this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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I just read through my feed, and if I find people that look interesting I click the follow button, it's not like it's hard, I have a really interesting feed full of cool stuff.
Sure, but I never had that experience. I just read along and then tried to sub to Charles Stross but he was on another instance and then I had to do some convoluted thing which is supposed to make sense - I never found that the thing was transparent and functional. Like I said, Lemmy works because the main thing isn't following people. The occasional hiccup with instances is not a problem at all. But don't get me wrong, it's not really difficult to use mastodon, it just makes my blood boil
If I find someone from another instance in my flow I don't need to do anything other than click on them and click follow. As long as you search from your instance, and not somewhere externally you can just follow them. Also the process when it's not your home server it's just a box where you enter your user name, not really convoluted. So I don't see what you're getting so worked up about to be honest.
Sure lemmy is easy in that way, and if you like it more by all means just use it :) Nothing stopping you from that, but you are playing up non issues as "infuriating"
I think the annoying part of this is when you stumble across an interesting account you would like to follow outside of your home instance. You have to copy the username and the instance address, search it from your home instance, and then follow them. Or, login from a popup window and then hit follow. Nothing too complicated or long, but I can see how some people see it as unnecessarily clunky. No idea how it works from mobile though, maybe it's a little bit more complicated there too
Yeah, sure it's a bit of a hassle, but it's not like it's complex or difficult, that's what I meant compared to how often I do it it has not been an issue, after you have bootstrapped with a couple of follows, and keep an eye on the local feed it's pretty easy to get rolling, and then just following interesting people that the people you talk with boost, or people that you enjoy discussing with. I haven't added someone from a search in years, it's just a bit of work in the beginning.
Well it seems a whole lot of people are playing issues up - it's a small thing but it really matters. And I'm just saying what my experience is, no big deal - I prefer this sort of place anyway :) But I think I saw somebody made a browser extension which is supposed to solve the random instance thing, so that it always forces you back to yours or something
@MayonnaiseArch There are extensions which make it easier to interact with remote instances, like Roam With Mastodon. https://fo.llow.social/roam
Nice! This is cool
My Mastodon feed is filled with complete garbage and I'm not even in a small instance. It's all people talking about what they ate or about subjects I don't care about, people posting in languages I don't speak, and bot accounts for small news sites I also don't care about. It's very hard to find useful content there.
I guess you're looking at the global feed? I haven't used that since my first few days. I'd start following people and using the Home feed. Then you're not getting the everything-firehose.
Probably? Admittedly I've only used it on Tusky, the Android app, and not much on desktop. It has a single feed which it calls "Local", which I assume is activity from the same instance I'm on. I'll give that a try on desktop.
You can't be following the right people then, I have tons of people speaking the 3 languages that I know well, talking about interesting and fun stuff, sharing things they learned and cool things they made. It's all about curating your feed.
That's the thing though, I can't find anyone interesting to follow in the first place. I never was much of a Twitter user honestly, but I still decided to give Mastodon a shot. Maybe it's just not for me.
I don't know what stuff you are interested in, and yeah, it's not a platform with algorithms that will push stuff that the site thinks that you will like on you, so you'll have to do some work to find people you like. If you tried mastodon.social or some other humongous instance that doesn't really have a culture itself also it makes the whole thing more difficult, joining something like mastodon.art or hachyderm.io or some other one with an a bit more focused theme will usually be a bit better for getting started since your local feed will not be so random.