8 years on, Mastodon is still failing because it’s so hard to use https://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

(For clarity, mastodon is not failing - that was my apparently bad attempt at sarcasm. Please see my response to this post for more details)

Mastodon Exit Interview

I am currently winding down the Mastodon bots I used to post sunrise and sunset times. The precipitating event is that the admin of the instance hosting the associated accounts demanded they be made nigh-undiscoverable, but the underlying cause is that it’s become increasing clear that Mastodon isn’t, and won’t ever be, a good platform for “asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind”. I’d also argue (more controversially) that it’s simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind. There are lots of interesting people using Mastodon, and I’m sure it will live on as a good-enough space for certain niche groups. But there is no question that it will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase. I’ve long since dropped Mastodon from my home screen, and have switched to Bluesky for text-centric social media.

Rob’s Posts

@jerry i think private messages are a bug not a feature; any service that offers them gets flooded with creepy 'girls' who say 'hey!' who probably work for Chinese nationals in Myanmar

anti-viral is fine with me, if anything I think chronological feeds + boosting is a toxic algorithm; I have a lot of fun on Mastodon but can't stand the "Explore" feed on mastodon.social

@jerry for that matter I think it makes no sense to be on any Mastodon sever other than "mastodon.social" but I'm not one of those people who can't make up their mind over whether they want to be visible or invisible

Personally I post first to Mastodon, enjoy the chance to edit, then I copy some posts over to Bluesky later.

@jerry I think engagement quality for me on Mastodon is good but if I hadn't done a lot of work to keep antiresilient people away I would not be enjoying Mastodon