As far as I can tell from my venture into Mastodon’s feeds, the demographics of that part of Fediverse isn’t that different from what Lemmy has: the same political takes, FOSS stuff, “big corpos bad”, etc.
I wonder, is there anything that Mastodon excels at that Lemmy just doesn’t provide? For example, I noticed that there are game developers and artists posting their stuff on Mastodon. Not many game developers (or any creatives, really) on Lemmy though.
Mastodon is better for following individuals, Lemmy for communities.
i would like to be able to follow lemmy communities and lemmy users from my mastodon account.
I came from Mastodon. I think Mastodon does have some good features that haven’t come to Lemmy such as account migration and bio sites verification, while Markdown and no word count limit in Lemmy excels Mastodon. Other difference are more due to the different nature of them, just like Twitter compared to Reddit, for example, more organizations, artists, developers, etc. post on Mastodon.
There is always MBin, on an MBin client you can see and post on Lemmy and Mastodon.
I think it’s basically what you said. There’s some organizations on Mastodon, some German newspapers and tech magazines, game developers, a few artists and some more known people from hacker spaces. We don’t really have that here.
Mastodon is personality focused rather than topic focused like Lemmy/piefed/et al.
If there is a person or organization that you’re interested in following (or if you’re a person or organization that is or aspires to be followed) then mastodon is the service for you.
Mastodon is personality focused
Sadly I have no personality! Lemmy it is then.
Exactly why I’m here.
I have impersonality.
You are comparing apples with oranges. The two apps serve two different purposes. Mastodon is mostly for individual one on one interactions, lemmy is for building communities.
You are comparing apples with oranges. The two apps serve two different purposes
In my defense the question was about comparing apples with oranges, so I did.
Both formats can serve a purpose, I haven’t put enough/any effort into my mastodon, but the intention was for it to replace bluesky for me, where I tend to have more conversations in threads, than I do here on lemmy.
they are entirely different contexts of communication. mastodon is a ‘microblog’ platform, where one person tends to broadcast to a group of subscribed users
lemmy is just forums with threaded discussion… many to many as it were.
personally, ive always generally hated the twittersphere (microblogging), and avoid it mostly. but it is nice being able to subscribe to the small number of microbloggers i do enjoy thanks to mbin’s built-in integration.
Nice domain name!
Mastodon excels in updates. If a niche is alive on Mastodon, then you will get news from it before Lemmy. Especially in infosec, or (if you are from Europe, especially from Germany or the Netherlands) local news.
In a way, shitposting is also freer on microblogging, without Threadiverse’s pigeonholing into different magazines/communitiesThe discussion may have worse UX. Only selected alternative frontends (like phanpy.social) have got nested threads like here and until recently, replies were delivered only to replier’s follower instances, resulting with users not seeing all the discussion and inconsistent threads between instances.
The discussion may have worse UX.
Mastodon developers forgot that their social media may end up generating discussions. They were too focused on ‘screaming into the void’ aspect of Twitter!
its just format. mastodon is like xitter and piefed/mbin/lemmy is like reddit.
Mastodon and Lemmy do not interact much though. And Masto has more people who found their way to Fediverse in a different way from Lemmy users. Meaning that there might be niches that Masto is more suited for, like game development.
Yeah mastodon because its like xitter is just something I have never been interested in social media wise. Kinda stinks because I like the watch party thing but I don’t want to make an account for one thing. Heck I don’t even make matrix or peertube even though those would be nice. I really wish there was more account login interoporability.
Better interoperability with Mastodon is on Piefed’s roadmap so maybe Fedi won’t be as fractured soon. I find it a bit funny that Fedi has so many people on it but we can barely interact with them because they are on Mastodon and Lemmy can’t talk to it.
I really like Peertube I wish it had content though.
When your instance upgrades you’ll be able to follow Mastodon accounts in Piefed and see their posts in your home feed.
this is where I think the mistake was made. I really think they should have started with the idea of a user and a user account as a place for various services to store configs and then did something like saml. So the most basic server to run would be a user server and you could even have simplified user applications that is for a user to keep his own user account. I think nostr would be a good way to start from this perspective but im not sure if its doing it really the way I am thinking.
