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David Njoku

On Mastodon, as everyone likes to remind everyone, you are your own algorithm.

I try to balance out the people I follow:

Whenever I feel that I'm following too many earnest, political types, I try to seek out some funny shitposters to follow. And then I toss in a handful of techie types, and a couple of accounts that post pretty photos. (I wish there were more accounts that post about what's good on TV.)

Do you do the same, or do you just follow whoever catches your attention?

@davidnjoku I do a mix of both I guess.

I did stumble upon some TV recommendation stuff, but it's mostly for German language public TV - that won't help you.

@gunchleoc My German's not as good as it could be. 😃

TV talk is the one thing I miss from Twitter. I like how you'd get a sense of the cultural zeitgeist (German word - yay!)

@davidnjoku I do pretty much the same!

Sometimes I unfollow someone but put them in a list instead (if I need less of the politics or shitposting or tech). And sometimes temp mutes are nice.

But yeah, when I feel like I'm lacking something I either need to trim some things down or add some more. I also like asking around for recommendations now and then!

@len I didn't realise you could add someone to a list if you weren't following them. Good to know. Thanks.

@davidnjoku I think Mastodon also has the option of following someone, putting them on a list, and filtering that list out of your home feed? Have seen several people talk about doing that over the past year or so.

I am limited to what Akkoma can offer, though, and it's a little limited in the list department.

@len Hadn't heard of Akkoma before. Any good?

@davidnjoku I like it! On an admin level it has a lot more spam prevention options and is lighter/cheaper to run, on a user level the default client has a lot more customisation options. It's quicker to load than Mastodon or Misskey-likes. And it has emoji reacts, which I really like. Also easy as admin to set a post size limit to whatever you like (glitch-soc fork of Mastodon also has this, as well as the emoji reacts).

There are fewer list options, and the filter options are less granular than Mastodon's. There's also a less active team working on it since it doesn't have grants or anything like Mastodon does, but since it started off with a focus on large scale admin actions to handle large scale spam or attacks (grew out of Pleroma, which you might've heard of, but which has a bit of a bad reputation for being used by the really bad parts of fedi) I haven't really noticed anyone waiting for new features in the same way I have with Mastodon users. Its focus on "I and my friends use this and we all want to use it differently" has also resulted in all the customisation options being /options/, so updates mean things aren't taken away, they only really get added.

Counter-point, since there's less people using it there's also less diverse feedback. And there are very few mobile clients that work with it (though thankfully since the website is light enough it's also fine to just use the browser).

Also take all of this as just my own views, as someone who's only really been using Akkoma, and who's only been around here for a bit over a year (but has a lot of sysadmin friends so picks up stuff here and there).

@davidnjoku I tend to use more of a pruning approach. I follow easily, and just observe the effect on my timeline.

I will then happily and quickly unfollow again, sometimes even at random. If it was a mistake, there will surely be a chance to follow again in the future.

@pbloem I would feel mean doing that 😃 I know that people don't know when you unfollow them, but a part of me still worries that they'd find out and be upset.

@davidnjoku It is a bit mean for mutuals, and I think I have a higher bar in that case. But otherwise, I don't feel much of an obligation to keep listening.

@pbloem This describes how I use Mastodon too. I follow pretty liberally and then prune when need be.

@davidnjoku I follow anyone who snags my attention and meets a ratio of "interest level" to "posting volume".

So if you post some esoteric stuff that's not my main interest, but it's neat and something you're clearly passionate about, then I'll follow so long as the volume isn't high.

And if someone goes on a binge of posting about something I dont have time for, or reposting something I've already seen, I can always mute them for a few hours.

@nazgul If you're muting someone for a few hours, you need to remember to unmute them, right?

It'd be a great feature if, when muting an account or hashtag, you get the option of how long you want to mute them. Sometimes, if I don't want to know who won the latest F1 race, I'd like to mute other fans for maybe 8 hours.

@davidnjoku I don't know if this is a mastodon feature or a @MonaApp feature, but I can set a time limit.

@EllenJS @nazgul @MonaApp The Mastodon app doesn't do that.

(Do NOT mute me! Do NOT mute me!! Do NOT mute me!!! 😃 )

@nazgul @davidnjoku Being able to choose to mute folks for hours, days or forever is one of my favorite features!

@davidnjoku I like the saying "specialisation is for ants". People / accounts who post all kinds of things depending on what's interesting to them feels like the right thing. Finding interesting people rather than "content".

@cohentheblue Specialisation is for ants. I'm going to remember that. 😃

@davidnjoku I think I need to learn this a bit better (or using lists) because I have a harder time unfollowing people than following and tend to end up with a slightly overwhelming timeline.

@davidnjoku I also try to mix n' match. I think Mastodonians are too ernest to watch tv

@davidnjoku @dominic I take a "follow them all and sort them out later" approach. It works for me.

@davidnjoku I do the same and also follow those that tend to follow me, unless you spam my timeline of course. I like sports so I follow as many sports accounts as I can. I haven’t really seen any shitposters yet.

@davidnjoku Similar. And I really need to spend the time to explore lists and how they work here.

@davidnjoku I just joined and I'm trying to build my feed as you suggest but please tell me if there are any good accounts about TV. Also, Inerior Chinatown was very worth my time

@davidnjoku

I haven’t decided yet.

There may never be a need to.