5 ms·

Local timelines are at best an attempt to help with content discovery and really too overrated. If the instance is too big, it feels like reading from the fireh

Local timelines are at best an attempt to help with content discovery and really too overrated. If the instance is too big, it feels like reading from the firehose and if the instance is too small it is better to just browse the directory and find the profiles that seem interesting to you. To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership. Unfortunately Mastodon's culture seems to about aggregating around instances with a very loose sense of "community" - e.g, "photographers", "open source developers", "lgbtq allies". To me this is - quite frankly - stupid. Not a day goes by on /r/mastodon where someone asks "is there an instance for X?" thinking that Mastodon instances works like subreddits.

bluesign 6y ago
yeah I replied in sibling thread, mostly topic based instances and federation is the problem. (when identity is bound to host) When I first saw Mastodon and topic based servers, I was thinking "photography" hosts will federate between each other, "developers" between each other etc. If you are a photography liking developer, you will have 2 accounts, one in "photographers in SF" instance, another one "developers in SF" maybe.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  I do agree that because mastodon became focused around specific niches per host, it made things much more complicated for new users. Do I join mastodon.social? Do I join bsd.network? Do I join writing.exchange? Etc. What I realized was I should have been asking: Do I care about the federated timeline? Do I care if my host blocks other hosts at random? Do I care if my host allows certain things (I.e. pornography with or without a NSFW tag, or at all). Do I know who the host is and can I trust them with my private messages and to not randomly ban me? I personally like seeing the federated timeline as I have discovered some accounts through it. But my host absolutely needs to do some filtering because some hosts will allow -anything-. I never really found much use for the local timeline. So for me, hosting was clearly the best option. I do try to get my friends to consider joining the fediverse, and I offer hosting to them to solve this issue.
andrewzah 6y ago
"To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership" Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests. E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for a local timeline. I guess the only issue is that these organizations aren't permanent. So people would have to migrate, which isn't a thing for twitter or facebook. I know mastodon has a feature for this specifically but I think people would still find it too confusing if people's handles kept on changing.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    > I should be able to browse any topic with one identity. You can. Who said otherwise? Where did you get that idea? An account at Mastodon (or Pleroma/Misskey/Pixelfed/anything) lets you follow anyone you want. There is no restriction about server talking with each other at the protocol level. If the server is federating and its admin is not trigger-happy with federation, you are good to go.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I think you're mistaken. I have permissions to access posts from any server (apart from those that the administrator has blocked, anyway), but that doesn't mean I can view another server's local feed in the Mastodon UI, which is the question at hand.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      Not every mastodon instance lets you browse their local feed if you're not registered to that instance. Now, it would be interesting if one could subscribe to multiple "local" feeds...

bluesign 6y ago

yeah I replied in sibling thread, mostly topic based instances and federation is the problem. (when identity is bound to host) When I first saw Mastodon and topic based servers, I was thinking "photography" hosts will federate between each other, "developers" between each other etc. If you are a photography liking developer, you will have 2 accounts, one in "photographers in SF" instance, another one "developers in SF" maybe.

andrewzah 6y ago
I do agree that because mastodon became focused around specific niches per host, it made things much more complicated for new users. Do I join mastodon.social? Do I join bsd.network? Do I join writing.exchange? Etc. What I realized was I should have been asking: Do I care about the federated timeline? Do I care if my host blocks other hosts at random? Do I care if my host allows certain things (I.e. pornography with or without a NSFW tag, or at all). Do I know who the host is and can I trust them with my private messages and to not randomly ban me? I personally like seeing the federated timeline as I have discovered some accounts through it. But my host absolutely needs to do some filtering because some hosts will allow -anything-. I never really found much use for the local timeline. So for me, hosting was clearly the best option. I do try to get my friends to consider joining the fediverse, and I offer hosting to them to solve this issue.

andrewzah 6y ago

"To me local timelines only make sense if the instance has a very clearly defined group with some kind of shared access, e.g, a company that has an instance for use by its employees, or a club or organization have some kind of membership" Wow yeah, this makes a lot of sense. It's too bad nodes became associated with niche hobbies or interests. E.g. a fraternity/sorority that hosts a node would make perfect sense for a local timeline. I guess the only issue is that these organizations aren't permanent. So people would have to migrate, which isn't a thing for twitter or facebook. I know mastodon has a feature for this specifically but I think people would still find it too confusing if people's handles kept on changing.

throwaway894345 6y ago
But even then, you can only pick one server per account, which seems asinine in this day and age. I should be able to browse any topic with one identity.
- rglullis 6y ago
  > I should be able to browse any topic with one identity. You can. Who said otherwise? Where did you get that idea? An account at Mastodon (or Pleroma/Misskey/Pixelfed/anything) lets you follow anyone you want. There is no restriction about server talking with each other at the protocol level. If the server is federating and its admin is not trigger-happy with federation, you are good to go.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I think you're mistaken. I have permissions to access posts from any server (apart from those that the administrator has blocked, anyway), but that doesn't mean I can view another server's local feed in the Mastodon UI, which is the question at hand.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    Not every mastodon instance lets you browse their local feed if you're not registered to that instance. Now, it would be interesting if one could subscribe to multiple "local" feeds...