this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Fediverse

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As far as I can tell from my venture into Mastodon's feeds, the demographics of that part of Fediverse isn't that different from what Lemmy has: the same political takes, FOSS stuff, "big corpos bad", etc.

I wonder, is there anything that Mastodon excels at that Lemmy just doesn't provide? For example, I noticed that there are game developers and artists posting their stuff on Mastodon. Not many game developers (or any creatives, really) on Lemmy though.

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[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 1 hour ago

If you use Mbin, or I believe Piefed now too, instead of Lemmy, you can interact with Mastodon freely without having to get a separate account there. I'm subscribed to a lot of Mastodon accounts as a threadiverse user, and I only have this one account.

[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 63 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Mastodon is personality focused rather than topic focused like Lemmy/piefed/et al.

If there is a person or organization that you’re interested in following (or if you’re a person or organization that is or aspires to be followed) then mastodon is the service for you.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 44 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mastodon is personality focused

Sadly I have no personality! Lemmy it is then.

[–] EastofEdson@piefed.ca 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Triumph@fedia.io 8 points 2 days ago

I have impersonality.

[–] ARMADILLOMANIA@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

People-oriented networking feels like staring in the void when one is asocial enough. In topic-oriented networking one does not need to contribute that much. Maybe that's why Lemmy seems better than Mastodon for me.

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[–] Bismyth@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

I personally don't like microblogging platforms in general. It's cool that there's an alternative to twitter and the like, but I just have no pull towards platforms that emulate that kind of environment.
I think it's great that it's so popular and has introduced a lot of people to the fediverse and spread awareness of ethical alternatives to corporate slop, but is not for me.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It can interact with peertube, pixelfed, miskey, and many more things. Lemmy only really sees the threadiverse part of the fediverse.

But he interface of mastodon isn't threaded, so it's unusable to me. I was point to Sharkey and akkoma, which I might try instead, but I feel quite comfortable here, honestly.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It can interact with peertube

Don't PT channels appear as communities on Lemmy? I feel like I heard it years ago but never got to actually use it as I've never found anything interesting on PeerTube.

[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 2 points 1 day ago

It did but I believe the federation broke at some point and never got fixed.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

they are entirely different contexts of communication. mastodon is a 'microblog' platform, where one person tends to broadcast to a group of subscribed users

lemmy is just forums with threaded discussion.. many to many as it were.

personally, ive always generally hated the twittersphere (microblogging), and avoid it mostly. but it is nice being able to subscribe to the small number of microbloggers i do enjoy thanks to mbin's built-in integration.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 days ago

Nice domain name!

Mastodon is better for following individuals, Lemmy for communities.

[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago

Mastodon has a lot of people talking about craft. Meanwhile Lemmy's rare communities on the topics get a post every ten days.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 1 day ago
[–] WillieShen@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

I came from Mastodon. I think Mastodon does have some good features that haven't come to Lemmy such as account migration and bio sites verification, while Markdown and no word count limit in Lemmy excels Mastodon. Other difference are more due to the different nature of them, just like Twitter compared to Reddit, for example, more organizations, artists, developers, etc. post on Mastodon.

[–] SleeplessCityLights@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is always MBin, on an MBin client you can see and post on Lemmy and Mastodon.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago

I tried to use mbin but couldn't find a setting to hide voting counts so I left. I prefer my social networks number-less.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

its just format. mastodon is like xitter and piefed/mbin/lemmy is like reddit.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Mastodon and Lemmy do not interact much though. And Masto has more people who found their way to Fediverse in a different way from Lemmy users. Meaning that there might be niches that Masto is more suited for, like game development.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 5 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Yeah mastodon because its like xitter is just something I have never been interested in social media wise. Kinda stinks because I like the watch party thing but I don't want to make an account for one thing. Heck I don't even make matrix or peertube even though those would be nice. I really wish there was more account login interoporability.

