I saw a post earlier asking people how they're genuinely finding Mastodon, but because the search function is utterly broken and will only display posts from January 7th backwards; I'm going to do my own post.

[cottoncandyandrazorblades@ohai.social]

@dec_hl I said I wanted newer games

[cottoncandyandrazorblades@ohai.social]

@dorian That last post under #HazbinHotel was six days ago and it's just sharing a Facebook (gross) video. Woot...

[dec_hl@mastodon.social]

@CottonCandyandRazorblades oh, sorry, I totally misread that...

[veesevents@blorbo.social]

@CottonCandyandRazorblades @dorian That's super weird. I see thirteen posts between that Facebook one and this conversation in #hazbinhotel.

But certain instances do block other ones, right? So ohai.social might have cut off/or have been cut off by these other instances and that's why you aren't seeing anything?

[cottoncandyandrazorblades@ohai.social]

@veesevents @dorian Another reason not to enjoy my time on Mastodon . It's like region specific content, only a VPN won't save you.

[veesevents@blorbo.social]

@CottonCandyandRazorblades There's a lot more Hazbin talk on Bluesky. It's also a lot easier to mute terms or just hide a single post, while Mastodon opens up another window every time I click on a hashtag I would like to mute and then I have to write it again.

I keep my account here, because in this current social and technological climate, it is stupid to throw your eggs all in one basket.

[substandard@chaosfem.tw]

@CottonCandyandRazorblades You can interact with _any_ of Mastodon, rather than all of it. Finding the right people to follow can take a while, though. Your server only grabs posts from accounts that someone on your server follows. The lack of discoverability has its downsides, but it also makes the place feel more intimate and less exposed, which I think is a good thing. It might be worth going to the mastodon.social website and searching hashtags there? You don't need to log in there to search. It's better to be on a smaller server in most respects, but the biggest ones have the most content available. You can copy the url of a maston.social link into your instance's search box, and it will grab a local copy you can interact with.

[veesevents@blorbo.social]

@dorian I personally prefer a slower pace on social media. I don't need to be inundated with hundreds of posts every day. I wouldn't be able to interact, I'd be too overwhelmed.

[ciara@anarres.family]

@CottonCandyandRazorblades this is a fair criticism. People will suggest following hashtags which might find some interesting posts but not everyone uses them and it still depends on your server seeing them. Following people with similar interests and then seeing who they interact with is the best way to end up with a feed that suits you but this is also a problem because you need to find the people first ‍️

Finding an instance that aligns with your interests would be beneficial if possible. The local timeline is more likely to have posts that interest you and allow you to discover people to follow. This is how I got started and I hope you can find your people here too

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@dorian @CottonCandyandRazorblades

Just to clarify, I have an account at @FediFollows and a website at https://fedi.directory to try to help people find accounts on particular topics, but I'm not collecting data or anything like that