As much as I'd love to use Mastodon, both times I tried, I got bored and gave up because I couldn't find interesting people to follow. All of the people I do find interesting are only on Twitter.
Yeah that's how it is now. The federation sort of blends into the background so disregarding that part I feel like I'm using a big message board in the early 2000s.
But actually worse, because at least those message boards had better defined topics. I can follow some hashtags that I enjoy but in the web gui it's very limited. I've been thinking about writing my own software to help me follow tags alone. Just to participate in relevant discussion.
Otherwise you're just watching people rant in the public feed and if you're lucky you might catch the occasional interesting post.
But I persist because I truly believe in the fediverse concept.
> But I persist because I truly believe in the fediverse concept.
It helps to see Fediverse as the early web, where things aren't that smooth yet, and everyone is just experimenting. From that perspective as a techie it is a joy to explore the possibilities.
That's the most difficult part is finding who to follow (likely strangers) when you first start. You could watch the global timeline or search some #hashtags for things you are interested in or try to pick the right server with a like-minded userbase from the get-go. However, these issues aren't too different than any other social media tbf. And eventually you find interesting people exclusive to the Fediverse or post different content on it that is more interesting. Mastodon and others never force being social and following others though.
I guess both work. On Instagram and Tumblr I can follow people and hashtags, on Twitter I can follow people and topics. On forums, you basically navigated by topic, without following any specific person.
I've had the opposite experience for the most part (way easier to find good people to follow than on Twitter), but maybe that's just because circles I'm interested in have largely migrated to the fediverse which may not be true of most. It also might be because I found an instance dedicated to at least one thing I'm interested in and used that one. Maybe that approach could work for you too?
