How To Make Your Mastodon Feed More Algorithmic

Algorithms have a bad reputation due to commercial social media, but a humble set of rules and instructions to let users choose what they see is key to making the fediverse a more enjoyable experience.

Big Bad Algorithms

When people refer to algorithms these days they often mean the user retaining tailored feeds that became popular in the 2010s on Facebook, YouTube and eventually all commercial social media platforms.

The Light Algorithm

However even on the fediverse all feeds have at least a basic algorithm for choosing what content to show you.

The Mastodon home feed is a good example:

1. Take all posts published by accounts and hashtags I am following
2. Display them in reverse chronological order

This serves as the base for most of the fediverse, but it's a base that almost all fediverse users build from over time. Once you start following hundreds of accounts, it's helpful to start adding some additional layers to create your own algorithm.

Crafting Your Algorithm

Here are an ever expanding list of ways that you can master your Mastodon.

Mute Account

User Profile > … > Mute

Mutes remove an account from your feed for a specified period of time. This adds a little customization to "Exclude this account for a period".

Mute Duration

When you choose to mute an account there is a dropdown called "More options" where you can select the duration of mute, ranging from 6 hours to 30 days or even permanently.

• Short Term Mutes: When it is 2am in the morning and you have "replied enough times" to someone a mute works like a commitment mechanism. A raging debate about Klingon replicator technology can be muted until the next day. It won't send you a notification at that time then either, which lets sleeping dogs lie.
• Long Term Mutes: When someone is fixated and posting every minute about a news story you can mute them while it blows over. Is your good friend posting about the #BulgarianPotatoCrisis simply be having a hard time dealing with a breakup? Save your patience online so you can be a good friend pay them a visit with some Corn Chips #ReducePotatoConsumptionNow.
• Permanent Mutes: Permanent mutes are a way to handle the awkwardness of following someone then realizing you want to unfollow them but don't want them to know. You may have followed a manager when you started at the company, but you don't need to hear his "insights" after work hours.

If you are paying for the instance permanent mutes are not a good solution. Your server is caching all the data from that account only to never show it to you.

Filters

Preferences > Filters

Filters hide certain posts from your timeline based on keywords and are a key part of changing your Mastodon experience to match your preferences and reduce the number of posts you have to read each day.

Filter Uses

• Offensive Words: The most obvious use of filters is to exclude words that are a strong indication that this is a post or person you don't want to hear from.
• Doomscrollers: We certainly do live in interesting times, but you might not want to read about those interesting times every time you open Mastodon. Adding a political leaders and news hashtags filter can depoliticize your timeline.
• Unfocused: You might have a specific intention for your Mastodon account like work. Over time you can figure out what words and hashtags are indicative of a distraction.
• Spoilers: Follow a sport or movie? Chuck a filter on "Hockey" or "Star Wars" to save your family from your whining.

Filter Contexts

• Home and lists: Filters from your home feed and lists, the lightest and typically the only filter most people wanting to shape the core algorithm that creates your experience of Mastodon.
• Public timelines: This filters it from the live feed and other "firehose" places made for finding new content. It can be useful if you find yourself in theses places often.
• Notifications: Filters from posts that are typically mentioning or replying to your account. Not recommended for anything other than offensiveness.
• Conversations: Filter this word from private message conversations. Not recommended for anything other than offensiveness.
• Profiles: Filters this word from the profiles feed. Not recommended for anything other than offensiveness.

Filter Action

You can choose between completely hiding things you filter from your timeline (recommended for words with little to no ambiguity). You can also show them but with a content warning requiring you to click and open the post to see what you have filtered.