wake.st is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
the personal instance of Liaizon Wakest

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I've been thinking about the lack of algorithmic* feeds in the #Fediverse and wondering how much that is hurting growth and retention. Big social media spend billions on getting and keeping eyeballs, and algorithmic timelines are a huge part of that.

I think it's right to avoid it, but I worry that will just forever stunt growth. The alternative is human curators, I think, but I have no idea how to make that happen.

*Yes, I know reverse chronological is an algorithm, algo-pedants.

@john Your whole post hinges on growth being desirable. However, with no profit incentive on the #Fediverse, there's no need for growth either. Commercial social networks spend so much on growth and retention because it's integral to their business model, not in their users' best interest, see the toxic culture fostered on Instagram.

@hypolite @john I think it might be useful to have more nuance in the terms we use here. One type of growth that I think is important is people being able to keep their *social graph* and that requires a certain *critical mass*

I moved to the fediverse full time and tried for years to bring people here from facebook and the #1 complaint I got was "you are the only one I know that uses it"

a large portion of people use social media to interact with already existing friends not make new ones.

wakest ⁂

@hypolite @john We don't care about growth for the sake of growth. But social media is only useful if the people you want to interact with are using it. Otherwise its just a place to take notes into the void and thats not much fun for most people...