http://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

> it's become increasing clear that Mastodon isn't, and won't ever be, a good platform for "asynchronous ephemeral notifications of any kind". I'd also argue (more controversially) that it's simply not good infrastructure for social networking of any kind.

Okay, so you were a BotMaster and the bots' home instance required that they not appear on the public timeline. You were somehow unable to find them on MastoSoc, so to you that means no one else could find them. Even though there have been bots on the Fediverse that were cool to interact with (ask a Fediverse old-timer about @x11r5), the overwhelming majority are annoying as heck. So I agree with your instance admin that they shouldn't appear in public timelines ... but only in the timelines of those who subscribe to--follow--the bot account. But if you wanted to see the bots' posts, you could have followed from your own account.

> [Mastodon] will never offer the fun of early Twitter, let alone the vibrancy of Twitter during its growth phase.

Mastodon is a subset of the Fediverse, not the whole thing. As recently as a year or two ago, there were segments that were nearly as fun as early Twitter. But most of them didn't have many Mastodon users. But as a frustrated BotMaster, you're not really interested in fun. You're interested in getting people to see your bots' posts. Let's talk about that.

How do you inform people about something that you think may interest some of them without offending everyone else? That sounds like the problem of every sales & marketing team in the world. I'll bet you can find some advice by entering your question into a search engine. This ( https://www.strikingly.com/blog/posts/10-clever-social-media-engagement-tactics-greater-reach ) isn't specific to your situation, but I expect that most of it applies. If you want traffic to your bots, most of the Fediverse doesn't have Twitter-style follow suggestions, so you have to do the work to attract attention to your bots and their posts.

Okay, so what about Twitter's former "vibrancy" ? Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. Twitter was fun in 2006, still somewhat enjoyable by 2009, and an absolute dungpit by 2012, which is when I basically stopped posting there. I'm not sure which growth years you mean. I remember using Flock browser's social posting tool along with TTYtter. There were lots of others, but most were focused on the needs of those we now call "influencers", so I didn't want them.

> Mastodon is an instantiation of an open standard called ActivityPub, which was built mainly in reaction to Facebook's closed ecosystem.

No, not really. Most AP Fediverse software, like most OStatus Fediverse software before it, was built around the capabilities of Twitter at the time. The ActivityPub standard is more capable than that, but most implementations are rather conservative because they want to remain compatible with the most-used implementation, Mastodon.

> I'm not saying federation "won't" work or "can't" work. Merely that in 2025, nine years after deployment, federation does not work for the Mastodon use case.

> I could opine at length about possible federated architectures and what I think the ActivityPub people clearly got wrong in hindsight.1 But the proof is in the pudding: Mastodon simply doesn't show users the posts they ask to see, as I quickly learned from my collection of bots.

The posts someone asks to see are the posts available by following the other poster or adding them to a list. If you didn't follow (and encourage others to follow) your own bots, you're blaming others for your own failings. If you follow the bots, your instance would express its interest on your behalf.

But what is the Mastodon use case, in your opinion? I'd be interested in hearing about it.