we really need some kind of #mastodon feed mix controls. like, say I'm subscribed to someone who posts every 5 minutes, and I want to see their posts, but I don't want my entire feed to be just their posts. idk if that's a client level thing or a mastodon server level thing. i don't think it's #activitypub level
@2ck in fact, it might be best if it’s client side anyway, some folks don’t mind the occasional deluge, some can deal with 5 posts but not more than that, some might draw the line at one. User preference, so client-side.
I envision this as some setting in a client, where everything over X amount of posts from one user gets “collided” under a “show the other Y posts” button thingy.
In fact, that sounds like something that’s not even particularly difficult to do, but I’ve never so much as looked at any client code, so I could underestimate things.
@max no, I was talking about subscribers when i said "users" in my previous post
@2ck oh, ok. Does the protocol allow such preferences to be sent with a subscription or when receiving updates? I’m not that familiar with the spec tbh.
@max hell if i know😄 I don't see why it couldn't though. i figured it would be an extension or something though. I know there is scope for that kind of thing since qoto, for instance, has some customizations for various things
@2ck might be worth looking into, but frankly, if it’s something that has to be changed/enabled on the server/sending side, adoption might be more problematic than switching a client.
Point in case: Cory Doctorow has very good reasons to be on the Masto instance he’s on. AFAIK he doesn’t control it. So if I have to depend on his instance to throttle his output, I’d be out of luck.
If it’s on the client side, I could at least switch to a client that allows me to throttle whatever.
I’m not against having it on the server side, but that means a lot of folks won’t be able to use it.
@2ck With “users” I mean the readers, consumers, whatever you want to call them. If I follow you, and you go on a tooting spree, and I don’t want to see all 9001 of them, I should limit the display on my end, right? In this case, I’m the user.
Does that make more sense? I feel you understood user as the tooting user, not as the tootee.
Giving it some more thought, I (as a tootee) might even have different preferences per client, that way. Not too many toots displayed in a row on my phone, but gimme the whole firehose on a desktop client, that kind of difference.