Alright, we appear to have uncovered something with the help of y'all.
Twitter had a featured apparently called "Quality Filter" - this was probably turned on at some point unbeknownst to me once I crossed X-number of followers but was opt-in otherwise.
This was undoubtedly the thing that hid nasty replies and prevented them from showing up in my notifs. And if this wasn't on for you (or you didn't have access) that may explain why my lived experience Over There has been easier than here.
And my complaints are really just about that - quality and volume of replies.
I have received some ugly stuff here, but nothing that is even actionable by moderation. I don't think it's crossed that line. So people saying "just do this!" largely don't understand the scope of the problem. At least, I think that's where we're at now.
What I'm yearning for is a filter to separate signal from noise. Because now everything is signal - which means it's all noise.
@TechConnectify I think that simple *prioritization* and sorting of replies and feeds would go a long way towards making it more manageable. Consolidating of favourites/etc would also be a good and necessary step, of course, but following that, being able to sort your feed by "most favourited/boosted" would at least let some of the less "shitposty" items float to the top and help focus your attention.
There are a couple issues on the github. Here's one:
@rbos There is a problem with popularity metrics being implemented as The Solution, though: the long-term effect is that once enough people start using it as such (after all, that is The Solution), it will give everyone else reason to start optimizing *their posts* for popularity to remain visible, and so you get all of the problems that the popularity contest on other platforms introduces.
It's kind of like a cobra effect; initially it will make the situation better for the early adopters, but then in the long term it will make things worse for *everyone*.
@rbos People have already been finding ways to mitigate this for a long time, that do *not* have this problem, that's the point.
@joepie91 Still, not convinced that there's such a straight line between "sorting a feed" and "everything going to shit". :)
Regardless, mastodon *badly* needs some kind of solution to the cognitive overload problem. I'm open to ideas, but I simply can't keep up with every post by the people that I want to follow, and replies are much too demanding.
Something is going to break, and either Mastodon is permanently a backwater or some solution is found.
@joepie91 Trading a known actual current problem for a hypothetical future problem, though. If you're concerned about that, I don't think the answer is "throw up hands and do nothing", I think it's "find a way to mitigate".
I'm not convinced that that'll actually happen, anyway.