Justin SearlsMay 26, 2023

I've been jokingly calling Mastodon "Nicorette for Twitter". It looks and feels like Twitter except it's designed to be unengaging and not very interesting so within a few months most users fall off and stop using it.

It's a social media cessation tool.

Show threadolivierlacanMay 26, 2023

@searls or maybe you’re not be following (enough) people that engage *you*?

Twitter hid a lot of that.

My time here has been relaxing, engaging on my terms, at first limited, but now very reminiscent of Twitter before the trending topics and algo-timeline-gaming ruled all.

Took effort and patience for sure, just like it did then. And clearly, most people don’t care enough to seek out and assemble a timeline worth checking. It’s slow, like RSS. That’s obviously why Twitter went mainstream.

Show threadJustin SearlsMay 26, 2023
@olivierlacan yeah, I just don't think it's particularly good software. I'd honestly rather just RSS subscribe to the handful of accounts I care about than use a Twitter clone that's intentionally bad at all the the things that made Twitter fun and addictive to use. I am glad to have quit Twitter for my own sake, but that doesn't mean I need a Diet Twitter in my life either
Show threadDave Copeland 
@searls @olivierlacan I feel like you must use twitter in a much different way then I have. Ivory + Mastodon has been so much like early twitter. I do miss quote tweets, but I never ever searched for anything on twitter ( can't really think of a reason to even now ) and mostly consumed it as a stream of random thoughts from people I was interested in hear from that I could interact with / share my own thoughts in a low-friction environment. That's what Mastodon is for me at least
May 26, 2023 at 5:20pmWeb
Show threadJustin SearlsMay 26, 2023

@davetron5000 @olivierlacan my Twitter usage from 2009-2022:

70% - checking notifications
29% - search (for various projects, companies/accounts, URLs to recent work).
1% - home timeline before clicking one of the above

ActivityPub as implemented means a huge chunk of engagement *never* surfaces to me in any view and engagement from other instances is often hours-delayed. Search is of course also functionally impossible.

Twitter was only ever useful for being real-time, and Mastodon isn't

Show threadDave Copeland May 26, 2023

@searls @olivierlacan I didn't realize notifications were so delayed - maybe I don't get enough to notice, but they seem real-enough-time for (though probably all from my home host?). Twitter DMs were super flaky for me - I'd get an email that I had one and then days would go by before it would be on the website. But I never used the twitter app so maybe that was it?

But yeah, you use it much different so I can imagine it's not great for your use case

Show threadJustin SearlsMay 26, 2023
@davetron5000 @olivierlacan yes, the fact that Mastodon isn't appropriate for real-time coverage is why sports Twitter, horserace politics Twitter, and reality TV Twitter have not found a reason to move here
Show threadKris NuttycombeMay 26, 2023

@searls That's fascinating as a usage pattern. I suppose that makes sense if you have a high level of interaction / large follower count. Totally unlike how I used Twitter though - I chose my follows really carefully to get an digestibly-sized stream of high-quality content and would unfollow ruthlessly to keep it that way. I always hated the way the algorithmic timeline polluted my high quality stream, and turned it off over and over and over again. I could tell instantly when I'd been switched to it without my consent.

So for me, the experience here on Mastodon is a lot like my *best* experience on Twitter.