I wrote this piece for my Mastodon account originally but then I thought “Fuck, I’ve spent quite some time on this. Let me put it on my web, too.” Here it is, then.
I celebrated my first Mastoversary a few days ago. It’s been a good first year on Mastodon for me; I like the Fediverse idea, I like people there, and I like the calm vibe the place offers.
Also, I ditched all of my other social media accounts. All but one.¹
As I say, Mastodon is a good platform to be; however, there are a couple of things I’ve been struggling with the whole time.
The thing that buggers me the most is boosting.
I know boosting is important because it’s the only way to spread the news around as there are no algorithms there to force-feed you what they “think” is good for you, and I’m quite a booster myself, too. But I’ve cut back a bit recently for a simple reason: I can’t hide boosted posts from my profile.
I mean, when someone views my profile I want them to see my toots first so they can get an idea of who I am. Conversely, when I visit someone else’s profile I prefer to see what they have to say. If you’re a generous booster but not so creative in the “content creation” department, just like me, you get a profile full of re-blogged posts where your original toots are hard to find. And no, pinned toots don’t do the trick.
If there’s any hack to work around this I don’tknow.
Then there is the ‘For you’ tab in Search that shows suggested profiles to follow.
This would be a very useful tool if it worked. However, unless you follow them all, it keeps showing the same profiles, presumably forever. At least that’s my experience. I did it once shortly after I had joined Mastodon, the suggested profiles refreshed …. and have since remained unchanged.
Maybe some more seasoned Mastodonians know if this is a bug or a feature.
Well, I can’t think of anything else that upsets me about Mastodon so I might just as well get back to the boosting issue.
I have a suggestion of the “what if” sort this time. What if your home timeline also showed toots favorited by the people you follow. Wouldn’t it be nice to boost the boosting function this way and give an extra power-up to the content distribution?
Ok, I may not be the first to come up with this idea. Maybe it has already been tested and proved technically unfeasible. But still, what if….
If you’ve read this far and still have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s time to go and try Mastodon. Of course, you can find me there as @xl8freelancer.
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¹ I still keep Instagram to exchange cute pics of sloths and pandas, and ice-hockey reels with my sons. 😁
Credit notes: The first picture by @sayomgwtf@mstdn.party | saymistage.com