Hello fellow Europeans!
I have already swapped like 95% of all of my american applications to European alternstives (all besides YouTube). However, I have a question…: What the heck is happening on Mastodon?
a) there are a few people there (even in comparison to Lemmy it is just microscopic
b) seems like Mastodon has never seen Any moderation: even though I followed politics-related people/organisations, Mastodon was, almost, bombarding me with unmarked and VERY unwanted NSFW content. Why?
So the question is: how to deal with Mastodon? Is it only me? It would be very nice to get back there and make theiving conversations and threads like here on Lemmy.
Vive l’Europe, Vesi
You picked the biggest instance there is. I would start with a smaller one and then pull in the material you are interested in.
Especially if you were hoping for your Local feed to give you anything short of a firehose of everything. Starting on smaller instances, maybe an instance formed around a topic that interests you, or you are passionate about, usually means a much more usual local timeline. From there, like @SrMono@feddit.org says, you can pull in the stuff you want from the other, and bigger, instances into your instance.
But shouldn’t the biggest one be the best one?
The biggest one has the biggest moderation burden, and since every server can share content, there are not huge advantages to being on the larger one. The “local” feed is not going to be that interesting unless you’re on a highly specialized instance anyway though - you’ll probably find the “explore” feed more interesting.
Following users is key, so I leave you with some suggestions to get started:
Some US politicians I am aware of: @RepShontelBrown@mastodon.social
@RepDonBeyer@mas.to
@barackobama@threads.net
Journalists:
@w7voa@journa.host
@anneapplebaum@journa.host
@timkmak@journa.host
@dangillmor@mastodon.social
@jasonkoebler.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy
Commentators: @davidallengreen@mastodon.green
@Daojoan@mastodon.social
@royaards@newsie.social
@randahl@mastodon.social
Thank you!
I realize I forgot which community we are in, and made the politicians US-centered out of old habit. Oops!
I’ll add in a selection of European voices: @AliceStollmeyer@eupolicy.social @ilumium@eupolicy.social @rafa_font@mastodon.online @StevePeers@mas.to @thomasjorgensen@eupolicy.social And of course @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu
As always with Europe, there are many different “bubbles”. Finding some active users/boosters in the languages you know are always a good idea - I think all European countries have active communities on Mastodon, and you find them by following the participants. :)
For discovering things in the whole Mastodon/fediverse network: yes absolutely
However if you are browsing the “local” or “all” feed on such a huge instance you should not be surprised to see a lot of nsfw or japanese-language or otherwise “uninteresting” content
Mastodon requires a lot of manual content curation by you to create your feed of people you are interested in following
But there are resources - starter packs, lists of people sorted by topic/profession/etc that you can follow. And best start by following hashtags related to your interests.
For example:
You can pull in content of the bigger one by following users and hashtags. There are several trending and discovery mechanics, so you don’t miss out on content.
I started over at the generic host mas.to .