@tokyo_0 @oblomov @_elena @mcc @mhoye You seem to have missed my point, so let me restate it a bit differently: The idea of having an algorithmically weighted feed or not as it's often discussed here is essentially a false dichotomy, in which you either have a very simplistic chronological following feed or you have the sort of highly-optimized, psychologically manipulative, completely opaque algorithm of something like Twitter or Facebook. But, in fact, those are just some extremes of a huge parameter space of feed weighting/ordering algorithms. It's a bit like saying you only want to walk places because you refuse to ride in a self-driving autonomous vehicle, ignoring the fact that there are other types of cars, or bikes, or busses, or trains.
To give a concrete example: Someone has constructed a feed on Bluesky that shows you posts of people you follow but surfaces posts more prominently from people who post less frequently, so your quiet but interesting friends are not drowned out by your more prolific ones. Another feed just shows you the most recent post from each person you follow and that's it, so you see everyone equally and are not tempted by the infinite scroll. No opaque weighting schemes there, just some slightly-less-simplistic alternatives to a Mastodon-style feed (which also exists on Bluesky as the default "Following" feed) that help people find the posts they want to see.
To be clear, I don't necessarily think that Bluesky's approach of letting anyone make any sort of feed (within some, fairly loose, restrictions) will be good, because the feeds can impact the culture even for the users who don't use them. But I do think that refusing to have anything but the dead simplest feed types makes it hard for people to find the posts and people they're interested in, and that is a bad idea. But by indulging in this false dichotomy about having "an algorithm", I think people here are talking themselves into the placating notion that this shortcoming is, in fact, a virtue.
@internic I don't think we should conflate Mastodon with the whole Fediverse. Case in point: Friendica (part of the Fediverse) has custom made feeds that are similar to Bluesky's custom feeds.
How do I know? I have them turned on in my Friendica account (see screenshots).
My original point was about the culture of the Fediverse which is in stark contrast to that of other networks. I wrote about it here: https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-values-of-the-fediverse-ethical-social-media/
@_elena Thanks, that's interesting! I was unaware that Friendica had that feature. It seems like a very good idea.
In the context of the OP's question about people rejecting the Fediverse in favor of Bluesky, though, it would have been Mastodon they were rejecting in almost all cases (because that was what people flocked to as a Twitter alternative). So, for this particular discussion, I think that the features of Mastodon are most relevant, but I agree that the culture of the Fediverse overall is also relevant.
