".
Then allow it some time to complete this in the background. You can additionally use the export/import options to transfer your follows, lists, blocks, bookmarks, etc. This will probably re-request the people who you follow, so people usually leave a message in both the new and old accounts about how I'm migrating so that they know it's the same person.