As Twitter flounders, Mastodon refreshes its official app for Android users

I'm on both, and both vibes are pretty great. I prefer Mastodon simply because the app is superbly made, tiny file size, no trackers etc. Bluesky is a buggy mess right now. Also, 3rd party apps on Mastodon are amazing.

I see plenty of people on BlueSky without .bluesky.social in their @. Doesn't mean they're on another instance?

I've heard that the official app was initially thrown together at some point around the time Mastodon first blew up due to Twitter...uh, blowing up, in a different sense. Basically, "it would really help onboarding if people had an obvious choice of official app to use". At least, that's what I've heard. Never verified this myself.

Tusky is definitely decent though.

It's not! The official app is relatively new, and Tusky has more features, or did the last time I compared.

It's not! But it's my favourite too.

Thanks for Phanpy. I like Pinafore and Fedilab, Tooot was nice - but I think I will stick with Phanpy. It is such a pretty webapp.

No one is going to feed you content. It's a different way to think and consume media. You just gotta start following people or hashtags and see which content and people are posting things that interest you. Go the the local feed of the instance of the world feed and watch things unfold.

But you gotta bootstrap it. There's a lot of interesting people and content in it.

There's a few sites that help with discovery by listing relevant people and topics.

There's hashtags important to follow at the start, for example #fediverseMigration where lots of posts trying to help new people and guiding them appear.

I know it may hurt a little at the beginning, but it's so worth it and rewarding. So, don't quit and give it a little bit to grow on you. It's a new experience so not everything will feel similar to what one knows previously.

And, the amazing thing that on mastodon one being able to directly interact and comment on lemmy posts is just mind-blowing.

So. Good luck. And Thanks for all the fish.

I mean, isn't that a good thing? You shouldn't be doom scrolling anyways

Also, that's a temporary measure. As more people migrate, there will be more content.

Hit "Explore" and follow hash tags to grow your list of accounts to follow. It really helps a lot! Mine used to be like 2 minutes of scrolling and I'm done for the day. Now it's....um....I should get back to work.

Same. It feels like Mastodon isn't anywhere close to approaching critical mass of users

there is still some work needed to be done on sync for lemmy meanwhile, you can try connect or liftoff for Lemmy

Same. It feels like Mastodon isn't anywhere close to approaching critical mass of users necessary for it to take off.

Best thing for discovery in Mastodon is to follow hashtags. This is algorithm-like in that you will see posts from people you don't follow, on the topics you have an interest in.

Discoverability was largely the reason why I got in fights with Mastodon users over the platform being in a bad place when Twitter had its first wave of musk awfulness.

I find that the system is now much improved, but man, I can't stress out just how bad an impression I was given that everyone seemed to think searching posts by tags was a bad thing, and that tags in general were, in fact, objectively broken at the time. Like, people go on social media with purposes in mind.

It's fixed now. Tag activity is shown correctly. Tag history also gets shown correctly. You can also follow tags. That's all I wanted, and acknowledgement of it, not a philosophy discourse.

I wish I knew that existed before Twitter shut down the API. It doesn't work anymore.

Another good account to follow is @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services (https://social.growyourown.services/@FediFollows) They highlight interesting accounts to follow.

I am here since the blackout using Jerboa, but I get an error when I click on it, doesn't it work in the App? I tried the instance website and put it in the search bar, but it doesn't work either and unfortunately I don't find any tutorials how to follow mastodon users from lemmy, do you know how? Another thing I don't quite understand: with my Lemmy account I can use other Fediverse services like mastodon. And my understanding is that kbin is not the same as lemmy, but another service such as mastodon? So why does kbin come up in my all feed but nothing from other Fediverse services?

I search tags, and if someone posts something interesting under a tag I like, I'll check their page out.

Like the other user said following tags is a great way to engage with things you choose. Along the way, you'll find people that you find interesting and then you can follow them directly. It's much less about seeking people and more letting them come to you.

No idea. I mainly follow tags lol

@jasonwaterfalls @Elegast I've just starting searching hashtags and finding people to follow that way

One way is to just follow hashtags and see whoposts to them. Since hashtags are basically the de facto way to find relevant content on Mastodon, not just a marketing tool like on Twitter. And then once you see who posts interesting stuff, you can then add them to your follows.

There's also some sites that list users by topics of interesting such as http://fedi.directory and https://communitywiki.org/trunk .

Another way is to check out instances that talk about things you're interested in. There are several websites that list them but here is a shorter list: https://fedi.garden Check out their feeds and see who posts things you're interested in.

Furthermore, you can follow a.gup.pe accounts, called "groups", which work similarly to hashtags. Each a.gup.pe account is basically a repeater that boosts (i.e. "retweets") every post that pings it, so that anyone following it gets that post. For example, I follow @climate@a.gup.pe, and every time someone pings that (it's like including a hashtag), it'll boost that post and I'll see it too.

If you're on their mobile app, press and hold the home button for a second or so, and a list of recommended accounts will show up.

I'm so confused by comments like this. I use Mastodon every day and it seems pretty active to me.

Follow some hashtags. Makes it active very quickly and lets you find accounts to follow.

It seems like Mastodon and Twitter operates on different principles or I am missing something.

https://mander.xyz/comment/749912

I didn't even sign up, I just wanted to see what it was all about, whining about politics and general madness, just like twitter, not for me, so I didn't end up signing

No. Lemmy and Mastodon federate using the ActivityPub protocol, but that's not good enough for making mobile apps or other clients. They each have their own API for their apps and an app made for one federated platform won't be able to log into another platform's server/instance.

All your interaction with the Fediverse is done through your instance.

Was about to say, it's the boost function