Is anyone using Mastodon as their primary social media and is it working for you?

[softwaretheron@mas.to]

@LianaBrooks
Pretty much.

I left Facebook last December, and rather miss it; I knew people there.

I'm on BlueSky, but all I do with it is post politics stuff and look at other people's bird pictures; it's not a place I go for interest.

Mastodon, I don't know people, really. But the people I see are interesting.

It doesn't really feel social. But the interactions are much more interesting than BlueSky and there is no algorithm, which is a huge step forward.

[nyquildotorg@gts.nyquil.org]

@LianaBrooks works wonderfully

[marynelson8@mstdn.social]

@LianaBrooks Yes. I long abandoned most others, and left the app previously known as Twitter in 2022. This place is the best of every social I've used.

[quasit@kolektiva.social]

@LianaBrooks Yes and yes! I just hope it lasts.

[stefan@stefanbohacek.online]

@LianaBrooks I am, and I'd say it's mostly working!

The specific corner of the fediverse I'm in is very welcoming, encouraging, and engaging.

The main downside is that not everyone has the same experience as I do, and it's really hurting the diversity of our community.

[rachela@mastodon.online]

@LianaBrooks
Yes, snd somewhat. Not a lot of interaction from my posts. Was it something i said? 😂😂🤣. i do love the people here though. ❤️

[starraven@mastodon.scot]

@LianaBrooks

I am still largely on FB because the majority of my real-life friends and family are on it. Mastodon is where I go to decompress, however, and enjoy the topics I like seeing.

[luluhelle@ohai.social]

@LianaBrooks hi and yes. I left the bird place years ago and found the transition interesting. Yeah i miss the friends i had there who didn't come over. However i feel safer here. There's a nice sense of community here.

[johndecosta@mastodon.social]

@LianaBrooks @craige Yes x 100!

[myerman@turtleisland.social]

@LianaBrooks yes and yes. I get good engagement with my art posts, much of which drives traffic to Patreon

[paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange]

@LianaBrooks

yes and yes

[apbblue@thepit.social]

@LianaBrooks Yes and yes. The only other thing I use is LinkedIn, but it's 🗑️

[chris_e_simpson@hachyderm.io]

@LianaBrooks absolutely.

It seems to me that one of the main benefits of Mastodon, the fact that I get significantly fewer low-quality interactions compared to my experience a handful of years ago on Twitter*, can also seem like a challenge.

*and Bluesky too, to a degree, though I almost never post on there so it's hard to say

By low-quality interactions, I mean bots and trolls, but also the regular folk who treat the whole thing like a popularity contest or a battleground. There is a tiny fraction of that on (my experience of) Mastodon and that's not just because of fewer overall users, the ratio is drastically different.

This means that I can have decent conversations with decent people who are mostly trying to engage positively, as opposed to the frequently adversarial engagements I experienced before.

However, there's a small corner of my brain that still seems to be impressed by the raw counts regardless of their quality, a part of me that enjoys feeling popular even if I know its an illusion. I've learned to ignore it but I suspect the same sense might chase away a number of new Mastodon users each month.

Of course this is all based on my experience on here, other folks mileage may vary.

[cshlan@dawdling.net]

@LianaBrooks
I have Facebook for a few friends and Bluesky to follow a few big accounts and a few more friends but I spend most of my online time here and find it's much more cozy than anywhere else.

[moira@mastodon.murkworks.net]

@LianaBrooks Absolutely. And it's working great. It takes more to get going, I'll freely admit that, but - yeah, for me at least, it's so. much. better.

Howcome, anyway?

[nyhan@fediscience.org]

@LianaBrooks
Yes and I like it a lot.
Last week I was helping an elderly neighbor with her phone. Scrolling the Instagram app (where she needed to block some accounts) made me jiggy and overstimulated within 30 seconds. If there were an emoji for "my eyeballs went spring and I wanted to go lie down in a dark room" I would use it :)

[angelascholder@mastodon.energy]

@LianaBrooks Yes, yes.

[maikel@vmst.io]

@LianaBrooks

Primary: yes.

Working for me: depends on the day, sometimes it gets too political / too enraging in a way that is even more toxic than commercial social media. I find it really really hard to remove myself from US politics even though I carefully curate who I follow. That's the disappointing part of it for me. The US gets a disproportionate attention to the number of people I follow who are not in the US.

I agree with others in that it is more educational, but at the same time there's a lot of window dressing going on.

[jeffzugale@mastodon.art]

@LianaBrooks yes, and yes.

[leftistlawyer@kolektiva.social]

@LianaBrooks yes
Confused by the “does it work” for me. I’m baffled corporate social media “works” for anyone. How does being a tool for billionaires work for anyone???