Steven T. DennisMastodon’s limitations mean it relies more on its users to surface good content. Search doesn’t really work. There are far fewer suggested posts. QTs don’t really exist yet. Trending doesn’t really work. So boosting becomes the absolutely critical way for other people to find interesting things. IE, if you see something you like, boost/RT it, tag people who you think might be interested, etc.
Boosts on here are what will make or break Mastodon. If people can find other interesting people and content, they will stay and the site will grow. If its too much of a chore, they won’t. Other sites reward lazier social media grazing, and they surface content designed to maximize engagement, which often = lies, hate, stuff that enrages rather than enlightens. Mastodon just surfaces what imembers boost.
Rich Stein (he/him)@steventdennis A quick "how to" guide re. Fediverse and Mastodon widely distributed to potential users in media and government agencies at all levels & locations, would probably also increase the number represented here.
David Slifka@steventdennis that’s a good point but I dont think it will be that way for long. I expect there will be more and more digest products and eventually user-selectable algorithms that emphasize pro-social interaction rather than time-on-site/profit.
malena@steventdennis does not appear that you are doing much boosting! people with larger followings boosting > people with smaller following boosting
peter honeyman@steventdennis ugh, i dislike boosts bc the folks i follow boost many of the same things so i see the same posts over and over and over again. i’m hoping @ivory will help clobber redundant boosts.
@peterhoneyman I suspect that would be less of a factor if there was more content and more people boosting/replying rather than grazing.
Kate Mackenzie@peterhoneyman @steventdennis What's ivory? That link didn't work for me.
@Kmac it’s an iOS client
Phil@peterhoneyman @steventdennis you can follow someone but hide their boosts to avoid this.
"Visit the relevant person's profile, click the three dots icon next to the Unfollow and bell icons, and there's an option there that says "Hide boosts from @[username]".
That option seems to hide them not just from your current view of their profile, but also from your Home view as well."
Here's a screenshot from Tusky showing its implementation in apps. Hope that helps.
@Phil_C thanks, i’ve been doing that
@peterhoneyman good luck solving the annoyance,I also think you can filter all boosts on specified instances as well.
@Phil_C the updated ivory client tries to reduce duplicate boosts presented, so i just went through my following list and re-enabled boosts on the 10% or so for whom i had disabled them. fingers crossed.
Benjamin Ross@steventdennis @mtsw I discover new people to follow here through replies more than boosts. Also, a lot of the boosts I see are posts I've already seen, often 2 or 3 times before (a weakness of either the software or the federated model). Unless you have a very large followership, writing thoughtful replies is a better way to improve Mastodon than boosting.
@BenRossTransit @mtsw Replies are also very important. But I don’t think I’ll even see the conversation unless someone I follow boosts it into my timeline.
shaun@steventdennis @BenRossTransit @mtsw The one feature I really, really want here is to be notified about who interacts with my boosts.
A _huge_ driver of my participation on T was that I'd retweet something, people would reply to my retweet, I'd get notified of their replies, and I'd engage in conversation.
Here, I boost something and I have no idea whether anyone even _sees_ it, much less replies to it. Any interactions go directly to the OP and leave me out of the equation.
mtsw@BenRossTransit @steventdennis some of the clients being released apparently handle this issue the same way twitter does (show you RTed posts in your main timeline once and then not again). Not mine (Tusky) and I agree its exasperating and annoying to see the same post over and over.
Shield Maiden@steventdennis Searching via hashtags is good too.
@Judeet88 it’s ok but doesn’t seem to work for long.
@steventdennis "for long"...in what way? It surely depends on whether you're searching for in-the-news topics or something a bit more obscure?
@Judeet88 If you search on one of my hashtags, #FridayNightZillow only recent posts are included in the search. Which is a shame as it’s a weekly feature, so you have to go somewhere else to find all of them easily.
John “Mastodon“ O’Briant@steventdennis @Judeet88 When I search that tag, it goes back to about 10 weeks ago. Is it supposed to go further?
