Why do Mastodon posts don't get many likes?
Why do Mastodon posts don't get many likes?
When I look at Mastodon posts, I see a decent amount of replies and boosts for popular posts, but not very many stars (see example image). I assumed a star is the same as a like, but I feel not a lot of people star a post, whereas I did see a lot of hearts/likes on Twitter posts. Are they not equivalent?
In addition to what the others said, there was a „campaign“ a while ago that you should boost and not favorite on Mastodon.
Since there’s no algorithm that promotes liked posts in the timeline, liking something doesn’t do a whole lot.
1I never understood this logic.
I've been on Mastodon since 2016 and never really got into Twitter. I just don't understand why the "algorithm" matters. Who cares if people who don't follow you see your post? I want my followers to see my posts, and then favorites allow me to know that my followers liked what I posted. It's a nice dopamine boost and helps me feel closer to my community.
A lot of posts I make unboostable as well (followers only). "Promotion" doesn't really factor much into my use of Mastodon so much as being "social".
2
Favorites (likes, stars, whatever) don't Federate, so the only favorites that your instance shows are the ones it knows about, being the favorites that are local.
When I view that same post from my instance I also see 0 favorites. But when I view it on mastodon.social there are 366.
1Is there a bug report to fix this?
2O, I see. That makes sense. A bit of a bummer, because having a total number of likes would be more informative (imho) than only seeing the number of your own server.
1
As said above, likes are virtually useless. They're more like "noticeable bookmarks". Mastodon etiquette is to boost rather than like, if you enjoy a toot, and that's also how it was when the Twitter timeline was chronological and didn't include likes, a very long time ago.
-1On Masotdon, likes don't do anything to extend the reach of a post or make it popular in an algorithm like Twitter. It's literally just a regular like/favorite button, so use it if you want to like/favorite a post.
Edit: also yes, federation as others have said.
-1