I was listening to a podcast (by three software devs) just yesterday talking about algorithmic sorting on Threads vs chronological sorting on Mastodon. Nerds, it seems (of which I am one), prefer chronological sorting. This is because they have a community of people that they follow (I'm not using Mastodon, Threads, never used Twitter). They self-select for high-quality content. Normies, they theorized, don't have a specific group of people to follow, thus they need an algorithm to show quality content from celebs and such.

I'm curious how you self-identify and how many specific people you deliberately follow?

[–] TPetrichor@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I used to use Twit before the Nazi jerk off came along. I used it to follow individual game makers as they made progress on their games, creative writers tweeting out little stories, and amazing artists I would find there.

I was definitely a Twitter Nerd before it became tainted.

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love combing through the federated timeline and randomly finding someone new to follow or maybe just interact with that day. It's my choice, it's happenstance (based on chronological feeds and when I take time to look) and it feels like running into new people in the real world in a way.

Algorithms tend to funnel people into partisan views of the world. They find people that think like you and follow the same topics as you and eventually without realising it you become partisan and unwilling to talk or compromise with someone with different views. It's this part of social media that has made political situations hot and compromise seem impossible... I am digressing in my ramble though.

I curate people in my follow list based on looking for things I know I like at first and people/celebs I know I follow elsewhere. 10-15 minutes a day I spend looking through the federated timeline (not the local timeline which is the only one available in the official Mastodon app) and I will interact with or find new people to follow at random. And then occasionally I go to people I am following and see who they are following to find new things as well.

All my posts are chronological in my feeds, which means I can actually find them again.

And one other thing I've noticed on sites with algorithms like Twitter... eventually you're just seeing the same people over and over again from the algorithm. There are thousands and thousands you'll never see because it will never think they are important enough to show you. Chronological feeds are unbiased and give everyone and equal platform... for better or worse... but after years of Facebook and Twitter algorithms, I strongly feel that's for the better.

[–] TPetrichor@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'm really digging the simplicity at Lemmy.world, though I haven't gotten mastodon yet. Still not up to speed on "instances" & the federated timeline (?).

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