While Twitter is busy limiting the number of readable tweets and breaking its TweetDeck app, Mastodon is launching a significant refresh of its Android app.
  • Sneezy McGlassface@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    The mastodon app on f-droid is marked as “promotes anti-features” with a description “This app promotes or depends entirely on a non-free network service” and I wonder why that would be, since there’s also Tusky, Fedilab, Husky, and some others, none of which have a warning like that.

    • Hildegarde@lemmy.worldEnglish
      231·
      1 year ago

      In my cursory research, it seems to be possible to view mastodon through Kbin. And possible to view Lemmy through Mastodon.

      Lemmy doesn’t have support for following user accounts, only communities.

      All the platforms use the same backend. So there’s no reason full mastodon interoperability couldn’t be added to Lemmy in the future.

  • MiscreantMouse@kbin.social
    10·
    1 year ago

    I switched last year and haven’t looked back! For me at least, Mastodon has been a much better experience than Twitter ever was.

  • seacocker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    Is this what everyone is using now? I was using Megalodon, Tusky, and the original app, but I’ve skipping a few updates of all of them.

    • Elkaki123@vlemmy.netEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      I use fedilabs, don’t know if the other apps have caught up (hope they did) but the timeline function where you can add timelines from whatever instance you like and also have tags as timelines is so OP.

      Since I spend most of my time browsing other instance timelines that feature is a must.

      • Myro@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Just for me to understand this as I’m pretty new. Each instance has their own “timeline” aka homepage or feed with all content (people you follow, tags etc.), and you either have to access each instance separately or use something like the app you mentioned?

        • thegiddystitcher@lemm.eeEnglish
          8·
          1 year ago

          Each instance has a “local” feed of posts from that instance. Same as how local works on Lemmy.

          You also have your “home” feed (like our Subscribed, it’s for posts from people you follow) and a “federated” feed (like our All, everything your instance knows about).

          I mostly use Mastodon on desktop and I can pin columns with my fave hashtags in as their own separate feed, which is nice.

          • Myro@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Thanks, that helps!! The separate timeliness ads actuly pretty awesome. Basically a curated list of topics/people instead of everything being thrown at you like Twitter.

            • Franconian_Nomad@feddit.deEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              Don’t forget, you can follow hashtags too! So if you want to see toots (posts) regarding a topic that interests you, just follow a hashtag like #ukrainewar, or #linux for example. That’s also a good way to to find people to follow.

              • Myro@lemm.eeEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Yes! I saw that, that’s great. Missed it initially, as it is not possible viel the official mobile app. And when using Tusky I accidentally “muted” my tags, so they were shown as filtered in the homepage. So many possibilities!

            • thegiddystitcher@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I honestly have no idea how Twitter works so will just have to take your word for it lol. Loving Mastodon though, I’ve had two accounts since November, both on small niche instances and both have nice active feeds and as much conversation as I want :)

          • Saneless@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Good to hear fedilab is still one of the better ones. Haven’t used any much lately but I’ll just stick with it

            The official one lacks lists, local, world… how is anyone supposed to find people to follow?

        • Wrincewind@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I believe that much like Lemmy, there’s an “all” button that gives you everything from everywhere.

    • RxBrad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I’m mostly on Trunks… and I occasionally glance at Megalodon. Both have been light on updates lately (maybe I’m just spoiled by the crazy pace of development on Connect for Lemmy right now).

      Based on their Mastodon posts, it looks like the Megalodon dev has been hard at work re-basing their app on the new official Mastodon app version. Still no public release of that to use that I’m aware of.

  • scorpiosrevenge@lemmy.mlEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I just deactivated both of my Twitter accounta. Done with the bs, I’ll use mastadon for a while (and Lemmy).

    • Izzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I use Megalodon and I really like it. The base app is pretty decent though too.

    • SulaymanF@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      You don’t need to use the official Mastodon apps, they’re not the best way to use Mastodon. The official apps only arrived last year, and they were intended as “Fisher Price My First Mastodon” things with a restricted set of features.

