1y ago

I much prefer Lemmy over Mastodon

I had been spending quite some time on mastodon, but lately realized that it just isn’t for me.

Mastodon is very focused on individuals, not as much on content. I’m not saying there isn’t a need for mastodon, and I’m happy it’s there, but my main use case is contacting (semi) public figures or software-support there, which happens rarely. Curating a feed that is both interesting to me and "high quality" without being overrun doesn’t seem feasible.

Lemmy is much more focused on content. You don’t follow people, you follow topics or interests and get the things surfaced that the most people in that interest group appreciate. The discussions work much better (Twitter-like reply’s are just one huge bag of trash). It also doesn’t matter who the people are behind the content, as long as it’s interesting it will find an audience.

Just something that I’ve been thinking about. Any thoughts on this?

33 comments

I just like threaded discussion. It doesn't matter who I am, I'm just the first person in this comment chain.
Though there's been some bugs with showing context, hopefully those are addressed soonish.
- How does this post have -1 downvotes?

It’s basically forum discussion vs microblogging, and they are different types of social media. I myself prefer a forum type format because the focus of discussion is on a topic and doesn’t need my identity to be involved in. It’s also hard to maintain a conversation on a microblogging format when many people are replying to each other at the same time, unlike a forum where there are nested threads. It’s the reason I never got into twitter.
I did try mastodon because it was on the fediverse, but stopped posting after 2 weeks because I couldn’t think of anything interesting to post and it was hard to follow conversations with other people. It was also weird knowing there were people "following" me and will see everything I post.

You cannot really compare them. Mastodon is similar to Twitter and nothing more, it’s a microblogging service. Lemmy is like Reddit or the Usenet from back in the days with a nice threaded view. Many people on Reddit never used Twitter and vice versa.
This new fancy stuff is all part of the Fediverse, but that‘s a bit misleading. You can use one part and completely ignore all the other ones.
- Sure, they're two different sites, but the smaller user base makes Mastodon harder to enjoy for most people since the people they know aren't using it. That's not an issue for Lemmy because no one cares about the specific users, they just want the content and discussion. I just think it's kinda interesting how the fediverse approach works to different degrees for different kinds of sites.

Eh, they're for different things. Lemmy is for discussions, Mastodon is for following creators (IMO).
- These products aren't new. Twitter is not the same as Reddit. Why do people think Mastodon and Lemmy are comparable? Also it feels like an unnecessary competition. We'd better off with the Fediverse growing and maturing.
  
  Im not trying to say anyone should use one over the other, I’m glad both exists. You probably have a point that they are too different to be comparable, but for me they’d both compete for the same "social media time" and I simply get much more out of Lemmy.

Yeah, I'll follow someone on Mastodon or Twitter because they post funny content, but then they start posting selfies or something and I have to decide how much of that I mind scrolling past every so often.
It makes so much more sense to follow topics than individuals.
- I tried to use ivory‘s filter to limit some of the other hobbies or stuff that I’m just not interested in, but it only goes so far

This is a really weird thing to post here to be honest and yet I think I've already seen this thread like five times. In so far as there is a Lemmy circle jerk this is definitely part of it.

I like them both. Mastodon is great when I follow hashtags and the occasional person. I also like that I can follow Lemmy posters there. It means I can pay attention to individuals when I want.
Lemmy is great for threaded conversation. Mastodon can do this to a point, but it’s not a clean and navigable as Lemmy.
Imagine if I could subscribe to Mastodon hashtags within Lemmy!
- I think the structured conversation makes a big difference on Lemmy

Following hashtags tends to help get more broad content. Yes, Mastodon is more individual focused, but sometimes that's what someone prefers.
- Yeah definitely. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it isn’t for me.

My mastodon is like an abandoned city with only a few people in it. It's so quiet and depressing. Lol
- Two ways to liven up your Mastodon feed:
  You can follow hashtags (search for a hashtag and follow it) and it'll show up in your main feed.
  You can find people to follow based on the people who you're following are following using https://followgraph.vercel.app/
  
  Thank you.
- I am a heavy ex-Twitter user who left when the blue checks went wild. I have substituted it with Mastodon/Post/Spoutible. Yes, all three. Less than than half the people I followed are on any of them combined, but it still has some people I like to hear opinions from. I'll never go back to Twitter, and it's weird not seeing all the alt-right freaks on any of those other platforms. But really, it's been good for me to not get into the useless arguments I used to inevitably fall into with those people.

Good for you. Stick with what you like.
The ActivityPub protocol (the plumbing of the Fediverse) makes them interoperable and that's good. Other than that, knock yourself out.

The lack of a thread-view is just annoying. It's much easier to follow discussions with a thread-view.
- Some apps do have a thread view. Phanpy comes to mind and I want to say fedilab does too?

I'm trying to use it like Twitter where I find people and organizations to follow who are funny or interesting...but the majority of people "boost" other stuff more than they post. This gets problematic for me because you just follow a few accounts and suddenly your feed is so full you can't read through it all. I want it to be manageable... I want to follow people I enjoy reading...but I don't necessarily want to see 30 posts a day that they like. Maybe I'm using it wrong or thinking about it wrong. I enjoy some things about it and I'm happy it exists, but I'm having trouble finding a lot posts and users that I find super engaging.
I follow probably 30 Lemmy communities and scrolling through the feed brings me much more that is interesting, beautiful, funny, insightful...
- There are clients that let you disable boosts for certain people, ivory on iOS is one of them. But I totally get the general issue you’re having, I have the same one.

You can also look into kbin which supports both the regular article based content (like Reddit with subreddits) and posts (which are like tweets attached to a topic with tags).
Been finding some decent topics to follow recently
- That’s what attracted me to kbin, although I use the Lemmy side far more than the Mastodon one. I am still looking for some good follows on Mastodon.

I think masto and indie/fedi microblogging makes sense for seeing the empherial now that you are interested not topic based content. (Especially on small niche instances via the local feed) its a also great way to meet like minded people and build longer lasting connections as you see more of a person via their stream than only seeing them in niche spaces. Granted many people single topic their accounts, but masto is way more personal and less influencer type accounts than Twitter was, though those accounts exist too. You can still follow topics, but that's a way of finding new people with shared interests not necessarily only deep diving in a topic.
Lemmy and topic forums in general are great at deep diving in a topic, but since you stay in the niche while you might see people frequent in that niche you really don't have those longer interactions. Some forum communities try to mitigate this by having general chat posts or chat rooms on the side.
Different kinds of social media have their strengths.
- Fair point. There’s definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.

I, too, prefer topic focused content. On Mastodon I can somewhat achieve this by browsing hashtags. For me, hashtags ~ communities. This is the only reason I was able to get interested in Mastodon. Also, I enjoy sharing sharing articles etc which I find interesting.

I would love Mastodon with Lemmy/Reddit-ish sorting. Purely chronological feed means I get low quality content at the top of my feed simply because someone posted something 2s with a hashtag I follow.

Never used Mastadon but the way you're describing it, it sounds like they're doing what digg tried to do in 2010, and we all know how well that went for them.
- They’re like Twitter and Twitter (was) doing just fine. I’m not saying the format is objectively bad, it’s just not for me.

33 comments