Vicki KyriakakisJan 5, 2023

A reminder that on Mastodon you are the algorithm. If you’re seeing content you don’t want, block or filter it out. Boost things you want more of. You control what you see. It’s better than trying to control others. Focus on curating the kind of feed you’re interested in.

If you don’t want to see politics, unfollow people who post or boost a lot about politics.

The #birdsite is very passive in terms of what it demands from you. Mastodon isn’t. It’s a mind shift but it’s a good one to make.

Show threadCameron PalmerJan 5, 2023
@VickiKyriakakis I’m of the opinion the algorithmic timeline on Twitter was consistently better. Even with many of the same follows the timeline moves glacially and with less relevance
Show threadnickaposJan 5, 2023
@palmerc @VickiKyriakakis the algorithmic timeline is one of the basic tools of manipulation in twitter. You do not see what is interesting to you, you see what Twitter believes will drive you to engage more. In mastodon you need to follow a lot of,people in order to have a lively personal timeline. One other way is to check your local and federated timeline regularly. Quite often you will find interesting people to follow there.
Show threadCameron Palmer

@nickapos @VickiKyriakakis nope. Mastodon, as much as I want to like it, is just less relevant. The timeline is basically dead.

Your anti-algorithmic stance, I get. You watched The Social Dilemma. This does not mean you cannot leverage technology, when not profit driven, to just provide a better news feed.

Jan 5, 2023 at 8:23amWeb
Show threadCameron PalmerJan 5, 2023
@nickapos @VickiKyriakakis why would it be less relevant? Time isn't really a great way to group information, generally, especially internationally. When an author writes a long thread (which I like) here it ends up reversed and every single message is presented. That might be fine in certain circumstances, but it also leads to spamming the timeline. The most interesting bits should be presented and if I so desire I will drill down, scroll up and read.
Show threadCameron PalmerJan 5, 2023
@nickapos @VickiKyriakakis following people that aren't your primary interest should be possible without being bombarded by their cat obsession or whatever. Again, algorithmically your engagement is consistently low to their cat related posts, algorithm stops pushing cats. That is the power of technology and it is good.
Show threadnickaposJan 5, 2023
@palmerc @VickiKyriakakis I agree with you that an algorithm could exist, and I am pretty sure one will be created, because people want it. The problem is that you have no visibility on what the algorithm is doing and when it changes. I have seen several changed both in Twitter or in Facebook, and gradually the posts became irrelevant.
In this case the choice belongs to the developer and not yourself. We will see when this feature is introduced if the developers vision about what you should be viewing is aligned to yours.