As it exists at the moment, Mastodon functions essentially as Twitter did in around 2008. In some ways, that’s nice. The userbase is calmer, and the DiscourseTM does not get spun up as easily.
But the thing is, functionality-wise, Twitter in 2008 existed in 2008. We are now in 2023, when someone can use the Twitter of 2023. From a functionality standpoint, Twitter in 2023 is quite good, with some of the alternative Twitter-style frontends (e.g., Misskey and Calckey) being at about parity.
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There are less computationally intensive server packages—Pleroma, Calckey and Misskey—but Mastodon is now, for better or for worse, the standard. It’s what people expect, and its feature set and API are the key driving forces behind the feature sets and APIs of the others.)
My takeaway from that is that, even compared to other Fediverse microblogging services, Mastodon is worse in both the front and back end.
Like a lot of people, I joined Mastodon in November 2022 then didn’t do much with it. Thanks to Lemmy, I am much more enthusiastic about the Fediverse and want to add a microblogging platform into the mix but I am wondering if I should try Calckey before I commit to one.