The new Mammoth app is a much simpler take on Mastodon

I for one value the minor barrier to entry. Mastodon quality degraded greatly with Twitter migrants. Just take a look at bluesky or threads - the content quality is not even close to that of Mastodon despite being projects in similar market position.

I know it sounds mean and there has to be a "better way" but a bit of friction goes a long way. If you're too dumb to figure out Mastodon you're too dumb for the internet - there I said it.

There can be nice people who are bad at tech, just like there's racist technologists

Just because a group of nice well meaning Lemmy users is willing to suffer the pain of a poorly built app doesn't mean they should /have/ to suffer through it

It's sometimes nice to make nice things. Don't be too much of an HOA, they're new, it's not the end of the world.

Just because I'm not afraid of biking with cars, doesn't mean I don't recognize that American biking infrastructure is hostile. We could do more to make biking safer and easier. They'll struggle but they'll get the hang of it.

So too, with making nice apps to free the lay people from their digital walled gardens.
Mastodon nowawdays is absurdly easy to sign up for, too. The official app (the way most newbies will find it) defaults to mastodon.social, and users never have to deal with anything involving Federation. From the user's perspective the "Mastodon" app is identical to the official Twitter or Reddit app etc.

It absolutely boggles my mind how there are still real live technology journalists that claim it's "too confusing". Like yes "instances" and Federation is def weird, but not knowing how the technical backend stuff works doesn't detract from the experience in the slightest.
Accessing the internet used to be the same way, filtering out the brainlets increases the quality of online interaction greatly.
- Yes, the old Internet was absolutely full of good-natured, kind, helpful people.
  
  It wasn't until my boomer grandchildren got hold of Facebook that I got tricked into rm -rf, and called dirty words for believing a stranger
  
  ... Luckily I use Windows so it didn't hurt me.
  
  Now I use Hurd, btw
I agree. It looks me time to know how mastodon works. But, it's how it maintain the quality. You can't have quality and quantity in a social media.
- I actually disagree with that. It’s theoretically possible to have quality and quantity at the same time. But to do so, it can’t be based on an engagement algorithm, because engagement typically correlates with low quality posts.
  
  This is why you’ll never see quality and quantity together from a profit-seeking platform - they are incentivized to shovel you low quality stuff that’s highly engaging.

Apple only so Fuck'em.

What kind of mentality is this? Don't we all want the Fediverse to grow and succeed? Don't you want more apps for the Fediverse to spur adoption? And what is so wrong with it being exclusive to iOS? What do you say about Android exclusive apps then? Fuck them too? Aight listen, I'm a GrapheneOS user. I have been on Android exclusively for the last decades and I'm so sick of this attitude. You Android elitists are so utterly anhedonic. You tire me out. Grow the f up up and let people enjoy what they want geez.
- The other great thing about the Fediverse is that people have options, and they can explore those options without affecting you
  
  If someone wants to use Mastodon on an Apple device, then great. If someone wants an algorithm when viewing content, then great.
  
  We aren't locked into one thing anymore
- Social media is like capitalism. If your way is the infinite grow, you end with entshitification for both. You need to have a limit where you balance quality and quantity.
  
  It's why the steep learning curve isn't as bad as people like to say. It's the limit to keep the quality high enough. If you have a lot of new player making it easy to join, you change the equilibrium and entshitification begins.
  
  But, fediverse is in some case protected. If the new player has its how instance, the others can defederate. It's what is already happening.
  
  I'm part of a minority and I use Mastodon on a dedicated instance. We defederate of some very specific instances to keep our safe space and keep entshitification away.
- Welcome to the Android good and Apple bad argument.
- You seem angry.
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The whole article exists in Apple-land. Like a tacky stereotype of Apple users, the author never acknowledges it, treating everything Apple as the "default."

I don't have time for articles that consider the 3.5 billion android users to be "outliers." C'mon, it's 2023.
They said they are open sourcing their app so hope ahead
- And Swift code talking to iOS APIs is magically working on Android? If the app wasn't developed as cross platform from the start, it won't be at a later stage. And if it works using cross platform technologies, not publishing it on Android is just stupid. After all, that's where 70% of all users are.
There’s a lot of that I think with mastodon apps.

I suspect it’s devs who want to get paid at some point, which on one hand is fair but also raises interesting concerns about how open/FOSS software dev needs to work with respect to money.

Beyond that, there was some speculation I saw that the iOS dev space is just more interested in designing social media apps. No idea how true that is.

Just went open source too.
https://github.com/jgw96/mammoth-app

The last activity on the page was many months ago.
On their website page 404

And where can I find the compiled installation files?
- getmammoth.app is the address

It’s a very attractive app. And there’s not any core functionality hidden behind a paywall. Definitely going to give it a run. Though I don’t really have any complaints about my current app Ice Cube.

In-app purchases. Get fukt.

