Welcome #NewUser
If you are coming from Twitter, you understandably may feel like it is a lot quieter here. Mastodon is not "dead," but there is no #algorithm bombarding you with stuff. Here you develop your own user experience by searching out and following people and things that interest you. You can pretty quickly build a much more satisfying experience, but it takes a little effort. Following #hashtags is a good way to get started. Be patient and join in conversations.
It's worth pointing out that, because there is no algorithm totalling things up, the two ways of reacting to a post work differently than in other networks
Favourite = send my personal thanks to the original poster
Boost = show this to more people.
Basically, if you want to spread an item, Boost it. Boost does only two things:
* It shows it to people who follow you
* it puts it in the feed for the server you are on, as though you posted it.
So things /can/ go viral on Mastodon, but only if you Boost them. And even then they do it rather less spectacularly. They rise less, and fall away quite quickly.
Mastodon Migration
Bob Harvey