The Federated Timeline via ActivityPub / Mastodon

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Back in the day, we’ll say 2017? I think, or I’m pretty sure that’s when I first joined Mastodon. It was back on my mastodon.social days, because, well, I’m not sure there were as many privately run instances, and this was before I launched a GNU Social instance (wish I would’ve found a way to keep it, would be awesome to still have it). But one of the first things that caught my attention wasn’t really the UI, or the diversity of people and ideas on my timeline as I gradually followed those I was interested in seeing. It was, in fact, the federated timeline that kept me captivated.

You can see this, now, on pretty much all ActivityPub software (aside from like Pixelfed, I think?), but to me, when I first saw it, it was like the first time I played an MMO. It was mesmerizing. I came from Twitter where what I saw were random people that an algorithm decided to feed to me. Usually, it was always some junk meant to make you mad, to get you angry, so that you’d engage, and keep you on their site longer, and longer (and it worked, for a long time). But, seeing all of the people an instance was connected to, across probably all of the instances that existed at the time, was freakin’ wild.

This was back when I was still out-of-work and suffering from some major anxiety and agoraphobia issues, so I had some time on my hands.

I think, the very first time, I spent an entire night watching people zoom by with whatever thoughts they were shooting out into the void.

Like logging onto my Night Elf for the first time in 2004 World of Warcraft, it was something I had never seen before. People, unfiltered, non-algorithmic, just living in the social media moment.

This isn’t something you can get on Bluesky, as much as the devs tout what their idea of “decentralization” is. Bluesky is very much just Twitter, but with a PDS that lets you store media and a handle.

But, on my own instance now (again, and self-hosted), the timeline isn’t as fast as it was when I was on .social in 2017, and this is largely due-in-part to the fact that I block many instances with negative, bad, or sometimes illegal content. The last time I saw the .social timeline, they were … let’s say, a lot more lax about what they allowed through the pipeline.

I’m not.

I pay for this server, and so I keep the fungal mass out.

If you haven’t really experienced this, I highly recommend you turn on the advanced web interface for Mastodon, and then watch as the thoughts stream by. Maybe you’re on a big instance and it’ll be like a waterfall, or you’re like me on a smaller instance, and it’s more like a dripfeed.

Whichever.

The thing though, most of the mobile apps have this too … except for the official Mastodon app. For real. One of the most unique things about ActivityPub, and it’s not included in the official app? To me, that’s kind of a fumble.

Why isn’t it there? Too much a chance people might see things that are bad for Apple policy? Things that could be rectified by … correctly moderating who you’re federating with?

Either way, that’s my piece of it. I enjoy seeing people’s thoughts stream by, even if I don’t interact with most of them, and now I have an idea for a potential different feature on this website (haha).

Good night, I’m going to turn on some ambient and zone out.