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- It's AGPL. Fine with me but: Since when is AGPL code allowed on the Apple app store?
Why wouldn’t you like developers to make a living? Do you expect to get a high quality app for free? Grow up.
- You want to be marketed to on your phone that you paid for and continue to pay for, cool. I don’t give a fuck. Why you think others should want that is fucking bizarre. I’ll continue to use software that doesn’t invade my privacy and shill bullshit.
  
  Also, work on your fucking reading comprehension, because at no point did I insinuate I wouldn’t pay for software. Christ on a shitstick.
I use a Lemmy app with IAP (Sync)

It's great. I literally moved to Lemmy because of Sync.
- I found Jerboa on the Fdroid store. It's amazing looks just like Now for Reddit.

Ate the stories of the lead developer being not so cool, true? Nice promises up front that turn to shit on behalf of pleasing investors?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The official Mastodon app is fine, but there’s also Ivory, Mona, Fedilab, Ice Cubes, Elk, Mastoot, and many others.

This openness is part of the whole appeal of the ActivityPub-powered social networking ecosystem, and it has already led to some solid new ideas.

Now, with the launch of Mammoth 2 for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, the app is going even deeper into curation and personalization: it’s launching a series of “Smart Lists” filled with good posts, a set of suggested people and accounts to follow, and more.

Most lists are filled with websites and well-known posters, so they’re more like a starting point than a long-term solution.

The default process has improved over time, but it’s still a lot of work to pick a server, sign up, find people, and get your timeline tuned just the way you like.

In general, he says he sees the app as a way to explore the entire fediverse, whether it’s on Mastodon or Pixelfed or anywhere else.

The original article contains 615 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Will check out alternatives, but pretty happy with Ivory.

Are you sure this is a new application?

What about the simplest and most understandable application for beginners, this is the PWA app Pinafore.

For those who have used third-party applications for Reddit, such as Infinity and Boost, Pinafore will be quite comfortable.

So, algorithms. Pass.

One of the reasons I don't use the other medias.

Some people want some sort of suggestion system. I figure as long as it's an opt-in choice, why not? Gives people what they want and makes the ecosystem more enticing. And at least it's an algorithm that's transparent rather than one controlled by a large corporation.
- Definitely! The reason why many of us hate algorithms is that they are constantly pushed on us. Look at what Reddit was doing before they killed third party apps. One of the reasons I went to a third party app was to avoid the Reddit bs.
  
  People who dislike algorithms can simply avoid this app while people who prefer a personalized feed can use this app.
- I strongly believe the “algorithm of the future” is a locally-run, personalized content filter AI that you can train to wade through all the shit and find the diamonds. We have the technology right now, but nobody has put it all together yet.
- Are there any good clients that has a good algorithm feed in android?
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I honestly think that mastodon will die on the no algorithms hill.

Plain reverse-chron just doesn’t scale beyond the “hanging with friends and neighbours” experience that mastodon was designed for.

Which is a great experience/platform, but not the social media many are after, I suspect, for better or worse. And also, I suspect, an experience that’s not so hard to get elsewhere.

Thing is that lemmy/Reddit show how helpful simple sorting and aggregated recommendation systems can be without any opacity to users. I’m still baffled that mastodon and people there haven’t embraced that ethos more.
- I agree that the no algorithm hill gets annoying once you're following enough people.
  
  What I don't understand is why they don't setup something like Bluesky has where you can choose which algorithm you want, including those not made directly by the Bluesky team: https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23739174/bluesky-custom-feeds-algorithms-twitter-alternative
  
  One of those algorithms could just be a chronological feed that some people seem dead set on sticking with. Everyone can be happy.
- Same. I only use Mastodon for the explore page, which is basically an algorithm for the most popular posts
- I'm of the mindset that if I can't fully catch up on my feed within 10 minutes twice a day I'm either following too many people, or the people I'm following are posting too much. I just don't understand the desire for infinite content. After a certain point I'm not actually reading anything in depth I'm just distracting myself.
- Completely agreed, and it's one of the things keeping me off Mastodon honestly. I don't have a close group of friends on it, and for the purposes of following a bunch of strangers/outlets and whatnot I want a better sorting algorithm to actually show me interesting posts when I check in the morning.
Looks like they're topically curated feeds not algorithms. Doesn't seem like a bad strategy.
- Newsmast is trying something similar but they're backed by a nonprofit
This makes zero sense as the Fediverse uses algorithms. Hell, just go to Mastodon’s explore page. When people make this comment it also shows their believe in the Fediverse is phony. Big Social has incentives to keep people locked in and showing specific posts primarily for ad dollars. The Fediverse has no such incentive, thus them providing an option for users to see more custom content is a good thing. The beauty of the Fediverse is that it can provide optional experiences to all its members that better suits their individual needs.
no. It is an algorithm in itself to go from the latest post to the oldest. Algorithm just means a way to list the posts and a kind of suggestion system thst's optional is good for mastodon because that's one of the biggest thibgs preventing people from seitching or the first thing you have to get used to when you gwt into the fediverse