I think people are tired of the 140 character type social networks, the novelty has simply worn off. It’s either self-promotion or “I had two eggs for breakfast lol” type of posts.

People who came to Mastodon, posted “Hello world!” and didn’t bother to set a profile picture or add a description will always complain about the lack of discoverability, or the place being boring.

You literally have to put in work to set up your feed, follow hashtags, people and post yourself for it to be a network and not just a feed of things. And I think people struggle with this concept a lot.

I do understand that it’s not for everyone. But it’s not a problem with Mastodon, it’s just a natural filter IMO. “You have to put at least this much effort to integrate”. Low-effort things are usually just rage-bait.

i posted in another thread how i think content discovery stinks on mastodon. bluesky is much better at it. mastodon feeds are a wall of noise

mastodon + opt in to bridgyfed is the way

Because it doesn’t have $100s of millions to throw at marketing, or the name dropping of Twitter creators behind it.

It is what it is. You can either be alright with being small, or hurl money into it, but the people who hurl money into things tend to want it back at some point, and that means becoming a shitty business.

I prefer Mastodon over Twitter for microblogging. However, I didn’t use Twitter for microblogging, but to receive news (directly or at least officially) from game devs, directors and other creators.

Mastodon is my only presence on social media. I love it. I found (over time) a large community of people who share my different interests. I love the wokeness of it. I don’t miss my lefty mutuals who are somehow still on X/Meta. I love the absence of influencers, algorithms and nazis. I love discovery through following hashtags. I could go on and on. I’m fine with people hating it for all the reasons I love it. They would ruin the vibe if they moved there.

On the feature side, according to Mastodons recent 4.3 release post development is only 4 full time employees and a budget of under $500k annually. That is basically nothing in the realm of social media companies.

Improving Mastodons features requires money and resources, but Mastodons users are unwilling to pay for instances and unwillingly to fund development. Hell, the .world folks host a bunch of instances for collectively hundreds of thousands of users and they take in about $1k a month in donations. I’m surprised that even covers hosting costs.

So…it’s no wonder that it isn’t going to be as polished as other social media in ways that would reduce the attrition.

I use mastodon every day and I’m glad it’s not dominate. It’s not a vc funded a shit hole looking for a growth market. I use mastodon because not every one is there, is a nice little niche place where I can play with my friends in peace

I thought this was about the band and panicked

1. You know all of those politicians and scientists people like to follow? Well, they’re still on Xitter.

2. I remember their “official” app claimed it was a third party app on the stores, which probably put off a lot of potential users. Any phone users will be getting an app by some randos no matter what they pick, which is a big trust issue for many of us.

Mastodon was around for a while, slowly being built up until 2022 when the big twitter surge happened. They had the perfect foundation to make it the next big thing and all they had to do was keep the people who joined, make it slightly easier to join, and develop a few features like quote posts.

• They banned and defederated everyone who wasn’t in a very narrow sliver of political and technological opinions.

Mastodon lost it’s momentum, but had a second shot a year or two later. Threads joined the network offering a massive user base that could talk with Mastodon users. Then Bluesky blew up and that was bridged so Mastodon could talk with those people too. Mastodon may not have been the center of things anymore, but it could be fully integrated into the other two.

• Most servers defederated with threads and bridges.

There are other things that I’m sure play a roll as well. Luck, discoverability, easiness to join, people getting board, people looking at the next shiny thing, you name it. But it does look to be in many ways self inflicted.

I’ll say it again, the name sucks. It’s not cute, it sounds like mastrubate compared to twitter, it just is not catchy.

TicTic, snapchat, the apps that make it have a stupid catchy name, mastadon ain’t it.

I think a better title & question would be, “Why is Mastodon struggling to thrive?”

It’s surviving no problem, but it’s not thriving for a multitude of reasons. Some are pretty well covered across comments here & in the linked discussion, and are more or less reiterations of prior discussions on the matter.

Ultimately I think as much as many of those reasons are correct, the biggest reason is the same as ever: network effects. All the jank and technical details could be endured and adjusted to if there was sufficient value to be had in doing so, i.e. following accounts of interest/entertainment, connecting with friends, etc. That’s proven to varying degrees by those that have stuck with Mastodon. In turn, however, it’s also clear by how many bounce off that for many there’s still insufficient value to be found across Mastodon instances to justify dealing with all the rough edges.

If Mastodon had enough broadly appealing/interesting people/accounts across its instances, people might deal with the various technical and cultural rough spots the same way they deal with similar on other social networks they may complain about yet won’t leave. There still aren’t enough of those sorts on there for many though, so Mastodon simply survives but doesn’t thrive.

I have an account that I use to read, but I’ve never posted on Mastodon. Decided to tweet after seeing this post and I see a privacy option called “Quiet Public - Fewer Algorithmic Fanfares”.

Seriously, wtf is this? What does that even mean? If techie people like me can’t figure out Mastodon then you can’t expect the general public to do that. I’m not blaming this feature in particular, but Mastodon is quirky in all the wrong ways.

Mastodon is just like Threads : a hype , wait for the hype to end and you’ll see that it doesn’t offer something that would impress an ordinary person who isn’t a nerd or tech savvy enough to continue using it… What I’ll say now is more like random thoughts about federation and it applies to any federated service but this post inspired my thoughts so …

The two best features I can think of for a Mastodon are :

• Open source: an excellent thing but it’s probably not important for an ordinary person who still uses the products of big companies just because they are “convenient” and “common” even when his data is the cost
• federated: although it provides freedom to choose where you want to join, it creates a lot of confusion and inconvenience as well : I personally have somewhat specific interests and I usually tend to avoid public instances dedicated to “everything”, however, every time I decided to join a federated service I got the same confusion : “which instance should I choose?” , I had two accounts on Mastodon before I deleted one of them ( and I’ll probably delete the other soon ) and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, I have two accounts on Lemmy and I felt this confusion the two times I created an account, one account on Peertube and it’s the same ( this was the most difficult of them honestly because Peertube’s filters are very bad and whenever I could find an instance that I considered good, it turns out that registration is closed, or needs approval), the same confusion also happened when I created an account on Kbin/Mbin , the same on Pixelfeed , the same when I searched for an instance of friendica and it will be the same when I think in the future to repeat the experience on any other federated service… Now, someone may come and say the famous sentence “it doesn’t matter which instance you choose, at the end you can follow anything from any instance” and honestly this sentence is a pure myth imho because … first : when you register an account in an instance, you will constantly notice the “local” section, which shows you what’s happening on the instance you are in , and it’ll form part of your experience in the instance depending on the instance itself and people on this instance , also , let’s suppose that a large number of annoying users existed on a popular instance and the moderation of this instance couldn’t solve the problem ( or didn’t do anything about this in the first place) , what might happen is that moderation of other instances might decide to defederate with this instance, and this might affect an ordinary user who has done nothing but joined the instance - and any other person who isn’t annoying but but ended up on this instance -, I know that this point is unreal currently but it might be real one day especially that some instances are known for not being tolerated with specific behaviors
• Another confusion that might happen … I’ll explain it with my own experience : when I was still using my first Mastodon account, I left the account for a few months and then decided to return … but guess what happened ? I forgot which instance I signed up for in the first place ! fortunately, after two attempts in two different instances, I found the solution : I searched on a random instance for my Account (I still remember the username ) and was able to find it … I was lucky in this, but I can’t guarantee that everyone will be as lucky as me and will find a way to remember ( this is both a good and bad point for the federation , on the one hand I forgot where I registered because the instances are similar , and on the other hand I found the instance which I registered in using another instance )