ive seen people complaining about discoverability and lack of algorithmic timeline on mastodon. to me this sounds like a feature you want but don’t want. algorithmic feed creates an infinite timeline which allows for infinite time wasting!

@pingiun Plus extremely toxic social dynamics; because outrage 'sells' in an algorithmic environment.

@joepie91 yea tbh i don’t like the global feed either but i guess it’s hidden away so i’ll just ignore it’s a thing

@pingiun You mean the federated timeline? Because at least that's not outrage-ranked (though probably still a firehose on most instances)

@joepie91 yea that’s what i mean. on my instance it’s quite empty bc there’s 3 users on here so i’m not densely federated but on other instances i’ve looked there before and it’s just entirely not what i want

@pingiun Right, I think I'm on exactly the right size instance for it to be useful - there's a bunch of users on here, but not *massive* amounts, and this instance is pretty loose on the trigger for instance blocks. So I get a new toot on the federated timeline probably... every few seconds? Which is manageable, and it's often in some way relevant or interesting.

@joepie91 yea this is where “it doesn’t matter which instance you choose but it matters” comes in and that’s a bit sad

@pingiun I prefer telling people "it does matter what instance you use, but not right away - just pick the first one you see, and move it later if you want, it's easy to move"