This happened to me recently. I posted a link to my Mastodon profile on Facebook to let followers know that I don’t intend to keep using Facebook for music, and it got a total engagement of 2 viewers.
As a test, I posted a dumb meme. ~10k engagement. Facebook intentionally lowers visibility of outside links.
The usual trick is to post an image along with “link in the comments”.
maybe there’s some lesson to learn here … “a platform is free if it allows outside links” or sth
Oh definitely. I only passively maintain a facebook account for my music.
Not to sound cheesy, but the fediverse is such a wonderful place. I can’t imagine feeling stuck with Meta.
God even here on Lemmy.
I share links, relevant links, in comments.
They just go on, people say thanks.
I share some links on Reddit, and Automod deletes it as “spam”. Also because Reddit seems to hate out going links, which is unexpected given what it is.
how dare you to add outgoing links in my news aggregator?!
People actually use threads?
I assumed everyone had moved on to mastodon/bluesky or crawled back to xitter.
People are still using twitter, so a lot of them are extremely conservative in their internet habits (and probably other ways as well).
I can understand twitter, it’s years of inertia, but threads was the next big thing for all of a week.
I tried all three when leaving Twitter and dropped Threads within days because its so bad.
BSky and Masto are decent though.
My wife uses threads because aaron parnas uses it… and that’s where she gets most of her political news.
So it’s catch 22 there for me. She’s on threads but getting actual news. So… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well I used to use Reddit but then they ip banned me for a stupid fuck up on my part (using a VPN) but now I have decided their advertisers don’t get my eyeballs to read their shit. (Still pissed about it a week later)
ITT: People discovering the “algorithms” aren’t neutral or objective in any way.
Business is business. I remember reading about this shit some 15 years ago on Reddit and other sites/ forums.This guy is a political influencer, of course he will measure Mastodon’s worth based on engagement metrics.
He’s not comparing the 2 platforms, he is pointing out a flaw in one of them. His message is not “i prefer mastadon for reason x” but “i dislike threads for reason y”.
The flaw is that this content is getting less engagement on Twitter. Chasing engagement is how we got into horrible state of social media we are in now. If something is worth doing then it’ll be worth doing regardless of amount of likes you get.
I think the flaw is intentionally limited visibility by meta, which they are using engagement to track. Considering what they are trying to point out, what other metric do you think they should be using?
You see this as Meta boosting wrong things. I see this as a problem with algorithmic timelines and boosting things in general. If someone is interested in a particular subject they should seek out sources of information on that topic and follow them, but by then you don’t care that wrong things are boosted, or that people like, dislike or are disinterested too much.
I do not.
I see it as meta intentionally lowering visibility, not as boosting other things. The root problem of that being algorithmic timelines rather than an actual timeline.
Which this post also points out (indirectly).
Again, what metric would you suggest to use to demonstrate this?
Isn’t adjusting weights of what’s being shown effectively the same as boosting?
I’m not really interested in any debate around semantics, to me the answer is no, applying a -1 to entry a is not the same as a +1 to entry z, but its also completely irrelevant to the question.
Again, what metric would you suggest to use to demonstrate this?
This… Is the wisest comment I’ve read in some time. Even though we all know this, it rarely gets said enough.
I dunno. I agree that the way engagement is used is often toxic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. If your job is creating content, then its useful to know how well that content is being received by your community. Hell, without measuring interaction in some way you wouldn’t even know if you had a community.
I don’t think social media should be used for people doing their jobs, that’s what RSS is for. I’m on social media to talk to people, not to be sold things.
Its a communication platform and these people are just communicating. Part of good communication is watching who is actually listening. That’s all this is.
Let’s measure that by taking a look at a number of meaningful responses and discussions this has generated then? Likes and boosts don’t even mean that the person doing it read those posts.
look i’ll tell you what i dislike about social media but you’ve gotta give me a like and a subscribe first
If something is worth doing then it’ll be worth doing regardless of amount of likes you get.
I agree 100%
Isn’t the entire point of social media to interact with other people? I.e. engagement. Why even bother posting on social media if that’s not what you’re looking for?
When I talk to other people normally I don’t really consider if what I’m doing is going to make them like, save or subscribe to my posts, therefore I don’t need to measure it. More social person might but that’s still an unhealthy amount of reliance on external validation.
We seem to be talking about different things here. Validation vs engagement. When the only metric you have of visibility is the number of likes, then that’s what you use. If you want engagement, your content needs visibility.
