In my experience, I feel like Mastodon is a way healthier social media platform than most. No (intrusive) trends, no "likes of friends", no randomized timeline, but just other people posting pictures of their oscilloscopes, cats, plants and hobbies, or starting healthy discussions about things.
It's not a panacea by any means, but makes an almost mind-blowing difference from the "usual" addictive social platforms (FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).
It feels a bit like joining a café where everyone is human, and imperfect, rather than a shiny videolottery casino where the higher liked profiles keep winning.
You are describing an experience closed to the old forums of early 2000. I am still an active member of such a forum, we are less than 50 active people that interact for almost 20 years, we meet face to face quite rarely because we live now in several different countries (we were all in one initially) and overall is a nice atmosphere of spending a bit of time with old friends, just async and without the commute time to the same bar.
It's not a panacea by any means, but makes an almost mind-blowing difference from the "usual" addictive social platforms (FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).
It feels a bit like joining a café where everyone is human, and imperfect, rather than a shiny videolottery casino where the higher liked profiles keep winning.