I recently moved from mastodon to firefish because of the “better” features, but I’ve been pretty disappointed so far. I don’t know how much of this is just the instance I’m on, but its actually missing some of the features I like the most about mastodon.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t seem to mute/block instances, just users. I also can’t keep personal notes on a user’s profile (I loved this feature on my mastodon instance, I think every platform should have it). It’s nice being able to mute users for specific lengths of time, but less nice that I can’t choose to mute them on my timeline without muting them in my notifications. I also seem to have less control over my filters - on mastodon I could make a filter, provide a list of key words and hastags for it, and then have separate settings on which parts they applied to - whether it should also filter out replies to posts, or hide people’s profiles that mention them. iirc the only option I have on firefish is to make the filtered posts disappear completely or hide them behind a warning. These are the ones that affect me the most but I’ve also seen people mention that they can’t follow hashtags. I never did this but it seems like the people that did really appreciated it, so a bit of a bummer there too.
I don’t really want to migrate again, but if I did I would move back to mastodon rather than another firefish instance. It doesn’t “have better features”, they’re just a different set of features. If those are valuable to you, then great! Unfortunately I don’t care anywhere near as much about the features firefish added compared to the ones I lost.
I also use Calmer! I have both Calmer and the more intense Calmer Nights, and they are both absolutely fantastic. I can still hear what I need to hear, they just… take the edge off. I love how discreet they are too.