As a new user, I’m enjoying Mastodon’s vibe so far but the one thing that is a letdown is the trending hashtags. I’ve been checking them regularly over the past couple of weeks and it seems like they’re pretty much always like this.

Even on days with big news stories, people on Mastodon are only talking about what day of the week it is like company employees on some internal message board?

Is there anything that can be done to liven them up a bit?

  • @[email protected]English
    166•1 year ago

    Because mastodon doesn’t have an algo that promotes division and controversial topics. These hashtags are what normal, everyday people talk about. Drama isn’t its strongest side.

    • @AsafumEnglish
      56•1 year ago

      Are you saying that Lemmy does have those algorithms? Because this shit is never boring lol so many instances I never wanted to see or know existed…

      Slightly related: how many freaking instances of “yiff” shit do we need!? I couldn’t believe I was STILL seeing it after I blocked like 7 separate instances lol

      • @[email protected]English
        48•1 year ago

        Lemmy ““promotes”” upvoted stuff.

        Mastodon “Trending” is just stuff that wasn’t talked about, suddenly being talked about. That’s why constantly popular things don’t appear on Trending, but things like “BigBoobFridayWhatever” (or equivalent) gets trending (people don’t use the hashtag for a week, and everyone use it for that day). I see how they thought it’s perfect for world-wide events, but it just end-up being a bunch of “weekly” stuff.

    • CarlsIII
      20•1 year ago

      I guess the reality is that I want at least SOME controversy. I don’t know why the only two choices have to be “fascism-enabling hellscape” or “nobody saying anything interesting ever.” There has to be at least some possible middle ground!

          • @[email protected]
            4•1 year ago

            By creating a pull request in Github. (Don’t yet angry, that was supposed to be a lighthearted joke)

            • Rabbithole
              1•1 year ago

              I can imagine some alpha-cunt Tate-esque grifter selling courses on how to “Just Shout at People” like it’s some sort of magic spell that mysteriously makes everything that you want happen.

              Selling it like it’s the hidden secret sauce to the universe or whatever, rather than just being a dick to everyone.

              Would the community even be any worse, I wonder? :)

      • @superflippy
        3•1 year ago

        I agree. I want to see people’s opinions on the news of the day. By the way, I recommend following @[email protected] if you want a little controversy. He was one of my favorite posters from Twitter & has gone all-in on Mastodon.

    • @Tag365English
      8•1 year ago

      Wait, so the recent topics that occur suddenly on Twitter aren’t the normal things people talk about? So the hype on Twitter events are fake?

      • @[email protected]English
        7•1 year ago

        They are. But they’re also influenced by who talks about it, how many comments, replies, likes it has. How many people click on it. Etc.

        On mastodon is just how many people used the hashtag in a short period of time.

    • @ZaktorEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      I think the #tuesday hashtag isn’t really what normal people talk about, but probably people gaming the system to get on a reliably trending hashtag.

    • 👁️👄👁️English
      3•1 year ago

      yeah sounds like boring shit. I get that already from talking to actual people, not virtue signalling boomers on mastodon

      the lack of algo reduces the quality of content to this garbage, but this is the same people who think more content is bad as well. I don’t want some breaking or interesting post to be hidden by some random person posting completely meaningless garbage