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

[nicksworld@mastodon.stickbear.me]

@ShaulaEvans @LianaBrooks Yes. Mastodon is my main social media platform and I like it.

[kitten_tech@fosstodon.org]

@LianaBrooks yes, yes

[journeysinfilm@hcommons.social]

@LianaBrooks Our social media presence is divided equally between Mastodon, Instagram and LinkedIn. So not solo primary (poly primary?) but an important part of our online outreach.

We love it here! We have hands down our best engagement on Mastodon, no question.

Our primary audiences are educators (classroom / homeschool / community / other contexts) and filmmakers, which are communities that exist on Fedi but aren't as large or well-defined as legacy corporate media.

We have the impression that we connect with a more international audience and more people in higher ed here than elsewhere. (Yay!)

We're a non-profit that gives away our teaching resources for free. Our most important metric (that we report to our board, our funders and our filmmakers) is downloads. Mastodon does not drive a huge number of downloads at this time, but the numbers have grown significantly since we first joined. (Yay!)

We're really happy to be here and we are grateful for the support we receive.

[glittercleric@corteximplant.com]

@LianaBrooks I was part of the great Twitter exodus and haven't really used any other social media besides Fedi ever since. I do have a Tumblr account still, but only reblog stuff there without engaging otherwise. Fedi is working really well for me, I have a lot more interactions here than anywhere else, most of which are very positive.

The only negative things about Fedi for me are that there's very few Black and other PoC users, and it overall leans very tech-y.

[nopatience@swecyb.com]

@LianaBrooks I wanted to add a thought to this.

Mastodon requires of you an intentional use of social media. You need to curate your timeline(s) through your follows and lists. There are pros and cons with having a none algorithmically dominated timeline.

If things "go viral" it's because PEOPLE made it so. That's a powerful concept. Virality is a function of ... people liking it.

Mastodon has also announced that they will focus extensively in the coming 3 to 6 month period on improving discoverability and "timeline" management through starter packs (collections) etc.

Mastodon works, but I think the more important observation is that Mastodon integrates into a bigger whole where humans are the center pieces, not the tech.

[musevg@23.social]

@LianaBrooks
Yes and yes (mostly).

I had like a ton of different subreddit subscriptions back in the day, and I don't get all my interests covered to the same extent here (or in Lemmy). But I'm very fine with Mastodon/Fediverse nevertheless.

[mahadevank@mastodon.social]

@LianaBrooks yup - primary - works great - almost all info I find here is trustworthy - I might be binging a bit too much on it though, need to reduce usage a bit

[apalun@toot.wales]

@LianaBrooks Yes and yes.

[morihofi@furry.engineer]

@LianaBrooks yes and it is working fine

[zpeteris@lgbtqia.space]

@LianaBrooks

[technicaladept@techhub.social]

@LianaBrooks Came here to replace twitter a few years ago. Never looked back. Removed my facebook and linked in bookmarks a few weeks ago. Facebook keeps emailing me when it thinks there's something from friends and family that will lure me back in. Which turns out to be a reasonably well curated feed from them. But most of the time, I'm right here.

[perpetuum_mobile@mastodon.social]

@LianaBrooks I do. Finally a place like the internet of late nineties and early 2000's
- no algorithm
- real people
- I choose what to see
- meaningful interactions
- I can be myself!

The only thing I don't agree with the general community is the resentment of LLMs. I engineer systems with LLMs built in and I use models to convert unprocessed text into JSON that my systems can ingest. I use local models and choose the ones that used no stolen materials like polish Bielik v3 11B.

[journeysinfilm@hcommons.social]

@LianaBrooks We would really, really, really love it if we had enough interaction with people in education (in the broadest sense) and film here that we could leave corporate social media and still achieve the numbers we need (i.e., resource downloads, newsletter sign-ups, new filmmaker business contacts, and donations). That's not on track to happen soon, but as more people keep joining Fedi, it gets closer to reality!

[barneydellar@mastodon.scot]

@LianaBrooks Yes, and yes :)

[musevg@23.social]

@alice @LianaBrooks
Poisoned? What?

[leonianuniverse@caneandable.social]

@AdaraAstin @LianaBrooks Yes, I use Masto as my primary social media and have been for the past couple years now. Its been a great experience, not sure how many followers I have, but I really don't care all that much, I'm just grateful people want to even read any posts about me at all in the first place.

[rasterweb@mastodon.social]

@LianaBrooks A hearty yes and yes!

[cosmictraveler@mastodon.social]

@LianaBrooks Yes, and I love it 💓

[bart@smop.fyi]

@LianaBrooks @vladimir_lu Yes. I went from mailinglists and Usenet to Twitter and then Mastodon, mostly as a consumer, so no need to worry about who I can reach.

It’s plenty to feel connected to the rest of the world.

[ndw@toot.wales]

@LianaBrooks Yep.