I almost never log on to my Mastodon account. When I do, I always say I should do so more as the vast majority of the people I really enjoyed following on Twitter are on there. But the thing is, I just hate the Mastodon UI. It's so clunky. And the lack of things like centralized search are a big issue for me. I dislike the federated nature of it. In short, it's just not to me. Which sucks, as that's where a lot of the content I want to see currently lives. But such is life.

Meanwhile, even though my Twitter feed is a shell of what it once was, I wind up there several times a day. And it's not "because of the algorithm", I have been using the algorithm-free feed for years now.

> But the thing is, I just hate the Mastodon UI. It's so clunky.

I hope this situation improves once we finish hiring a product designer. Personally I don't think the web client is as bad as some people make it sound, but I know it can be improved. In the interim you can try the 3rd party web client Elk [1], some people seem to really like it.

[1]: https://elk.zone

Mastodon has the same UI problem as Matrix (Element specifically). The UI/UX isn't _bad_, it's just a teeni tiny bit more worse and confusing in everything than the competition.

If someone would just make a 1:1 clone of Discord and slap it on Matrix, it'd be perfect. The underlying technology is fine, the interfaces are the clunky ones.

Mastodon has a bit of the same, just following someone from another instance is like 6 steps. Basically you need to copy their URL, go to your own instance, search for them using the same URL and click follow if it's the only search result. Compared to Twitter's one click that's a good 500% increase in complexity.

> But the thing is, I just hate the Mastodon UI.

Which one?

The Mastodon project only comes with one UI. There are forks and alternatives, and themed instances of course, but those aren't really "the mastodon UI".

You're wrong. Even the Web client of Mastodon comes with two separate UIs, and that's not the only client officially provided by the Mastodon project.

Mastodon itself basically has two UIs, a Twitter like simple UI and a Tweetdeck like advanced UI.

And once you get into like mobile client apps, your options absolutely explode.

It's also an API, there are tons of 3rd party apps available.

If you’re after something a bit more like Twitter, try Elk which is an alternative web UI (it works with your existing account): https://elk.zone

Use an app?

Perhaps.

Anecdotally, I was 5 times as active on twitter as I am on Mastodon.

Now I am not on twitter at all.

So I'm more active on Mastodon than on twitter right now, but not super active.

If you think that's a victory for twitter, fair enough. It got so much critical mass that it's hard to replicate off of Twitter. But as weeks keep passing by without me going back to twitter, I think that's a win for Mastodon.

This is the same as me. I switched from Twitter to Mastodon, use the platform less overall but am happier as a result.

Mastodon isn't designed to incentivize the addiction loops that drive traffic on Twitter and other social media sites. Quality over quantity isn't a bad thing.