> Call me when the Fediverse has a search function that actually fucking works.

Actually that's a feature. If search doesn't work, there is less incentive for bots polluting others people searches.

On the other hand, search works so bad than even connecting to people you know on other networks is painful.

And what is that experience of yours? Do you have experience from deployments with many independent atproto data servers and relays federating together?

Or do you have experience from bluesky, meaning you're only interacting with one central server and none of the complexities of federation come into play?

No, not necessarily. Mastodon is actually "social media", as opposed to twitter/X, bluewhatever, facebook, or any other commercial outlet, to be honest, all of these have become "feeds" of promoted content designed to maximize "engagement".

Mastodon is social: you follow people, you see their stuff. It's what social media used to be.

You’re posting that on HN. I consider HN to be social media but lacking the most pernicious features (ads, algorithmic feeds) and benefitting from both strong moderation and self-policing. But it gets to do that by being funded from extrinsic sources, which is itself a compromise.

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If they filter you at the relay or appview level that doesn't work.

I could name so many projects or people. The Rust language? KDE? Comics like War and Peas, or David Revoy's works? Hackers like Foone, Mara Bos? Technology Connections!

Countless cute kitten pics. Minimal hate or bigotry in my feed. Don't have to log in. Don't even have to sign up. Finite scroll on the homepage.

I am quite happy with people I follow on Mastodon. Sure, various politicians might not be there, but those are not people I want to hear from.

The rest of your comment seems to be pure speculation, so.

How can you know there's nobody worth following on Mastodon?

Threads is just another node that connects to ActivityPub, there is no "road" to enshittification.

Mastodon is independant, each instance manages itself, some are bad, some are good, you can even host your own, that's the power of decentralization.

> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

So? I don't use social media to receive curated, hourly dispatches from Barack Obama or Taylor Swift (or, more likely, their account managers). And it might feel important to get the latest rage bait and memes from Elon - it's almost like being friends with the world's first trillionaire - but is it really a good use of your time?

I think a healthier way to use social media is to have two-way interactions with some reasonably stable social circle; less about "people who matter" and more about "people who matter to you". Mastodon certainly has the critical mass to make this possible.

Terry Tao, Bert Hubert, Michal Zalewski (lcamtuf), Bunny Huang are just a few in my feed. But Mastodon is more about peer-to-peer communication than celebrities farming engagement indeed.

No signs of enshittification either so far, barely any new features being added TBH

I, for one, want to choose for myself whether to block other instances or not. You seem to not tolerate this opinion.

A "main instance" is contrary to the whole idea of a Fediverse anyway.

Tell me you don't understand the point of Mastodon without telling me you don't understand the point of Mastodon.

> Nobody important or worth following uses Mastodon.

This obviously is total nonsense.