Why are Mastodon's trending hashtags so ... dull?

Because mastodon doesn't have an algo that promotes division and controversial topics. These hashtags are what normal, everyday people talk about. Drama isn't its strongest side.

tbh I really like mastodon but the userbase is incredibly boring

Another #wednesday another day of work, can‘t wait for #friday to come around!

-Mastodon user probably

If you’re looking for news, follow some of the accounts here, and there’s a spreadsheet of journalists on mastodon here.

Don’t rely on trending hashtags, it’s not a useful feature on mastodon.

Because there's no algorithm so most content avoids clickbait and is spread organically.

Also, Mastodon (and the Fediverse) tends to skew older, smarter, and more technically inclined.

Edit: https://hashtags.fyi/ has a lot more variety, though.

Is #ThickTrunkTuesday not about men with large cocks? That sounds pretty exciting to me.

I hear you. I just described Mastodon to my partner the other day as better than Twitter for my serious side but there is not a lot of light hearted fun to be had here :D and the breaking news aspect of twitter is also nowhere to be found, sadly. It’s still very niche and stuff like that doesn’t help

This is so bizarre. Who is going around putting #tuesday or #wednesday on their posts? They want to capture the audience that wants to read more about what day it is?

I was going to mention that if it's still growing the user base there may be some less interesting tags, but damn. Yeah, those are just really dull in a random way lol.

This is an issue I’ve had with many social media sites, it can be really difficult to find content that is interesting to you. Sure the bigger sites will have some sort of recommendation algorithm but that breaks down at two places. The first, if you don’t follow or engage with enough content it doesn’t know what to recommend you (but how do you find content to follow and engage with if you are are new). The second, you start to notice a pattern with the recommendations especially on something like YouTube. I get recommended the same like 20-40 videos even when I mark “not interested.”

Because it's just an incredibly small userbase made up mostly of tech/privacy enthusiasts as of right now.

The hashtags are near unreadable and almost never interesting. Please capitalize each word.

You must be the change you wish to see!

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mine are even worse, they should just gut the feature tbh

this is gen x level of entertainment, the same ones that preach no algorithms are somehow better

Agree, and I think hashtags (or similar) are very important unless you are literally just interested in the current toots only, or you check Mastodon every minute.

You don't think the #tuesday chatter is exciting? For real though, I get the same vibe. It usually makes me close the app shortly after I open it. Maybe I'm not giving it enough of a chance.

The hashtags are also kinda useless in another way. For example, if you follow the hashtag “#music,” (or any music-related hashtag, really) your feed will be filled with bots that just post YouTube links. You can go through and block these accounts as you see them, but there’s so few people using the hashtag in a non-spammy way that you might as well just not follow the hashtag in the first place.

Can't believe I haven't seen this said here but check against other instances. Some instances have stuff in the trending tab set to manual approval. I've noticed this in particular with my trending tab posts section on tech.lgbt

Mastodon feels empty because most people probably aren't using it as intended (following people you want in your timeline, following/using hashtags, etc). Also, it is empty compared to the popular platforms - they only have like 2M users which is a lot but not compared to Twitter or Threads.

If you have any specific hobbies / fandoms / communities you're interested in, you could see if there are instances specific to those interests you could migrate your account to. The local feed and local hashtags are sometimes way more interesting if you're on an instance you jive with.

Kinda curious to what kind of content you expect to see more in Mastodon. The little I've looked at some instances, I've thought "so this is what a saner twitter looks like", which I agree, looks boring.

Then again, I've always found the idea of twitter boring. Too much noise

Oh man, you weren't kidding.

No egos, rage bait or dumbasses.

You don’t want to see some thick trunks on Tuesdays?

is there a specific type of content you want? you can try following 'groups' instead of hashtags

the benefit of groups over hashtags is that you see posts from profiles that have not yet federated with your specific server since the group itself boots anything that is posted to it, so you can sometimes see things that hashtags miss

here is a website explaining it a bit more:
https://a.gup.pe/

to follow a group simply put whatever you want to follow before @a.gup.pe like so:
gardening@a.gup.pe

Pretty much my experience.

For a long while, before the twitter implosion, hardly anyone used them at all. My thought is it just never caught on for the most part. With the ability to follow tags now and more twitter migratees it seems to be more common to see them but still doesn't seem as much of a standard practice as with other sites.

Probably lack of marketing. It just is what it is. If you want to see what the latest #dance is or #icebucketchallenge, that's probably on TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter...it's easier for influencers to monetize their content.

ive noticed hashtags are not very popular likely due to them being overdone.

like lemmy, your mastadon exp is highly dependent upon your instance.

Speaking of dullness why isn't there a like, comment or retweet counter? Just started trying to check out Mastodon.

I actually use an ad blocker to block that section on the instance I use. "Trending" anything is of zero interest to me on any platform. It's anti-interesting when it's on a platform whose selling point is hand-curation.

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I don't know, but to me this isn't really dull. I wonder if it is matched with actual current events? Like, for example, if an earthquake, #earthquake and similar hashtags will show on trending section

oh my god I can't fucking believe the gaslighters on this thread trying to counterargument an obvious truth

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@hashtaggames@oldfriends.live is an account that hosts #HashtagGames everyday. It's quite fun activity.

There totally is -- you could toot a bunch about the stuff you want to see on the platform!

Good god. The number of people whining on this thread that Mastodon is solo boringggg.

Its not.

You are.

Within 2 weeks there,I had my feed filled with news intelligent hot takes and links to cool blog thought pieces. Without the snark and baitshit that was most of twitter.

Get a grip. Learn what a hashtag is.

jesus

Poo poo pee pee