Make Mastodon/glitch-soc less addictive

[ClearlyClaire]

Commercial social networks are designed to maximize engagement and time spent on them in order to generate revenue. Mastodon's design is largely inherited from those commercial social networks, but we don't need that engagement and that revenue. Therefore, we could try to not make Mastodon/glitch-soc addictive and time-consuming.

I have been suggested ways to do that:

1. Let people set a maximum number of followed users: when they reach the limit, they have to unfollow someone (or change the limit) to be able to follow someone else.
2. Provide people with an estimate of the time it would take them to read all the extra content from someone when about to follow them.

[lanodan]

I would add:

• Not having a pile of favorites/boosts in notification column (or even not having them at all in the column)
• Add the statuses per day of someone (Note: Can be quite imprecise), pleroma-fe got it.

[ClearlyClaire]

Regarding the pile of favorites/boosts, we still need to find a more compact way to display them, but they can already not be displayed. The statuses count per day thing is similar to 2.

[lanodan]

Oh… I forgot to put “no fav/boost” by default.

[velartrill]

seconding (2); it's a brilliant suggestion and i don't think i've seen anything like it on any social network before

worth distinguishing tho between "addictive" and "rewarding." just because corporate social media capitalizes on our desire for connection doesn't mean those desires are themselves self-destructive. a better way to think about it imo might be "how can we shift the focus from capitalizing on users to cooperating with them." you don't want to end up pushing people away by not offering a sufficiently rewarding environment; i suspect turning off the pile of faves/rts by default might be going slightly too far in that direction?

[lanodan]

It was quite a time ago, but I think I wanted to have fav/rts displays to be turned off so it would lead to more comments and one wouldn’t count the favs/rts. (I really like the favorites thing, but I think they are put too much on display) Basically on the same basis as witches.town putting “⛤666⛤” instead of the followers count.

[witcheslive]

as an instance that uses the witches.town theming, the “⛤666⛤” is implemented entirely in the stylesheet/theme (which breaks with huge accounts because it says "⛤666⛤ K"). the information is also still available if you mouseover the disciple, I mean follower count. While it seems to provide most of the benefits this way, the option for the backend to refuse to even serve follower count at all would be interesting

[SoniEx2]

I like it being addictive, I just wish it was more focused on interacting with your friends rather than throwing takes at the world.

We have very few features that promote friendship.

[lanodan]

Could you elaborate on friendship? Because AFAIK and IMO no social media is actually done with it in mind.

[SoniEx2]

I think we should interact with the ppl who we're following more than we should interact with others. As such, I think our [ppl who we're following]'s replies should show up on our home feed, assuming the original post also does (i.e. they're boosting something to comment on it). I would call this "commentary mode" or "social mode" and it's intended to bring friends closer together through the power of talking about/commenting on (special) interests!

[witcheslive]

please note that several months later I have fixed the ⛤666⛤ K bug and in general, obfuscating follower counts have been healthy for the community. the only time i ever find myself, or most people ive talked to, looking at or caring about follower counts is to check if someone is bigleaguing

[sapphaos]

@SoniEx2 I really don't get what you mean, the home feed already does this? I see every reply of ppl I follow on my home feed, even if I can't see the original post because it's private

[SoniEx2]

@sapphaos no, it's about seeing replies to boosts.

e.g. user A wants to talk about X. user A boosts a post about X and starts replying to the post about X. followers of A can see the posts about X and join in and talk about X together!

[ClearlyClaire]

@witcheslive on that note, I implemented a feature to hide your own followers count (to yourself and to anyone else), or, as an admin, disable followers count entirely for every local user. It's opt-in though.

@SoniEx2 I assume what you're describing is #891, and will therefore reply there.

[SoniEx2]

@ThibG it's #891 but for boosts. #891 itself doesn't include boosts.