After spending a couple of months using Mastodon again I have a few thoughts that I wanted to share. So far, the experience is much closer to Twitter than I expected it to be, although it does take a little bit of work to build up a decent list of accounts to follow in order to really feel like you’re interacting in a community of sorts. Now my feed is musher more active and I find I’m getting a lot more value from it.
I feel like mimicking of Twitter is good and all, because it provides a nice easy transition, but it doesn’t mean you can’t branch out and try new features, even if features ideas are borrowed from other platforms. For example reactions (as in emojis), or edit buttons!.. or perhaps some nifty WordPress integrations. Maybe there are things like this flowing around that I’m not aware of. If so, please ping me on Mastodon! 😁
Remove @mentions when replying to a post
We don’t need to see the @mentions at the start of every reply. It’s messy and there are ways to exclude such links from view and clean up the thread. At the very least hide it by default, just like you would metadata.
It’s way too difficult to find official accounts.
A good example is the BBC… wtf?! Which is legit? Are any of them legit? Do I really need to check each and every one individually to see if it is linked to the official BBC site using rel=”me”? This really needs an elegant solution or people will simply give up on the platform due to the friction of building and curating a half decent list if accounts to follow.
A slight background colour change, or a checkmark would go a long way. And maybe even suggesting other Mastodon accounts that are verified on the same domain too, for example BBC Sport, BBC World News, BBC Breaking News, etc. Maybe this would work, ir maybe not. Just a thought.
Previously used / favourite hashtags
Similar to recent how previously / regularly used emoji are presented in the keyboard app, having a box of previously used and favourited hashtags would be a godsend. I find myself using specific tags very often and any feature where I can quickly tap the tags I need would be super productive and intuitive.
Feature images for links (Twitter cards)
Maybe this already exists, but I’m having real trouble getting feature images to display when sharing URLs.
Lists
In my opinion, Twitter’s list feature is one of its best and least known features, and Mastodon has implemented it almost identically, which is awesome. Lists allow you to create distinct groups of accounts that you can treat as curated feeds within the app. This works especially well on Twitter as you can arrange lists as tabs within the desktop and mobile apps, allowing you to swipe between feeds horizontally and scrolling through the content vertically.
I would really like to see the Mastodon apps support this in the same way as Twitter, instead of simply switching out the main feed will the list content when clicking a list from the right hand menu. Unless I’m missing something, there just doesn’t seem to be a way of viewing lists in the mobile app. If they could mimic the search page’s tab structure and apply it to tabs on the main feed pave then all would be right with the world. 🙂
I’m not saying Mastodon needs to go down the blue checkmark route or anything, but there needs to be a simpler way to find the official accounts of users. I mean, we already have rel=”me” verification for confirming you are the owner of a website, which in turn can act as verification that you are who you say you are, so why not highlight these verified accounts with some kind of badge, even if the badge only appears in search results. That way it would be easier to differentiate the real individuals or organisations from the fake/parody accounts.
Spaces-like audio chatrooms
I LOVE Twitter Spaces. It’s one of the best features invented for social media in a decade. I wish this were something that Mastodon could find a way to support. I’m sure it’s quite complex to build a feature like that, but it would be an amazing addition to the platform. Sort of like Discord channels. Yes, yes, it’s just not gonna happen, I get it, but a guy can dream right?!
No adverts = heaven
Need I say more?
I’m sure there’s a bunch of other things but so far these stick out the most. I’ll add more when I think of them.
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