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I have spent the last two weeks in conferences with other science communicators and the general consensus in discussions was that (1) Twitter is dying and (2) it’s not clear what will replace it. (And not much enthusiasm about Mastodon, it seems.)

Hollie 💜

@AstroKatie Were there any reasons given for not feeling positively about Mastodon?

@hollie I think the perception is it’s a bit complicated, the interface isn’t as nice, it feels kinda siloed

@AstroKatie @hollie Huh. All true and yet I remain confident that most Twitter refugees will end up here.

@jef @AstroKatie @hollie ...but not happily, though. I moved here in October, and I miss the astrogossip that twitter still provides, and we still haven't got a critical mass of #astrodon people here. It seems very quiet.

@mattkenworthy @jef @AstroKatie @hollie

Which is why I'm still on Twitter. All my Excel sources are there and active and informative, I follow them, and I don't get the stuff the algorithm serves up any time I accidentally click "For you". Just many more ads recently.
Mastodon.world has the odd interesting thread on other topics like science and tech but gives me no professional (by which I mean work-related) content.

@AstroKatie @hollie We just launched a volunteer-driven site SpreadMastodon.org to help explain it and make signing up crazy easier. Mastodon is our best shot to #TakeBackSocial. I hope it might make Mastodon more approachable to people like your colleagues (who are far from alone!).

spreadmastodon.orgSpread MastodonWelcome to your better social home.

@AstroKatie @hollie I mean, I think a little of this comes from people who aren't thinking about how Twitter - or any eventually huge service is at the start.

@AstroKatie @hollie It's designed this way, you won't have an algorithm recommending you stuff that could interest you, likes are stricltly private and you can't quote a message you boost. It's all by design, to fight virality and the culture of immediacy that is at the heart of Twitter.

@trkzn @AstroKatie @hollie Likes aren't "strictly private", you can get a list of people who've liked any given post by clicking on the word "favorites" when it's expanded. They're just not publicized, which is different to being private.

@trkzn@mastodon.social
I mean,
you can't quite posts, maybe, but plenty of us can. There are other microblogging platforms on here beyond Mastodon, and Masto is basically the only one of them that doesn't have quote-posts.

The feature people (claim to) want exist out there in the wider Fediverse. The communities they left behind, though, are a different story.
@AstroKatie@mastodon.social @hollie@social.coop

@AstroKatie @hollie also I find it quite curious that scientists of all people would find Mastodon too complicated.I've heard this criticism from the general public, but that surprises me.

@trkzn @AstroKatie @hollie scientists? Nah. Science COMMUNICATORS, ie. journalist libs that say the word "pragmatic" a lot. lmao

@AstroKatie @hollie that's unfortunate. Hashtags help spread information and stuff that gets "engagement" across the fediverse usually shows up under the # feed. I have seen a bunch of creators run AB tests between the same content on both current Twitter and Mastodon who have found good results here, but that is anecdotal.

@AstroKatie @hollie Oh gosh PLEASE help us here if you have the platform to do it!

It's the exact opposite of "siloed", people really do not understand that term!

The problem is it expects and requires people to own their own presence and NOT outsource their feed to algorithms (or the whims of an oligarch at the top of the ACTUAL silo).

Humans are messy. And hard.

@johannab @AstroKatie @hollie

But sometime what you want is just a few posts about "whatever seems interesting to a lot of people right now"?

The Federated feed is largely useless.

The Local feed is largely useless unless you happen to pick an instance with interests similar to yours -- but if you do that, you're not going to see stuff from people with radically different interests.

How do you come up with people or hashtags to follow, for interests you don't even recognize you have?

@SilverMoose @AstroKatie @hollie

One shortcut is look up the profile of a follow you like, see who they follow, and/or who they boost, and check out some of those.

Many, though not all instances are also running Trends, which appear under Getting Started -->Discover --> #Explore in the web interface (and in various ways in various apps). Go there and you have "Posts", "Hashtags", "News" (links), and "For You", all based on what or who is getting attention on your instance in recent hours.

@SilverMoose @AstroKatie @hollie

You can also go to the "search" box, wherever it appears on your interface, type a hash, and then without a space start typing a keyword that seems to you like it should be a hashtag. It may very well be! Try typing all lower case as well as camelCase or UpperLower because so far those are interpreted differently.

#caturday or #Caturday
#feditips , #FediTip #Feditips
#FollowFriday or #followfriday
#knitting #Knitting #fiberarts

@johannab @AstroKatie @hollie

But, again, that pre-supposes I already know what I want to see.

One of the things I really appreciated about Twitter is that I'd occasionally run across something totally different from any existing interest, and find it just fascinating. At almost 70, I'm still way to young to even realize what all my interests are.

I don't find that here much -- and I miss it.

@johannab @AstroKatie @hollie

Thanks. #Explore's been staring me in the face since the day I got here, and I just never noticed it.

@AstroKatie @hollie It's evolving. I'm seeing a lot of discussions between developers on how to change things, new apps, etc. For me personally, as a journalist, it's been proving more useful than Twitter. I have more followers, more engagement, new expert contacts and have a gotten a number of story leads.

@hollie @AstroKatie Maybe they feel the same as I do - people spend a lot of time on Mastodon talking about Mastodon!