@smallcircles🫧 socialcoding.. everything you said can still be achieved with a customisable algo or litterally two tabs in the app : one with the chronological algorithm (still an algo btw) and one with the customized feed with your interests.

Without the second one the app is dead unless you build your feed yourself, that's really bad and explains why people got into bluesky instead of mastodon.
Also if you want to have mass appeal you don't expect people to have a boring app and understand the "new paradigm"

@fwtlDawa @smallcircles🫧 socialcoding.. there’s a third path to avoid empty timelines vs ‘build your own’ and ‘algorithm’ - packs, which is what the Mastodon team are focussing on .. blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/10/.

Because I saw your post and thought ‘oh but my timeline isn’t quiet’.. but rather than you having to find those 100s of accounts to follow to make it interesting, a pack supports different lists of accounts based on different interests. If they get it right (as they’ve got quotes right imho) then it could be really nice, and still no algo.

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