With all the tiktok drama I have been telling people Mastodon is still here and kicking!!

[silenceetchedonawall@mas.to]

I encourage anyone to try LARPING as a potential mastodon user who has experience with other social media but not Mastodon. For example, let's say they're a new user that likes reading books and wants to find posts about books. Or sports. Or anything. Mastodon tells such a user at multiple checkpoints that it's closed to them or that it's a ghost town and no one here is discussing such things.

[philcoyote777@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz when I explain mastodon to people they are thrilled to join. I haven't ever enjoyed FB like this platform. Give it time. The word is out!

[chris42@chaos.social]

@taylorlorenz
I think the biggest barrier is that it is just a social network. It is missing commercialisation. You can just be here. So it doesn't work for the majority of influencers, that make money on advertising. It works for the ones that have an interest in a topic and earn their money otherwise. But Mastodon will never develop the drive as other platforms and I think that is good...

[giant_crab@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz if Mastodon had exploded at the same time as Twitter back in the late 2000s, I don’t think there would be an issue. As much as people complain though, I think they generally prefer algorithmic, simpler alternatives.

[amazing_mmoia@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz .. it’s all about interactive communication.. people want a news feed page where they can share an opinion of feelings and thoughts and have it available to interact.. Facebook is very good doing so, that is why it is so popular.

[mastodonmigration@mastodon.online]

@Jamoteusz @taylorlorenz

And yet folks spend inordinate amounts of time and effort on SEO and complex strategies to spoof the algorithms to promote their content.

[andreasenglert@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz I believe the problem is that there is not a lot of information about Mastodon. I just joined yesterday because I wanted to get away from TikTok and just happened to stumble upon this platform by searching for No Tracking Social Media.

[martlund@mastodon.online]

@taylorlorenz Maybe too confusing to know which one, since there are so many

[andrei_chiffa@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz transparency/trust on legal & effective free speech protection; commercial content instances (de)-federation; lack of visibility for famous accounts; lack of context for posts; lack of any algorithm.

And additionally the fact that commercial social media to everything to maximize engagement and time on the platform, while Mastodon tries to keep the protocol and the initial instance up, running, and minimally sane.

[chris_colvin@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz honestly, the people that love (are addicted to?) Tiktok and Instagram *want* an algorithm feeding them, or at least want the option. Additionally, Mastodon simply doesn't have the same addiction-based behavioral design... When most of your time is spent reading text or viewing a static image, the endorfin hit is just much smaller and spread out. In that way neither does Twitter, but the last ingredient is siloed rage. Fewer people with more consistent views means less excitement.

[glamcode@openbiblio.social]

@taylorlorenz We should market the Fediverse as fun, not only as virtuous. It’s like praising your fruit as „healthy“. True, but I buy where it says „sweet“

I think the #Forkiverse got this right.

And, as always, do write alt-texts, do not harass new users who don’t.

[nikkinoir@theforkiverse.com]

@taylorlorenz the network effect, for sure
Big fan of your yt channel btw

[utopiarte@tupambae.org]

@AndreasEnglert
The missing information you are talking about is filtered out actively by the platforms you were using for more than a decade at this stage.
Post it yourself and you'll see the mafia acting in plain sight restricting your access to your contacts.

@taylorlorenz

[omartwotone@ioc.exchange]

@taylorlorenz
in a brief explanation: It's a matter of breaking the habits by themselves...

[sven222@soc.hardwarepunk.de]

@taylorlorenz Maybe telling the people that we have the fediverse with all it's possibilities and that it is more then Mastodon? That it is a real network and not an app?

[janikvonrotz@fosstodon.org]

@taylorlorenz Explain that the Fediverse cannot be bought by some tech bro millionaire. It is ours.

[aysc@mastodon.social]

@sven222 You're responding to a Mastodon instance. Stay out of the conversation.

[danielswann@mastodon.social]

@taylorlorenz this is very chicken/egg, but I think it needs a more heterogenous user base. if you’re into programming or leftish politics, there are many users to engage with. if you’re looking for discourse around a major sport like football/soccer, there’s almost nothing here.

[petr90@mastodonczech.cz]

@taylorlorenz

[jan@social.dytrych.cloud]

@janikvonrotz @taylorlorenz good point, but most of the users really don't care, they don't care their pictures are free use for big tech, they don't care that Meta AI is learning on pictures of their kids, learning on text statuses, etc. Now #Fediverse is not easy to discover, not easy to find friends, less users and less topics to discuss. I happy to be here and selfhosting my server, but it will need more work to be done to be competitive!