Paul Chambers🚧When I search the hashtag, the search results goes all the way back to your first mention of the #FridayNightZillow when you started posting regularly on Mastodon.
After a while, it took a moment after I reached the end for the older Toot posts to appear, but the next "page" scroll of toots were fetched in matter of 10 or so seconds.
Maybe so. I think I responded near the same day, and I follow the hashtag, so it might be cached differently on my end/instance.
The problem might be with journa.host not whitelisting the #FridayNightZillow hashtag in the admin's hashtag moderation because a simple search of your famous #FridayNightZillow hashtag on journa.host shows no results. So, other instances is caching only
If @info admin is reading this, they can whitelist it here: https://journa.host/admin/trends/tags
Debbie SeltzerWhat we need is to be able to easily set our own algorithms with maybe 3-5 hashtags we want to prioritize at any given time.
ProgGrrlOne thing I liked about Twitter in the earlier days were the algorithms for recommended similar follows and trending topics. If you’re new to the service looking for things to follow/read, stuff like that is very helpful.
At this point, I assume current users who are trying to convince their friends to come on here, are helping them a lot in this area to make the case.
Jose Gutierrez@steventdennis new user here. Using the Ivory app on iOS and discovery seems to be lacking as in easily finding new accounts to follow based on interests and topics. I’m sure it will get there but this will for sure limit switchers as Mastodon seems to be very power user centric.
Sean Murthy
Sean Murthy (@[email protected])
@sjkilleen True. I worry though that people won't unlearn the non-social habits they've already developed. E.g., I hope people reply and boost instead of just hitting Favorite or quote/sub post. I also hope people learn to follow the whole person and not insist/expect posts only on topics that initially inspired their follow. https://mastodon.social/@smurthys/109739269251464948
Russ Skinner@steventdennis The responsibility is ours.
Laure@steventdennis search on topics of interest is very hard here or on breaking news topics of interest. Need a pan-fediverse universal search.
David Binkowski@steventdennis I don't appreciate boosts when it's someone trying to treat this app like Twitter. I don't need every article boosted constantly from one single source, if that tracks.
Bruce E. H. Johnson
robert daniel pickard@steventdennis or it will continue to do it's own thing rather than cater to people who can't be bothered to change their behavior even in the light of supporting a platform owned by a dipshit fascist.
Christopher Cruz 
@steventdennis reading the string of replies and conversations spawning off this thread is fascinating, and for me highlights some of the bigger technical and cultural items that both help and hinder Mastodon: Feature sets, user experiences, and access disparities that are astonishingly different across apps/web; Not a lot of hand holding for new users to get started or get content served up to them; Half its users want to create Twitter 2.0 while the others want to create the anti-Twitter; And a general disinterest or disbelief in the “virtue signaling” that sometimes accompanies the migration to Mastodon. It seems like the competition has always been against Twitter, but from these observations it feels like Mastodon is actually much more like a Reddit masquerading behind a Twitter UX, and could potentially benefit from surfacing the best of each of those while avoiding the pitfalls currently engrained in both.
We're Not In Kansas AnymoreI'm slowly learning...
Daryl Bsomething@steventdennis I'm realizing that I'm stuck in my adversarial mindset of not wanting to share too much about what I like or don't like by mashing those buttons. But with Mastodon I'm not the product (and in fact pay directly for the service via donation) so I have to find my way out of that mental space. I hopefully no longer need to balance "helping(?) others via boosting" versus "the harm of feeding an algorithm that monetizes against me what interests I've expressed"
TrueBlueKew@steventdennis I worry that I will pollute other people's feeds with boosts of content that they have already seen. I know it happens to me - I repeatedly see boosts of (admittedly good) content, but it makes getting through my feed a bit more of a grind.
themitchcohen@steventdennis @briankrebs This. So much this.
Jon Udell@steventdennis I'm also finding lists to be very helpful! It takes effort to curate them, so far I've categorized ~200 of my ~600 follows, but now I can read what those folks say in a focused and intentional way.
