A newbie's thoughts about Mastadon after a few days here:
Fewer famous people are here than on Twitter. More DIY art! More DIY everything - meaning an underlying ethic of 'this is our community, it is what we make of it.' No Nazi's, MRA's or other hate groups. More interesting nerds!
@ewankeep this seems to be instance-specific, yes?
@odinsdream It is what I've observed so far from my home instance, but I'm checking out the federated timeline and following people from other instances. I'm sure there are hate speechers on Mastadon, but they are not running (ruining?)the dialogue for everyone. E.G. a quick search of #feminism showed people actually talking about feminism and feminist issues, rather than one huge misogynistic troll fest blocking actual feminists from talking to each other. Which is what I found on Diaspora :(
@ewankeep That's good to hear. Right now I'm trying to really settle into finding an instance that feels like a friendly place where I can actually talk to people and feel not overwhelmed. It looked to me like mastodon.social was too big, but I've heard good stuff about octodon.social recently.
@odinsdream @ewankeep so how does this work. On a smaller instance you just follow the public timeline and can cut through the noise to find people to talk to that way?
@iluxan @odinsdream
Sure. Watch the feed of your local instances for people who look interesting. Also make us of hashes #whotofollow #writers #books #sciencefiction. If you want to stand on the edge check out the fediverse (global) feed. Keep in mind I'm new here, too, but this seems to be working.
@iluxan I've just been paying attention to the instances Local timelines.