this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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I feel like these comments are from folks who haven't really used it. The traffic on your specific instance isn't really the point most of the time. And the fact that you can find another instance easily if the guy in charge of your instance is an asshole is a pretty huge feature. Who runs the other instance of Twitter you can move to?
You can migrate your account and followers/following lists until you find an instance where the admin isn't a "power tripping asshole" - and I'm not convinced that's a widespread problem in any case.
The Mastodon interface is kinda barebones though still not as bad as I think you are describing, but I migrated (gasp) my entire mastodon account to firefish.social, which federates with Mastodon, with a couple of clicks, and the interface and features there are really great. (And there are also multiple firefish instances to choose from in case the admin becomes an power tripping asshole)
But most importantly:
Why wouldn't you be following people from the broader fediverse? The federated feed on firefish (and on most instances I'd think) scrolls by so fast I have to pause it to read anything. There's plenty being posted. Certainly no less comparatively than I see on kbin/lemmy, and it gets better continuously.
I'm all for using what you like and avoiding what you don't, but this is like an infomercial-level criticism of Mastodon, like when they spend 45 secs showing you how hard it is to scramble eggs and cook them without their forty dollar gadget.
i've been on two instances since last fall: one mastodon, one pleroma.
on the mastodon one i found out by accident, that i was "shadowbanned" from it's own public timeline. inquiring why this happend, the mods didn't told me. when i asked then that i would like to know what i did "wrong" and if they could lift this, they said "no". i deleted my account after that.
the pleroma one was even worse because literally on day one i was zerged by some american internet rightwingers because i posted something they didn't agree with. i deleted my account after that.
what do you suggest, how many times should i move/delete my account until i found an instance that at least gives me the twitter treatment instead of just doing random policy?
I mean, I already recommended firefish.social, but you are under no obligation to try it. My point is that your experience is very much not typical I think.
In any case, if you plunk "left leaning mastodon instances" into your search engine of choice that would probably work, but you could also try a popular instance which would address several of your concerns. If firefish doesn't interest you with its various improvements to the UI, why not just go for the original and (I think) biggest - mastodon.social.
https://mastodon.social/auth/sign_up
I'm not sure that's actually possible for a mod to do on Mastodon. Did you make your posts "unlisted" by default by accident?
mod/admin/whover was behind the support mail address told me, that someone made a complaint about my account (they refused to tell me what the problem was) and that they unlisted/shadowbanned me from the servers public timeline.
The microblogging side of the Fediverse definitely has a cultural problem: people keep thinking that the instance that they join should be an indication of what "tribe" you belong to, and this can be worse that high-school politics. The only way that you can truly avoid issues with power-tripping admins is by running your own instance, but even that doesn't help much when there are some instances around (cough mastodon art cough) that seem to love the drama and play the "everything I don't like is literally hitler" game.
Anyway, if you are still looking for an alternative: I have a small, professionally managed Mastodon instance that has the simple goal of offering a reliable service at an affordable price.