Technology

The statistics thing is a downside of how Mastodon implements ActivityPub.

Two possibilites:

1. I think you can simply hide the counts if it irritates you.

2. You can install Fedifetcher to pull in missing interactions to your local server: https://github.com/nanos/FediFetcher

What sort of stuff do you like? Maybe some folks can make some good recommendations to jump-start a more interesting experience.

Recommendations and boosts from other users are how I've discovered interesting people there, and at this point, my feed feels just as full as my old twitter feed.

If you like news, a lot of breaking news is happening on Mastodon much more accurately and faster than on Twitter. There are a LOT of publications on there now, here are a few off the top of my head:

• Polygon (@polygon@mastodon.social)
• The Conversation (@TheConversation@newsie.social)
• The Intercept (@theintercept@jouna.host)
• Voice of America (@VOANews@mastodon.social)
• Ars Technica (@arstechnica@mastodon.social)
• Semafor (@Semafor@flipboard.com)
• Kotaku (@Kotaku@flipboard.com)
• The Christian Science Monitor (@csmonitor@flipboard.com)
• Fast Company (@FastCompany@flipboard.com)
• The 19th (@19thnews@flipboard.com)
• Vox (@Vox@flipboard.com)

There are a lot more local news sources too, so depending on where you live, you can probably follow news for your specific area. The account @FediFollows@social.growyourown.services regularly bundles up follow suggestions for different regions, interests, and topics. If you go that account and search for a hashtag (i.e., #texas) you'll get a lot of active and high-quality local accounts to follow.

Twitter's format feels a bit like yelling into the void and waiting for replies...you may luck out and get some engagement from a hub or a small subgraph of the network. Mastodon makes that stronger by removing the algorithm (I'd like there to be a user-customizable feed sort algo by an array of parameters, not sure what the technical limitations to that are: processing, security?)

Comment trees feel better (to me at least), because there is a hierarchical origin, a native indexing by topic>post>comment>countercomment...it sort of resembles how we relate with the world or navigate maps.

Did you use Twitter much before then? Some people just don't like the format. I use it to get updates on some things, but I don't use it as much as Lemmy (or Reddit before that).

If you did use Twitter, perhaps the content you followed back then still didn't make its way to Mastodon (or it went to bluesky/threads?)

Last thing you could try is following more people. I find that fediverse platforms need you to seek out content more actively, while old profit driven social media platforms were constantly seeking engagement. On top of that there just isn't as much content on any of the new platforms compared to the older ones.

That all being said, the quality of the content is equal or better every time

For me, it was the interface. I found it rough around the edges and not as inviting as Twitter used to be. I know it's seen as superficial but UX/UI is important.

Like, for example, to create a post or reply, the input was on the left navigation panel for some reason. I used to have trouble visually separating one post from the next in my head until I got used to it. Also, the way thread comments were nested could've been improved. And why did it only show me the top 5 trending news stories? Why couldn't I browse more? Idk, overall I felt like I was fighting the UI mentally.

I think Lemmy did a better job subtly improving on the details. I didn't see Mastodon doing that much when I was on there.