Luke Harris on his blog, writing about social media as a whole:

I’m on Mastodon, but I’m bored with what I call “the timeline era”. Scanning an unending stream of disconnected posts for topics of interest is no longer fun, I prefer deciding what to read based on titles, or topic-based discussion.

Before I start, I need to point out, early enough in my post, that I understand all the benefits of Mastodon. I don’t need you to yell at me that I “don’t get it” like you did when I criticised the onboarding process.

Mastodon promises to be a much better place than Twitter because of the way it is set up. But as it gets busier and busier, and popular users start to struggle like they did on Twitter. It becomes more and more apparent to me that it’s only a matter of time before it suffers very similar issues.

Sure, it’s not going to shove terrible content in your face for engagement, but the main feed is far too busy now to enjoy. Without some kind of filtering and algorithm, Mastodon is frankly impossible to follow. Not to mention the reply guys are there, with all their “what about” tendencies.

I was expecting more from social media in 2021, and I’m still waiting for something better. The problem is, as Luke covers in his post, snacking on the internet and trying to follow a never-ending stream of disconnected post is ultimately unfulfilling.