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[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think it's basically what you said. There's some organizations on Mastodon, some German newspapers and tech magazines, game developers, a few artists and some more known people from hacker spaces. We don't really have that here.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you're interested in specific people or organisations I guess you're much more likely to find them on Mastodon.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So Mastodon is for following celebs and political parties then?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And governments. Many EU countries and the EU itself have their own instances.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

I'm gonna follow my 🏳️‍⚧️country🏳️‍⚧️ then

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mastodon is her better at things like updates in the way you mentioned, and it's easier to build a purpose focused # than it is to build a community on lemmy.

You've also got different character limits, so you end up with most posts and responses being easier to follow; just hit the # in question, and you'll end up with concise responses. Which isn't better than a longer character limit, as it often lacks depth and nuance. It's different and has benefits though.

It's also way easier to find relevant imagery on because of the hashtag system. There's no good way to look up images on lemmy/piefed at all, but Mastodon makes it easy, as long as the poster uses #s accurately. Since most do, if you're into something like birding, you can find specific birds by a # search. That's the best example, but it applies to damn near any subject matter.

I'd also argue that it's a better system for artists and writers overall, as long as they have their own places where they keep their works. You can't drop short stories on most Mastodon instances, and big image files of art tend to not be ideal. But being able to put your stuff in a single repository of some sort and just link it via a toot for anyone that's a fan is superb.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago (4 children)

So, microblogging is better for creatives of all sort and for those who want to interact with said creatives. What about fandoms? I feel like all sorts of fandoms are (were?) at home on Twitter and Tumblr. Has Mastodon caught up with fandoms yet or is it too small for this kind of stuff?

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[–] Kierunkowy74@piefed.zip 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Mastodon excels in updates. If a niche is alive on Mastodon, then you will get news from it before Lemmy. Especially in infosec, or (if you are from Europe, especially from Germany or the Netherlands) local news.
In a way, shitposting is also freer on microblogging, without Threadiverse's pigeonholing into different magazines/communities

The discussion may have worse UX. Only selected alternative frontends (like phanpy.social) have got nested threads like here and until recently, replies were delivered only to replier's follower instances, resulting with users not seeing all the discussion and inconsistent threads between instances.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago

The discussion may have worse UX.

Mastodon developers forgot that their social media may end up generating discussions. They were too focused on 'screaming into the void' aspect of Twitter!

[–] b72@scribe.disroot.org 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For me, one advantage of Mastodon is the ability to follow particular hashtags and for them to show up in my feed, even when I don’t follow the person who posted something using that hashtag. I follow a lot of creative types on there - music folk, writers, artists.

As a corollary, being able to mute particular hashtags is also very welcome!

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago

As a corollary, being able to mute particular hashtags is also very welcome!

Mastodon does have a very good muting ability. I like that one can choose what feeds are affected by each word filter. It would be really helpful on Lemmy too.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago

Mastodon is my main source for finding links to post to Lemmy.

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Both formats can serve a purpose, I haven't put enough/any effort into my mastodon, but the intention was for it to replace bluesky for me, where I tend to have more conversations in threads, than I do here on lemmy.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you ever consider choosing a non-Mastodon Fediverse software, I'd recommend Wafrn as it implements Bluesky's protocol alongside ActivityPub meaning that it can interact with Bsky without a need for a bridge. A nice way to keep your follows without fully succumbing to the shitty moderators of Bsky.

[–] eremophila@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

social media privacy "gotta keep em separated"

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Lots and lots of hashtags and @ symbols

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[–] gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

i would like to be able to follow lemmy communities and lemmy users from my mastodon account.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

You can do that. It may just flood your timeline.

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But you can do that! I can see my posts from .social account and they appear in my home timeline just fine after following.

[–] gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

for me it doesn't work. tested on both troet.cafe and wien.rocks mastodon instances. neither following my user account ( https://feddit.org/u/gandalf_der_13te ) or following a typical lemmy community ( https://feddit.org/c/dach ) works. both appear in the search results, but their feeds are empty.

edit: update: sometimes it does work but results are inconsistent. probably it was fixed in a recent update and some mastodon / lemmy instances just haven't updated to it yet. that would be good news ❤️

[–] catfeeder@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 14 hours ago

I can see plenty of your posts from my test .social account. You probably just need to follow your account to fetch the posts.

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