I see a lot of discussion on HN about how we need decentralized social media, and how Twitter / Facebook / TikTok etc is the root of all evil.<p>But Mastodon has existed for a long time now, and at least in my techie social circle, it seems like nobody uses it at all.<p>To the folks who do use it, what purpose does it serve for you?<p>Who is actually using it every day? What for?
I used it every day for a couple months earlier this year. There are lots of little differences. I thought it was a more interesting place to be yourself than it was to find interesting accounts to follow.<p>Twitter is really good at the latter. Especially if you are looking for people to THREAD you up some knowledge or if you like viral content.<p>But there's also that saying that goes something like: "Every day one person is picked to bear the shame of all of Twitter, and your goal is to not be selected as that person" --or something like that. It's not exactly a chill microblogging platform anymore, but Mastodon is.<p>So, while Twitter might be a good research or learning tool, and Mastodon could also be that _depending_, Mastodon is also kind of open to exploration without some of the pressures or distractions inherent in the Twitter model.<p>If you want to microblog in a chill way and build up some fun toots to look back on over time, it's probably a fantastic platform for that.<p>Personally I took a bit of a Mastodon hiatus to explore SL and OpenSimulator, both of which are also pretty interesting.<p><a href="http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page" rel="nofollow">http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E4t8y9k1Us" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E4t8y9k1Us</a> (Video showing some interesting worldbuilding in OpenSimulator)
Memes, art, cat photos, catching up with other people's projects.<p>Find artists: <a href="https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/art" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/art</a><p>Comics: <a href="https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/comics" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/tagged/comics</a><p>Cat pictures, etc.: <a href="https://mastodon.social/@gargron" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.social/@gargron</a><p>More recommendations: <a href="https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/108521414258703203" rel="nofollow">https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows/108521414258703203</a><p>If you would like, I'm [@karmanyaahm@social.linux.pizza](<a href="https://social.linux.pizza/@karmanyaahm" rel="nofollow">https://social.linux.pizza/@karmanyaahm</a>) (you can see who I follow and whether they interest you)<p>As for using Mastodon, I would highly recommend getting an app like Tusky to have a proper 'all in one' experience.
> But Mastodon has existed for a long time now, and at least in my techie social circle, it seems like nobody uses it at all.<p>The honest truth is, little to no-one is using it, hence interaction there is extremely low.<p>It is not early days anymore and we have given it enough time to get more users to make it worthy of being able to recommend it to anyone who isn't a techie over something like Twitter at the very least. It really hasn't materialised as the so-called Twitter alternative that everyone here was talking about for years. [0]<p>If you have 94% of total users across all instances not using the platform, then to the average folk it doesn't look exactly great to use or a great pitch to convince others to use that instead of Twitter.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17788060" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17788060</a>
OSM community has it's own Mastodon instance set up.[1l It feels like a "small, closely knit" twitter, but we talk about OSM all day long. It's better than Twitter because it's easier to discover new tweets that's related to OSM<p>Also, one of my colleague is using Mastodon as his main social media. Even though his account is set up on different Mastodon served, i can easily follow him too. It feels like e-mail, where you can still get in touch to people that's hosted on different server.<p>Several years ago, i cant use Mastodon because it's still full of bugs and there's no active community. But for now, it's already usable for daily use.<p>[1] : <a href="https://en.osm.town/about" rel="nofollow">https://en.osm.town/about</a>
It seems like the Baraag and Pawoo (I think run by Pixiv) instances both host very... uh... <i>vibrant</i> pornographic, and sex positive art communities, and it is convenient for those users as Tumblr banned them all, Twitter patchily bans explicit content periodically (JP users get a much looser leash than EN it seems) and DeviantArt forbids anything more explicit than artistic nudes.<p>I don't use it, mainly because I'm unclear of what the implications of choosing an instance are. I have a wide range of interests and I worry I'll be siloed if I choose just one.
I use it pretty much the same I use Twitter, just a bit more filtered (i.e. I subscribe to fewer news sources, fewer people who post a lot, even among the obviously smaller set of users)