I’ve been giving Mastodon a fair share over the past few months, but even though the user base is significantly larger on that platform than Lemmy, I find the actual user ENGAGEMENT significantly worse. I’ll be posting random super interesting shit (according to me at least) and get fuck all as any for of reaction whatsoever, whereas Lemmy and its users actually engage in dope content. Therefore I’ve come to the clear scientific and educated decision that Lemmy is simply superior. Since it’s “AskLemmy” - thoughts?
Microblogging is a terrible social media format when what you want from social media is to read and discuss stuff you’re interested in. In Mastodon, I can scream into the void, but I have no guarantee that anybody will be interested in what I have to say. If all you want is to keep tabs on people it works fine I guess, but as soon as you want to follow topics it becomes incredibly clunky.
You can search keywords or hashtags, but all you get is an unmoderated firehose of loosely connected posts about the topic you want, and other topics for which people use the same words. You can follow hashtags, but then you just get said unfiltered firehose on your TL. Unless everyone somehow agrees in how to use the hashtag, it’s pointless.
Frankly I think all microblogging platforms would improve if there was a closed set of possible hashtags you could use in your posts. Hopefully there would be a unified name convention for each topic, and each hashtag could have a dedicated curation team of some sort, that could remove or relocate posts. Likewise, users should be able to submit a new possible hashtag for everyone to use. This way, I would be able to subscribe to a hashtag, be sure that all the content I receive will be relevant to a topic I care about, and I could post to it knowing that other people who subscribe to the hashtag are guaranteed to be at least somewhat interested in what I have to say. Oh wait, I think I just reinvented Lemmy communities.
While we’re at it, Mastodon is not 2008 Twitter anymore. No one posts via SMS. Inline hashtags should not be a thing, because it lets people optimize the way they phrase their posts for discoverability, and abusing them makes posts very uncomfortable to read. I have not seen as many people on Mastodon doing this as on Twitter, but why even keep inline hashtags at all nowadays? Just keep tags separately from the post’s content.
Because lemmy (forums) is built for following discussions, while mastodon (microblogging) is built for following people. Unless you’re popular and have many followers, you’ll have better engagement in a forum because people follow the topic being discussed, not the person discussing the topic.
100%. I don’t want to brag or anything but I do have 25 followers on Mastodon so I’m kind of a big deal and my posts get lots of engagement. I had 5 stars on one post, that’s the most amount of stars possible. Again, trying not to brag.
Lemmy is the new Reddit. Mastadon is the new Twitter.
I don’t expect them to be the same.
I’ve found almost the exact opposite.
Engagement on Lemmy is mostly fine, but I chat with people all the time on Mastodon
I think the key is to meet people on their level, to find people who share your interests and sensibilities. Follow plenty of folks and chat to them and before long you’ll have a grand little community.
and get fuck all as any for of reaction whatsoever
I mean yeah, why would anyone see your posts. I doubt people look at the “new” live feed much on mastodon. I dont have an account, but as far as i can see there are zero sorting features like on lemmy. There is only the live feed and a couple “Explore” filters that are not configurable.
So yeah nobody will see your posts unless you already have followers… Thats just how microblogging works by default. On lemmy people will just automatically see your posts if its posted into a community with a bunch of subscribers.
They’re different things for different people & purposes. Lemmy is for pseudonymous topical communities. Mastodon is for following & interacting with personalities, mostly in a parasocial way.
Lemmy is the perfect application for the fediverse.
Mastodon is supposed to replace twitter.
Twitter was stupid easy. That was the appeal.
Mastodon is slightly harder than twitter to understand and use.
+1
I also never liked the twitter format of “tweets”, there’s too much going on at once and I feel overstimulated
Mastodon simply isn’t designed for discussions. It is designed to (micro)blog. People can react to your microblog, but if you’re not a well-known personality or your content isn’t relevant for the people who see your posts, that probably won’t happen.
What helps to build a followership on Mastodon is to regularly interact with people who post about similar things to your interests and who already have a big following. Then they might be inclined to know who you are, follow you and actually interact with your content/rebl9g it for their audiences.
Over on Twitter I was keen to chat to people with large follower bases in order to perhaps hook in to some of that. On Mastodon I generally have no idea how many followers people have because it really isn’t important to me any more.
If someone is interesting, and their engagement good, then I’m happy to be a follower.
Definitely noticed that with Mastodon – there’s not a whole lot of folks talking/reacting with one another. I suspect it’s related to the user base (doesn’t have critical mass, demographics, or activity) or a discoverability issue. Bluesky, on the other hand, has a whole lot more engagement on a host of topics.
I think something like Twitter hinges on people/organisations being there that are popular for whatever reason. Many people engage with those people’s posts and react to each other. Since there aren’t many such people on Mastodon, there isn’t as much activity.
Not seeing the same. I get lots of engagement …
Mastodon puts the blog in mini blog. It’s more of an introspective platform where discussion can take place, but that’s not the aim.
Lemmy is more geared toward discussion with others, like a forum.
But in my opinion…
Mastodon > Lemmy.
Why? For the reasons I mentioned.
Also, Upvote/Downvote systems can go to hell.