      Third party apps have been around longer than official ones, and include way more features. You can sign in with the same account on all apps.

      :android: On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot

      :apple_inc: On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona

      As per Feditips: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110644814293019308

        • jkelol111@lemmy.oneEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Ivory can do this via its Safari extension, and it does support Universal Links for select instances. It’s difficult to implement Universal Links for the fediverse because each instance would have to add an association file to their servers, and even if all instances add this, there’s a limit to how many domains you can support in an app

  • allforthebest@infosec.pubEnglish
    86·
    1 year ago

    I hate Material U design. It is really like the Superflat design for 2020s with rounded corners and it looks really tedious.

    • HopperMCS@twisti.caEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I’m not gonna lie I miss skeumprphism from the 2000’s, I know a lot of people thought it was tacky but it had more character than this flat, low-effort boring shit. This new flat stuff from the mid-2010’s makes it look like these companies got halfway through product design and quit.

      • varzaman@lemm.eeEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        Na, there is a nice middle ground. I would rather have flat over the Skeumorphism if I had to pick between the two though. I thought it was hideous then, and I think it still is now lol.

    • people_are_cute@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Word.

      Btw is there another Android app for Lemmy other than Jerboa? It feels like one of the biggest victim of the Material You template’s drawbacks.

  • Chippyr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    Mastodon is just so empty as a platform. I hope for its success but I am not seeing it at this point the way we are with Lemmy.

    • Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      This is a strange take - Mastodon makes up ~80% of the Fediverse, whereas Lemmy makes up like 3% or something.

      Mastodon is the entire reason the Fediverse as a whole ended up taking off - for most people, it is the only thing they are aware of.

      • Sproux@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        According to fediverse observer Lemmy hit 2.2 million users to mastodons 8 million, so it’s up to like 17% now!

        • Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Not accurate unfortunately as the vast majority are bots. It’s more along the lines of 300k to 500k currently.

            • Matt@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              It was obvious - the instances are not shown on sources like fedidb.org anymore, but if you went to the instances which were growing fastest, all the accounts on there had gibberish names with almost no user activity.

              It would be great if Lemmy actually had 2 million users, but it just doesn’t, sorry. :(

      • animist@lemmy.oneEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        I think the reality is just that microblogging is always going to be devoid of content when compared to a messageboard system like lemmy or reddit

        • laxe@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Microblogging success seems to come from very popular users with many followers, such as celebrities, athletes, institutions, etc. Without these, Twitter would also feel empty.

    • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I Iiterally cannot keep up with my feed. You have to build a network there. It is not spoonfed to you.

        • fossilesque@mander.xyzEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Nah, man. I get things and people I like spoonfed now by active boosters. The more you interact and add to your network the better it gets.

          • 0xD@infosec.pubEnglish
            52·
            1 year ago

            I really don’t get how people don’t understand that for mass adoption you need as little fucking friction as possible, lol. What you are doing is just gatekeeping. My experience with Mastodon:

            The home feed is completely empty at first. I can go to some recommendations which are (I think) based on my home instance. I have no idea what those people even talk about so I just follow them to be able to check the platform out at all.

            Looking at the “Trending Topics” (or whatever) tab shows stupid hashtags like #silentsunday or #photomonday. I don’t really care about those and they don’t even matter for my home instance infosec.exchange. So how do I even find any topics I really care about? It’s so much work.

            I’m very technically inclined and I went in with an open mind and am now following quite a few people and have even found properly nice profiles like bellingcat. But that was way too much friction - there should be less, and I’m not talking for me.

            Anyway, I never really used or liked Twitter and Mastodon seems the same. There’s just too many uninformed opinions and people fishing for likes. I don’t care about that, I want proper discussions even if I, IMO completely undeservedly, get downvoted ;) I like Lemmy way more for that.

