We've had a lot of new people join the fediverse over the past week or so, so here's some advice from someone who's been here since 2016:

There's no algorithm. You have to actually work at filling your feed with the content you want to see. What this means is:

FOLLOW PEOPLE. Find folk who look interesting, follow them.

FOLLOW HASHTAGS. Try typing a hashtag relevant to your interests - e.g. Sheep - into the search box. Scroll down to hashtags. Click the Sheep hashtag. Click 'Follow hashtag'.

I can't tell you the number of people I've seen over the years come here from big social media and after being here a short while, complain that they're not getting any interactions or finding anything worth reading - and I go to their profile and they're following maybe 10 people and have made two posts and haven't interacted with any posts by anyone else.

You HAVE to put the effort in here to integrate with the community, or it's going to be a very quiet and disappointing experience for you.

Try doing these 'five of five' things every day for a week and see how your feed fills up:

Follow five people
Follow five hashtags
Boost five posts
Comment on five posts
Make five posts

There are, literally, millions of people using the fediverse. The initial work you need to put in to discover people is higher than algorithmic social media, but the payoff is far more rewarding; a chronological feed full of the content YOU want to see.

@Curator Thank you. Thoughtful curation kept me sane on the Bird Site before I finally pulled the plug. Thoughtful curation will look different here, but will likely be worth the effort.

@atl_bugg Yeah, I think on other sites you're filtering OUT more than curating IN - on here (on this particular instance, at least) we try our best to make sure you never see the really bad stuff, so we do most of the filtering OUT, and you can focus on filtering IN (then the filtering out that's more just tweaking your personal tastes than being exposed to hateful content)

@Curator this is what I did when I joined years ago. Worked really well for me!

@Curator People need to understand that the absence of a feed algorithm has implications…

- Not subject to manipulation by big owner who’s trying to sell you something.
- Doesn’t give immediate gratification of turning on a news channel and getting a deluge of items to be outraged or delighted by.
- Posts don’t “go viral” like on Meta or X.

In a way we are refugees from a hyper-commercialized, advertising saturated society. Calmer here, sometimes a little boring. That’s a feature not a bug.

@michaelormsby 100%.

@Curator The local timeline, especially here on .ART, is a good place to find people to follow, and I feel like since Mastodon got the single-column view, it's been de-emphasised and lots of new people don't know to look for it, so they're just faced with an empty Home TL and don't know how to get started finding people.

I don't follow many people because I treat the Local TL kind of like my Home TL - it's my Mastodon bookmark and I mute people I don't want to see on there. It's lovely :D

@Curator

> There's no algorithm.

This is the bliss and curse of Mastodon. I came from Twitter thinking that "no algorithm" would be great, and soon realised that a pure timeline is not very practical either.

Most people need some algorithm of sorts to stay engaged. It's good to be in control of it, but it should be readily available for 99% of users.

@mtcerio Oof, no. If you want to see a particular kind of content, you can go find it. If you don't want to see it, the site isn't forcing it into your feed regardless. Just because some folk aren't willing to put in some effort to discovery, doesn't mean that algorithms in social media are good - if some people need more content in their feed to stay engaged, they can follow more people / hashags.

@Curator @atl_bugg

I think this idea, intentionally saying "yes" as curation here, is precisely what is so different about the fediverse when compared to other places where the "no" is the priority.

I think it's also important for new folks to realize that a follow is a follow of someone's posts, not a judgment of their character. I have people I love to see on fedi, but I don't follow them because they would overwhelm my feed.

(They get boosted at me anyway :)

@Curator Thanks. I was not aware that following hashtag is an option.

@Curator Thanks Curator, I didn't know I could follow hashtags.

I pretty much love Mastodon, it is like Tumblr but then are people more likely to interact with each other.