My experience of avoiding #Mastodon for a whole week 💪

I figured out that timelines are really bad. They trap you in this weird slot-machine-like game where you pull the lever over and over again.

Timelines are polluted with interesting topics and unimportant posts. A perfect mix for gambling.

You barely hit something good, but if, you get a small dopamine boost, which holds for a few seconds and as soon as it's gone, you keep pulling the lever over and over again, until you wasted a lot of time or fall asleep being exhausted of scrolling.

There is nothing social in timelines. It's only an invention of big tech corps to keep you on their platforms to consume more ads and get more data to sell.

Even if timelines are in order on the fediverse and not manipulated by algorithms, like those from #facebook #twitter or #instagram, it still has it's flaws.

A good solution would be to only show the content of a person I follow, who uses a specific hashtag I follow, too. Both should match, not only one of it. The timeline would be very short and not as long as it normally is, which is a problem, too, because if someone posts something at a wrong time, the post goes into the void without anyone seeing it.

Why are #timelines a thing in the #fediverse?

Wasn't the fediverse something without ads and for the people and because it tried to be social?

Why do we have those #addictive and #notsocial mechanisms here?

If someone knows a better system or tool, which is content based and more social, please let me know.

btw. my #productivity went up the last week a lot, because the very first thing I did in the morning was something useful, like working in the garden, working on the next youtube video, reading a book or learning. With social media I would've wasted the time scrolling and that's only what happened in the morning! Imagine the rest of the day being as productive as those mornings...

#socialmedia #addiction #distraction #timekiller #trapsoftheinternet #doomscrolling #wastingtime

@utopify_org > Wasn't the fediverse something without ads and for the people because it tried to be social?

Yes it is and still is - at least on other Mastodon instances.

> Why do we have those addictive and not social mechanisms here?

On your instance probably yes. On others - at least on this one that I'm on - that's not exists here even!

Idk if you meant something else.

@expert @expert It would really help if you wouldn't cut off my sentences or at least try to understand a whole paragraph.

Okay, but maybe it was bad explained. I explain it again:

The timeline mechanism is an invention of big corps, who want you to use their platform more to consume more ads (so they can do money) and to collect more data from you (to make even more money).

This mechanism was copied into the fediverse, which is --->ADS-FREE<---- and the question was: Why is something from a big corp tech copied, which was created to consume -->MORE ADS<-- into the fediverse, which is -->ADS-FREE<--? Why do we have this here?

The second part is, there you cut off my message, because this is far away how Mastodon works and I don't believe not a single instance works like this, not even yours.

My improvement recommendation is: Follow a person AND a hashtag at the same time. The and in capital letters is important, because only if the person I follow would post something with a tag I follow, I would see it. (That's why I wrote: "both should match"). Everything else shouldn't show up in my time line, because it is garbage, which only fills the slot-machine.

To be specific: If another person uses the hashtag I follow, which is connected to a person I follow, it shouldn't show up.

Sounds complicated, but it's pretty easy to implement and it would make the platform a little bit more social and not a slot machine.

Maybe this presentation might help a little bit, because it's almost the same what I wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnciCz83t70&t=1619s

@utopify_org As someone other said here, your post really don't make so much sense.

> It would really help if you wouldn't cut off my sentences or at least try to understand a whole paragraph.

I did understand a whole paragraph, no worries? What am I doing is called *quotes*.

> Okay, but maybe it was bad explained. I explain it again

Yes your previous post didn't made so much sense, ok let see what you going to say this time....

> The timeline mechanism is an invention of big corps, who want you to use their platform more to consume more ads (so they can do money) and to collect more data from you (to make even more money).

Yes yes yes, you're right. But how that related to #Fediverse ?

> This mechanism was copied into the fediverse, which is --->ADS-FREE<---- and the question was: Why is something from a big corp tech copied, which was created to consume -->MORE ADS<-- into the fediverse, which is -->ADS-FREE<--? Why do we have this here?

First of all - the fuck are you saying that Fediverse has the same method of showing posts in timeline? Like in Twitter, it generates randomly what content you need to see based on previous you interacted with??? What the fuck?!

No, no, no. Fediverse *doesn't* works like that. Got it? Your idea that Fediverse "copied"/ "stole" big "corps" idea is really really wrong!

You follow a person/hashtag and you see posts from a person/posts tagged with that hashtag. That's it!

And it's up to you to who do you want to follow and who not to.

> The second part is, there you cut off my message, because this is far away how Mastodon works and I don't believe not a single instance works like this, not even yours.

OK, where did I "cut off" your message?

Here is my quotation of me quoting yours:

> > Why do we have those addictive and not social mechanisms here?

> On your instance probably yes. On others - at least on this one that I'm on - that's not exists here even!

OK, what did you said next after asking a question about why don't we have "social mechanisms" here?

> If someone knows a better system or tool, which is content based and more social, please let me know.

That's it! Then you told your audience the results of your experiment but that's not related to our conservation.

Ah and yeah, if you really refuse to believe that other instances are really EASY and SIMPLE works like that (by allowing you to have your own timeline where you can decide who do you need to follow [or hashtag that you want to follow] and to who don't and it's all UP, TO, YOU!) then what stops you from just..to try them? You didn't provided a single evidence that would prove THIS, PARTICULAR, SPECIFICALLY your that specific part of your point!

Give me it, the evidence.

> My improvement recommendation is: Follow a person AND a hashtag at the same time. The and in capital letters is important, because only if the person I follow would post something with a tag I follow, I would see it. (That's why I wrote: "both should match"). Everything else shouldn't show up in my time line, because it is garbage, which only fills the slot-machine.

> To be specific: If another person uses the hashtag I follow, which is connected to a person I follow, it shouldn't show up.

> Sounds complicated, but it's pretty easy to implement and it would make the platform a little bit more social and not a slot machine.

Second of all, GitHub exists. You can go to your instance's repository and suggest your feature request. Or if you want it to affect the whole Fediverse then you go to each Fediverse's projects's repositories and start suggesting your feature request over there.

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Ah and about presentation. Sorry dude, I don't have time to watch boring videos. I know, that you linked it to help me to understand what you wrote, but seriously from what I see already the title and the video is about that Fediverse is the feature of social media and that's it. IDK how that's related to your not-making-much-sense based post.