            • RiverGhost@slrpnk.netEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Is it really harder than with lemmy? In mastodon, basically:

              Subscribed = home feed
              Local = local
              Global = all

              If you join a big enough instance, the local and global timeline will have plenty of posts. Possibly, what you’re looking for is ‘algorithms’ that recommend juicy things (for you). But this is usually something favoured by for-profit sites, which want to push certain things and not others to increase the time people spend on the app and therefore maximize their ad-based profit.

              I really don’t get how people don’t understand that for mass adoption you need as little fucking friction as possible.

              A big factor is that most fediverse instances aren’t really looking for mass-adoption. Since these things are usually run by volunteers that have to pay for hosting with their own money or donations, and not a for-profit corporation, there’s no real incentive to advertise and get as many people as possible to a single instance. The ideal is that smaller instances federate together, there’s no centralized “fediverse” interest that wants to get them all.

              Ideally, we’d want a web that is less corporate and more federated, but if no one is currently able to give the time and money to pursue this more aggressively, it will not happen. That’s not really gatekeeping. In theory you could fork mastodon, improve it to make it easier for people, market it and sustain the hosting and moderation costs. But when you complain about how nobody is doing it already and call it gatekeeping, it’s not really fair.

              A lot of the fediverse is also composed of ‘beta’ software that will probably improve with time, but these improvements are based on people that work on it on their free time.

              Yes, there’s an inherent difficulty in competing with big corporations, but this is an open problem so far. Yes, if meta or some for-profit company join the fediverse and use their large budgets to make them very attractive for mass-consumption, it will grab most of the users. This is the whole embrace, extend, extinguish problem that has supported other closed system that dominate the market. How to fix that is a larger problem.

          • Firipu@lemmy.worldEnglish
            01·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, that’s nice and all. But for people that just passively consumed Twitter, Mastodon requires way too much work to get a decent feed set up. I’ve tried multiple times, but I’ve always given up after a while. I don’t want to put effort into my doomscrolling.

            I find lemmy a lot more “content-friendly”. After just 2 weeks of using it, my feed is almost back to where my reddit feed was. It’s awesome.

    • boonana@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      You need to start following people and hashtags.There is no algorythm filling your timeline.

    • RxBrad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      If you’re looking for the exact same celebrities you followed on Twitter, you’re going to be let down.

      If you follow hashtags instead, there’s a lot to like. In a sense, Mastodon almost seems more Reddit/Lemmy-like, in the fact that content is more discoverable by topic instead of person.

    • RiverGhost@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      My masto feed is really active, but I’ve also been there for a couple of years and migrated instances at least twice.

        • RiverGhost@slrpnk.netEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I would say it’s still not at the level where you have a nomadic identity. However, it’s better than it is for lemmy (which would involve using an external script to recreate your followed and blocked communities).

          So migrating in mastodon is basically recreating your followers (all the people that follow you) in the old account, without external tools. To do this you log in to the new instance, and in account settings there’s an option “move from a different account”. Then log in to the old instance, and choose “move to a different account”.

          Then allow it some time to complete this in the background. You can additionally use the export/import options to transfer your follows, lists, blocks, bookmarks, etc. This will probably re-request the people who you follow, so people usually leave a message in both the new and old accounts about how I’m migrating so that they know it’s the same person.

    • dub@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I mean all your can do is engage with the community and actually work to get it up to what you want. I’ve commented more in the last 3 days then I did in 8 years on Reddit cause I want it to thrive

      • Sproux@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Same, plus it’s nice that people aren’t hyper aggressive like Reddit was, nearly every time I commented someone told me to kill myself/ called me an idiot.

  • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Aside from Mastodon.Social are there any other decent instances? I’m considering joining one; I liked Twitter before Elon bought it and miss it.

    Of course Im staying on Lemmy as well. :)

  • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    Might have to give it a go, see how well they integrated the updated material design. So many apps still don’t support adaptive icons and proper colors.