posted in Fediverse

Does Mastodon bring anything of value to a Lemmy user?

As far as I can tell from my venture into Mastodon’s feeds, the demographics of that part of Fediverse isn’t that different from what Lemmy has: the same political takes, FOSS stuff, “big corpos bad”, etc.

I wonder, is there anything that Mastodon excels at that Lemmy just doesn’t provide? For example, I noticed that there are game developers and artists posting their stuff on Mastodon. Not many game developers (or any creatives, really) on Lemmy though.

Replying to @⁨catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone⁩

Mastodon is her better at things like updates in the way you mentioned, and it’s easier to build a purpose focused # than it is to build a community on lemmy.

You’ve also got different character limits, so you end up with most posts and responses being easier to follow; just hit the # in question, and you’ll end up with concise responses. Which isn’t better than a longer character limit, as it often lacks depth and nuance. It’s different and has benefits though.

It’s also way easier to find relevant imagery on because of the hashtag system. There’s no good way to look up images on lemmy/piefed at all, but Mastodon makes it easy, as long as the poster uses #s accurately. Since most do, if you’re into something like birding, you can find specific birds by a # search. That’s the best example, but it applies to damn near any subject matter.

I’d also argue that it’s a better system for artists and writers overall, as long as they have their own places where they keep their works. You can’t drop short stories on most Mastodon instances, and big image files of art tend to not be ideal. But being able to put your stuff in a single repository of some sort and just link it via a toot for anyone that’s a fan is superb.