In normal human interactions you don’t need to measure validation either.
If someone post on social media to spread a message, news or something else, they want to know if their posts are viewed or are just useless because the algorithm hide them; The person in the image cleary is among these people
I’d rather not have those people on social networks either. Post news if you think they’re worth checking out but don’t make it your mission. We don’t really need more spaces where we get to be sold stuff to, political agendaposting included.
You don’t get the point: “why would i continue posting in this social that hide my shit on purpose when i can use this other one that doesn’t?”
His message is not “i prefer mastadon for reason x
First sentence of the post:
Why is Mastodon the best social medium in 2026?
You’re right, my argument isn’t really worded that well, i know, but i stand by the point i made; i believe core of his message is not about comparing the pros and cons of the two services.
Seriously, I was about to say that’s not a good reason to use Mastodon at all…
I like the old days when I used the landline telephone mounted on the wall. I never once worried about whether or not someone liked my conversation after I hung up.
I rate your casual indifference to societal pressure a 4.5 stars out of 5!
I rate your rating a 3.9 out of 5.
Perfect job scoring ops score, I give it a 5 out of 7
Decent scoring there and a bold move to change the scale, I give it a 6
I give this response a B-.
I give this rating a B+/7%
I’m schizophrenic. I give your rating an i/10.
the satisfaction of hanging up on someone, slamming the phone hard enough to make the bells ring… <chef’s kiss> you had to be there man, it was so good and I didn’t appreciate what I had until it was gone.
Not reliving the stupid things I said to my crush on the phone? Absolutely not me in high school.
You didn’t care if the eavesdropping switch board operator liked your conversation or not?
867-5309
The last thing I posted to facebook was included a link to my own website, and it got buried into oblivion. It was about 5% of the usual response. I suspected the exact same thing.
Link to the Mastodon post in question: https://mastodon.social/@randahl/116412909768305794
Hate to break it to him. But, the post sucks. It’s bland. It’s a thumbs up next to an article hyperlink. Throw some spice and humor on it:
“Ayyy, we might get a Back to the Future reboot.”
Or don’t use either. Problem solved.
You give me a screenshot of the text instead of the text? You get downvote from me.
You give me a link to the YouTube without any text summary? You get downvote from me.
That’s how it work.I’m kind of sad that I can’t look at the global feed on Mastodon Social anymore. If I’m not already following others, I don’t really know what I can do on there but see some news links and brooding angsty posts from mostly the same handful of already popular users in Trending.
Browsing the global feed kind of felt like this.
You can also follow hashtags.
Good to know, thanks.
I use to have the global feed just opened and it was so fast half the time it would crash and I’d have to restart the page. Loved it though.
Exactly! Modlogs are incredible!
Meanwhile Mastodon burying posts from poster without a massive follower base:
How does Mastodon bury posts when you are your algorithm?
Mastodon shows your post to your followers. It also shows up in your instances main feed and under the included hashtags.
Mastadon, Lemmy/piefed, and…well “bitcoin” sort of. For certain purposes. Taxes. on corporations. By forcing them to do digital via BCH. I ain’t talk about why here cuz that a whole other chain logic. For people, it’s Monero & Autonomi until they’re comfortable with being seen as they learn who chose to be. TOR i2p, & Autonomi keep Gary Webb, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Manic Street Preachers, Rick & Marty and countless more, the ability to deserve their right to show what they have learned properly with an environment of strong fabric display and preservation.
deleted by creator
Huh? There’s no burying.
If they’re not following you, it doesn’t show up on their home TL. Why the heck would it?
If it’s public, it does show up on their local TL (if they’re on your server) and/or their federated TL (if their server knows about yours).
– Frost
After getting banned from the Mastodon.social, the primary public instance by Mastodon developers, for equating the genocide in Gaza to Israeli government acting like Nazis… Because a user on a pro-israeli & pro-genocide federated instance claimed it was anti-semitic, all I have to say is people on Mastodon… You’re using a platform developed & primarily ran by pro-genocide Nazis.
a platform developed & primarily ran by pro-genocide Nazis.
And you made this conclusion because you were banned by a moderator? That’s not a very deep analysis.
No I made that conclusion because the instance is ran by the same organization created by the Mastodon development team. Also it wasn’t a single moderator who made a decision. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the platform developed & primarily ran by pro-genocide Nazis. May it help you sleep at night.
