I’m trying to understand the way Mastodon works. Back in the day I started with IRC and then the many php-based forums and then reddit which led to lemmy. I never used twitter or similar platforms.
My understanding (and this is where I need help) is that all of the above are topic-based, whereas Mastodon is person-based? What I mean is that on lemmy I subscribe to things based on topic and I don’t really care about usernames or user profiles, I only care about discussing a topic. It seems to me like Mastodon is the opposite? You follow persons and what they might say about any topic?
Is there something I’m missing here? Are hashtags close enough to sorting it by topic that it works just like a topic based platform? Is this difference inherent or just in my head because I don’t understand Mastodon?
You mostly understood it right.
I think of Mastodon/Twitter as essentially server-side RSS readers: you follow the sources you want to read, then are notified when they are posting something. If you don’t already have any followers, there is little point in posting anything there. The forum-like structure of Lemmy is a lot more suited for ordinary people to discuss topics they are interested in.
See, I disagree. This may be true on the large Masto sites, but if you join an interest-first site, then the Local timeline is actually an ansynchronous chatroom filled with people with similar interests.
Fedi microblogs work really well for finding and connecting with people you have comminalities with when using small-to-medium sized sites. Much better than Lemmy, really, where the post content itself is the primary vehicle of interest, rather than the poster. The Reddit model is actually kind of shit for discussion, since it goes the extra mile to depersonalize the posts.
Lemmy is way better for content ingestion, while the microblogs are way better for socializing.
Assuming you’re not on Mast.soc, anyway.