Buy European

I have no issues finding content on mastodon, just search and follow hashtags.

Considering Mastodon sucks from a UX perspective i don't blame them or users.

This narrative is tired, particularly with Mastodon.

All open source projects that aren't violently ruthless about pursuing profits are going to lag behind tech companies approaching social media from the perspective of a cigarette company that also is selling the capacity to rich interests to distort, artificially elevate or silence perspectives.

Should we all push for a more accessible fediverse? Of course, but what is your perspective bringing to the table that does anything other than restate the incredible material inequality in resources between the two things you are comparing?

On the contrary I think the UX of mastodon is impressively boring and functional compared to the ever enshittifying slop and paper thin future promises served up by multimillion and multibillion dollar social media companies.

Because Money 🤑 And Profits 😎 And a new Yacht! 🏖

What's that, you can't afford groceries? Fuck off, poor.

As long as we're throwing fediverse wishlist items out there, I wish the Lemmy core developers/founders didn't have such gross political views.

Boomers are used to Twitter- and facebook-like platforms

They probably do, but that just means that they hate Mastodon and have never heard of Lemmy.

It has Democrat toxicity instead of Republican toxicity. And no Elon Musk. Which is like cleaner and often less stupid, sure, but for a european not very relevant.

And something something protocol cool cool much. Compared to Mastodon, it has similar algorithmic feeds that Twitter has, which depending on your viewpoint makes it just as bad as Twitter or just as useful as Twitter. This + lack of masses leads to nothing ever happening in Mastodon, or at least that it seems like it. In contrast, those algorithmic toxic wastelands like Twitter, Bluesky and Facebook especially always have something "new" happening in them. Even if it's just AI slop, the dumb part of your brain gets happy about it.

It's simple kinda - one has a marketing team. Lots of wonders the power of spin and hype can do for you.

The first time someone told me about mbin/lemmy, I had that exact issue and just gave up on it for a few months. This is especially true as there doesn't really exist any account migration (nor, probably, can there be one without any kind of centralized auth server or the like). I finally did move over, but two of the instances I used just shut down, one with basically no warning.

And they don't even say server but "instance". Like need special words to keep the unwashed out.

@DemBoSain @Sunshine
I think that a part of the "server hurdle" can be solved - at least for brand new users - by initiatives like the Vivaldi Social network.

New to Vivaldi? Nice - welcome. Would you like to join Mastodon? Register here. Boom.

If people have heard about Mastodon and are curious about it, this is the easy way to get them hooked. No talk about servers or instances - you register and you are off to the races.

How this all plays into the decentralized nature of the Fediverse and who is going to fund those servers is a different question - but it is definitely the easiest gateway for new users (as you can see, I was one of them).

I keep hammering home: instance doesn't matter when you start. It's more important for you to join. Once you join, you'll figure out the instance and then you can switch.

X lost 11 million users in the EU

Japan still stubbornly holds on as well. Insta eventually started to take over some things from Twitter, but tons of stuff is still there. I created a BlueSky for the small business I'm starting here in Japan and my wife asked me what that was and why no twitter.

Is that due to the war/skirmish/thing with Pakistan?

Especially when the Canucks account was hijacked by Elon Musk placing his crypto scam video as the top post on their page.