Sara Joy Jul 29, 2024

Just realised that on Mastodon, boosting *is* the algorithm.

There's no code trying to cleverly show me stuff it reckons I'd be into, based on what my contacts are into, instead my contacts are saying "I like this, I bet my contacts would like it too" and that is way smarter than any algorithm.

Thank you, boosters!

Show threadSara Joy Jul 29, 2024
Ooookay yep thanking and celebrating boosting gets one somewhat boosted 👋😅
Show threadSara Joy Jul 30, 2024

So because some people are struggling with too many boosts in their feeds - there are ways to make that easier.

In the vanilla Mastodon web client, there's a little filters button at the top right of the home feed. Open that and you get toggles to show or not show boosts or replies.

Another client I use a lot is called @phanpy - what's great about it is that it groups boosts into carousels that you can easily scroll down past, or swipe sideways to explore.

Show threadjfroehlichJul 30, 2024
@sarajw @phanpy I would love to have boosts grouped by post in a certain timeframe like one week. So if four people boost something, I would see it once and not five times
Show threadSara Joy 
@jfroehlich @phanpy yeah, I think that's probably very hard to implement by client, if the Mastodon API doesn't (yet..?) do it 🤔
Jul 30, 2024 at 8:54pmWeb
Show threadjfroehlichJul 30, 2024

@phanpy would that be possible or is that tricky? i see that Toot! Is grouping notifications like that, or is that something completely different?

@sarajw

Show threadPhanpyJul 31, 2024
@jfroehlich if you're referring to dedupe similar boosts, Phanpy is already doing it but only within short sessions (in-memory).