I migrated from Twitter to Mastodon when Elon Musk took over. It’s been really nice, and I I wish I’d have known about the Fediverse before then. I may have found an instance that is too comfy and perfect for me, though… I’ve been tempted to migrate my account over to a Calckey instance, but there’s no way that I’m not staying put. Other Fedi services that I’m interested in trying are PeerTube and Owncast.
I’m new to the fediverse so, while I know this is not necessarily the recommended way to go about things, I identified a handful of instances (one per platform I was interested in) and made a few accounts with the intent of spending time immersed in each of those platforms before deciding which to make my main fediverse account.
Beehaw is my Lemmy exploration account, and I also have an account on one kbin instance, one Mastodon instance, and one Pixelfed instance. In terms of usage so far, I scroll and read the most on Mastodon, but don’t feel compelled to post anything there myself, so I’ll probably use that account for just lurking. I spend a lot less time on Beehaw than on Mastodon, but I feel a lot more comfortable speaking up here, so it’s a strong candidate for my home base account. However, I could say the same about kbin once it has more time to develop and communities start to settle.
One thing I like more about Beehaw than kbin right now is that there are more conversations happening, and on more topics than just the Reddit migration. It feels more like its own thing, as opposed to a landing pad for people fleeing the corporate platforms. For example, right now, my kbin feed is just overwhelmed with Reddit-related content. I can only scroll past so much of that looking for other content before I head over here to Beehaw for a while. That will probably sort itself out with time, and I’m looking forward to experiencing that transition and seeing what kbin looks like on the other side of it.
In general I’m really starting to feel at home in the fediverse, and I’m quite enjoying my exploration of the various formats it has to offer!
I do have one on kbin, but I don’t use it. I think the kbin interface is way better than Lemmy, but I dig the vibe over here more. No shade to anyone, they are both great. Just personal preference.
Edit - I just read your question and it said beyond. Whoops. I had a mastadon account but I don’t like Twitter style social media so it was never used.
i used to be super big on mastodon but i’m not a fan of it anymore. there are a couple issues with it I had wrt metadrama, racism and the global timeline that make it not ideal for me personally.
because of that lemmy is pretty much my main fediverse access, and I think the link-discussion based format is the best version of the fediverse
Long time Mastodon user and enjoyed it very much since I left Twitter. Much more engaging and easier for me to follow likeminded users. I also learned about the fediverse and feel it is more important that ever to have these alternatives.
I’m on Mastodon (love it) and lemmy.world. It took a while for Beehaw to send approval, so I started off my Lemmy time there, and it’s okay, though it does have the more aggressive tint to its comments section that I"m used to from Reddit.
Use Liftoff to seemelesly move between your beehaw and lemmy.world accts.
How do you use Mastodon? Like do you use hashtags to find stuff you like to follow or what?
Yes, to get started. You can turn on advanced view and add a column with multiple hashtags you like to follow too. I follow 250 people, which is plenty to keep my feed interesting and active.
Just Mastodon and BookWyrm
Is BookWyrm like an alternative to Goodreads? I hadn’t heard of it, is it good?
It does the trick: reviews, community, keeping track of what you read.
I’ve been on Mastodon for several years, most of it on a singular instance (well before the Twitter migration). You definitely have to go looking for your own list of interesting people to follow, and the hashtags are quieter than I’d like, but I enjoy it as a chill place to just hang out and read fun stuff and occasionally have low stakes conversations.
I’ve tried a few other fediverse services but none have really stuck with me except for probably now Lemmy and Kbin.
Any recommendations on how to start finding those communities of interest on Mastodon?
What I did in 2018 was
- picked an instance where the local timeline looked interesting/relevant to some of my personal interests
- looked through there and also #hashtags for my interests
- through those avenues, followed everybody who looked remotely interesting at all! With the understanding that I was going to start big and some of those people probably wouldn’t accept my follow, and some of them probably wouldn’t turn out to be interesting to me/compatible in the end so I would remove my follow.
I feel like casting a wide net and filtering down to match your own taste and the kind of people you want to meet is a good way to start curating the Mastodon you personally want to see, since an algorithm isn’t going to do it for you. It takes time but is rewarding in the end. With Masto in specific, most instances by now have upgraded software to the point where migration tools are available, so if you end up not even liking your local timeline you can take all your followers, follows, blocks etc and just try someplace else.
You could probably also use lists to help with this process somehow but I never really understood them either here or on Twitter lol.
This was super helpful, thanks!
I’ve been on Masto since 2017. Ran my own instance for a while, but have since joined another instance.
I’ve been on Lemmy since they were first testing federation, but there wasn’t enough activity (aside from lemmygrad bs) to keep me around until more recently.
I have a bookwyrm account that I keep forgetting to update.
I’ve run a funkwhale instance for a few years, but I don’t actively federate with any other instances.
Mastodon but having a harder time getting the hang of it compared to Lemmy but never was really active on Twitter. Love Lemmy and Kbin but nothing beats Beehaw
Ive tried mastodon a few times but bounced off of it. Ive never been a big fan of twitter either and it’s essentially just twitter minus the industry professionals and journalists and smaller niche regional stuff.
Ive tried looking into peertube but again bounced off. The noise ratio and lack of activity and content can be a problem. Would be nice if some big creators used peertube as a youtube free backup, but they tend to rely on patreon for that.
I’ve had basically the same experience as you (also not big on Discord so Matrix didn’t really click for me) so it’s been really nice finally finding a fediverse that I vibe with in Lemmy!
I have a kbin account that I’m keeping an eye on. I’m sticking around Lemmy based instances for now since it had more time to develop and there’s some small UI stuff and search function that is nicer. Also have a mastodon but I don’t really use it.
Haven’t heard of PeerTube or Owncast though, might check it out.
Yes, Many.
Mastodon, Akkoma (Pleroma fork), Funkwhale, bookwyrm. I haven’t try Misskey or any of its fork, Pixelfed or Peertube yet. And I have no use for Friendica or Hubzilla.
Nope. I’m not a Twitter user but I tried Mastadon anyway and found it offputting and confusing.
I’ve accounts on Mastodon (first serious fediverse account*), PeerTube, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, Friendica (without content), Lemmy (both Beehaw and Sopuli), and Kbin.
*I had an account on Identi.ca 10 or more years ago, but the posts I read were too technical and logical to me at that time, so I stopped using it in favour of Twitter.
I joined Mastodon at the same time you did, and have taken to it as much as I ever did Twitter. That is to say, I waste far too much time shitposting on there.
I tried to set up a PeerTube account on one of the bigger instances (I forget which), but my account was never approved and I forgot all about it.