They can, though. Mbin is integrated somewhat, I’m not sure about others.
Yeah but most people are on Lemmy so its’ lack of integration is what shapes the local culture.
If you’re interested in specific people or organisations I guess you’re much more likely to find them on Mastodon.
So Mastodon is for following celebs and political parties then?
And governments. Many EU countries and the EU itself have their own instances.
I’m gonna follow my 🏳️⚧️country🏳️⚧️ then
For me, one advantage of Mastodon is the ability to follow particular hashtags and for them to show up in my feed, even when I don’t follow the person who posted something using that hashtag. I follow a lot of creative types on there - music folk, writers, artists.
As a corollary, being able to mute particular hashtags is also very welcome!
As a corollary, being able to mute particular hashtags is also very welcome!
Mastodon does have a very good muting ability. I like that one can choose what feeds are affected by each word filter. It would be really helpful on Lemmy too.
Mastodon is her better at things like updates in the way you mentioned, and it’s easier to build a purpose focused # than it is to build a community on lemmy.
You’ve also got different character limits, so you end up with most posts and responses being easier to follow; just hit the # in question, and you’ll end up with concise responses. Which isn’t better than a longer character limit, as it often lacks depth and nuance. It’s different and has benefits though.
It’s also way easier to find relevant imagery on because of the hashtag system. There’s no good way to look up images on lemmy/piefed at all, but Mastodon makes it easy, as long as the poster uses #s accurately. Since most do, if you’re into something like birding, you can find specific birds by a # search. That’s the best example, but it applies to damn near any subject matter.
I’d also argue that it’s a better system for artists and writers overall, as long as they have their own places where they keep their works. You can’t drop short stories on most Mastodon instances, and big image files of art tend to not be ideal. But being able to put your stuff in a single repository of some sort and just link it via a toot for anyone that’s a fan is superb.
So, microblogging is better for creatives of all sort and for those who want to interact with said creatives. What about fandoms? I feel like all sorts of fandoms are (were?) at home on Twitter and Tumblr. Has Mastodon caught up with fandoms yet or is it too small for this kind of stuff?
I think it’s still under the tipping point. The more fans use it, the more it’ll be good for fandoms, but it sometimes takes more fans onboarding and the thing they’re a fan of also at least nominally present for it to match the numbers of other platforms.
But in terms of functionality for fandoms, it’s as good as twitter was. It doesn’t have the same purpose as tumblr or Facebook, so those can’t be directly compared. I would say that in terms of what a fan base could use Mastodon for, it matches or exceeds Facebook simply by virtue of not being corporate, which means no artificial barricades. Tumblr is its own thing though, and it isn’t going to be 1:1 with lemmy/piefed or Mastodon. The use case just isn’t close enough.
There are fandoms present on Mastodon, mostly anime based, and the hashtag system works well for that, imo.
Tumblr is its own thing though, and it isn’t going to be 1:1 with lemmy/piefed or Mastodon. The use case just isn’t close enough.
Fediverse has a Tumblr alternative nowadays - wafrn. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the culture there is much more different from both Mastodon and Lemmy. More chaotic and creative, it’s really nice to see!
There are fandoms present on Mastodon, mostly anime based.
I’m surprised. My (limited) experience with .social’s feed is that it’s mostly Very Serious People who are posting, mostly about politics. Maybe I need to dig deeper.
The one fandom I’m in uses a mix of IG, BlueSky, tumblr, and gasp FB.
Wasn’t Tumblr supposed to become Fedi-compatible at some point? Or did they move away from that idea by now?
Lots and lots of hashtags and @ symbols
I will say that boosts can make posts spread on Mastodon a bit more quickly than I’ve seen Lemmy posts spread on Lemmy. But Lemmy posts aren’t particularly Mastodon-friendly, I do wish they were formatted to be a bit more readable.
