Some thoughts about using the Microblog functionality in kbin and why, controversially, I think it might actually beat Mastodon at it’s own game - browsing toots.
Kbin let’s you have a curated feed of posts from the fediverse (including Mastodon toots) which is sorted by new, hot, top etc.
Steps:
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First, if you are subscribed to the https://kbin.social/m/Random magazine, I’d suggest you unsubscribe - kbin drops everything which it can’t allocate to a magazine into here, which for the Microblog stuff is a lot of noise.
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Do make sure you’ve subscribed to a few magazines, but also you can subscribe to domains like https://kbin.social/d/social.bbc
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Follow people (I’m not sure of they will show up, but can’t harm)
…now look at “Subscribed”, and then choose the Microblog section (on desktop it’s a tab at the top, on mobile you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of Page 1 to find the Microblog button).
You should find this Microblog has stuff linked to the magazines you subscribe to, this is due to hastags being linked to those magazines, and also included posts from domains you’ve subscribed too. I’m not actually sure if people you’ve followed show up here(?)
Better still you can now sort and filter this list, New, Hot, Top / 3h, 6h, 12h, day, week etc.
This is sorting based on boots and upvotes.
In summary you’ve now got a custom curated feed of fediverse posts, and you can sort this feed by the posts which are most popular.
…I don’t think Mastodon let’s you sort your feed like this - this is power!
Edit: Fixed the hyperlink to Random
I feel like the microblog feature would be more useful if we could get a separate feed/filter that doesn’t include the tags of magazines that you’re subscribed to. For example, I’m subscribed to /m/fediverse because I want to see the threads that people post here. I don’t necessarily want to see every mastodon post tagged #fediverse, though.
It also looks like we can’t subscribe to a tag by itself, without subscribing to a magazine that includes that tag. So yeah, some more separation there would be nice.
Yes I was also thinking along those lines. When you create a magazine you can choose hastags to associate with it, I briefly considered whether you could create a magazine specifically to have interesting hashtags for you - problem with that is you end up modding the magazine and anybody can see it, join it and post.
I suspect what you describe might come later, it feels like a natural progression from what we have now.