Black Eye Books 👁@steventdennis I like the idea of tagging. How do you go about doing that?
@blackeyebooks It’s not as easy as it is at other places but you mention their handles in a post.
@steventdennis Aha. I thought you were referring to tagging in a boost! Which I suppose you could do by linking to the original post, and mentioning handles.
Tim Reed@blackeyebooks I’d think they mean reply to the post and @ the people you think would be interested?
Paul-Gabriel Wiener@steventdennis @gregpak
Those aren't limitations. They're deliberate choices. Mastodon was built by and for people who don't want viral content shoveled at them. Random reply guys and companies searching keywords to push their POV. People abusing QTs to dunk on others. Waves of celebs and main characters dominating every TL.
It's about community conversations and person-to-person engagement, not a few people on pedestals. Which is part of why journa.host has had so much trouble fitting in.
@WearsHats @gregpak Yes, deliberate choices were made. The net result is boosts become critical at surfacing interesting things. It requires users to do a bit more work.
Yes. Exactly. Not disagreeing with you on that at all. But (and it takes a while to get used to the shift in framing) it's a question of whether that's a "limitation" or a desirable result. It takes time and effort to engage and find the right people for what you want. But it can be rewarding, and a relief not to have the clutter. To be part of a group rather than building yourself a soapbox.
@WearsHats @gregpak I think it’s a limitation if people you would like to read and interact with decide not to bother and go elsewhere. The lack of a search function in particular is vexing to me as a reporter trying to find people saying interesting things about topics I’m covering.
I've been frustrated from time to time by the lack of search, myself. The ability to find a post I saw a few days ago that's suddenly relevant to something else, for example. But it's also a relief to be able to just talk about things without a spokesman for the company popping into my replies. I like the control that hashtag only search gives me. If I want it found, I can tag it. And follow tags that interest me. It's a trade-off, for sure.
GlenG🌻 - Support UkraineBoosting is like lighting a match to start a fire, that fuels the engine which makes the Mastodon Wheel turn.
Liking is like stamping the Wheel of Mastodon with Kindness as it turns.
Both increase connections which increases Follows.
All three bring more accounts to Mastodon which starts the process all over again.
Every Turning of the Wheel makes it better.
chriswadeevans@Gleng2 and commenting?
@chriswadeevans Commenting is like the grease that helps the whole thing turn. :)
Giselle's very old account@steventdennis
Um, what do you mean by limitations? Those are the advantages of Mastodon. You get lots of tools for shaping your timeline, what languages, who you post to. Users having to do more work leads to commitment. I know lots of people would like QTs but when you think about it, replies work the same way - you just need to phrase it in a way that your followers understand what it is about so that can follow it back to the original toot if they want.
Um, what do you mean by limitations? Those are the advantages of Mastodon. You get lots of tools for shaping your timeline, what languages, who you post to. Users having to do more work leads to commitment. I know lots of people would like QTs but when you think about it, replies work the same way - you just need to phrase it in a way that your followers understand what it is about so that can follow it back to the original toot if they want.
Leonardo Ferreira Fontenelle@steventdennis I rather like the trends as they are
Karl@steventdennis feels good that way don’t you think?
Jari Pennanen@steventdennis These are temporary. Home timeline search can be implemented on the client, just like quote toots were implemented. The device caches posts and makes them searchable.
There will be plenty of algorithms, each client is free to make their own. Only imagination is a limit.
NncyRuth@steventdennis Thank you.
Lstn2urmama@steventdennis just go thru the list of locations and exactly boost or like and add comments or converse...
Metl Mann@steventdennis does boosting mean "reTweet"?
Harish Narayanan
Doctor Biobrain@steventdennis I definitely think new users should get a list of the most popular Mastodoners so they can select good people to follow and build from there.
The way I use Mastodon is to follow specific people and use them as my algorithm. Different people have different preferences, of course, but I think starting folks off with something they’re familiar with is key for the adoption of anything new.
I don’t boost anything unless I think the people following me need to see it.