I'm sharing the attached post simply to contrast our philosophy with that of the invaders from Eternal September II. It is describing the 'Explore' tab on Mastodon.
Those of us that have been around the fediverse since before the invasion are mostly here to communicate and collaborate. We're here to share our adventures and life events with family and friends -- away from the prying eyes of corporate marketers.
What Mastodon and subsequent Twitter migrations brought to the table is the fact that huge numbers of people are now here because to them it's all just one big freaking popularity contest. Amplifying and feeding the loudest and most abrasive egos.
For what it's worth, the first three are just measurements of post virality, not suitability for your life circumstances. So these will tend over time to be the posts that cause the most outrage, because that's the most predictable way to make something go viral. A few will be funny. Over time, these will get drowned out by outrage, because we've seen it happen time and time again on the corporate nets.
And for friend suggestions, we rank suggestions based on whether people are friends with more than one of your current friends and/or share a number of your stated (if you choose) interests, meaning it's highly likely you already know them - or at least have something, anything in common. Not on whether their entire purpose is amassing followers and you're just the latest sucker.
The Explore tab offers 4 ways to discover content & people to follow:
1️⃣ Posts: The most shared posts from the last couple of days.
2️⃣ Hashtags: The most used hashtags from the last couple of days.
3️⃣ News: The most shared links from the last couple of days.
4️⃣ For You: Suggests accounts to follow based on their active follower count and how widely their posts are shared.
If you are
#NewHere, find the
#Explore tab on the desktop version of
#Mastodon on the right side of the screen.
#MastoTip
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