We plan to disable the "live feeds" of the local and federated timelines on mastodon.social within in the next couple of weeks. They are already disabled on mastodon.online. While these feeds can be useful on smaller, topical or regional servers, they have limited use on larger servers like ours.
The live feeds present all content on the server immediately and essentially pre-moderation, which presents a particularly poor experience to new users finding the fediverse for the first time.
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Evan Prodromou
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •william.maggos
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •Supermoosie
in reply to william.maggos • • •@wjmaggos
So now the can't "choose" for see what others are posting on their instance.
Or in the rest of the feduated instances.
Some of us want to see that sometimes.
Trending hashtag or posts won't let you find interesting people with small followings or non popular haatags.
Taking away choices, isn't letting people choose.
Matthew Newton
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •Mastodon.social Staff
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •Recommended follows, trending, and searching for hashtags all provide a far better discovery experience for newcomers, and we intend to improve discovery features more in 2026.
Note that we do have the ability to restore live feed access to individual users, and will consider this on a case-by-case basis. We will proactively reach out to trusted flaggers to offer this in advance.
FinchHaven sfba
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •"While these feeds can be useful on smaller, topical or regional servers, they have limited use on larger servers like ours."
Maybe, just maybe:
1) @Mastodon shouldn't be so gargantuan in the first place, and
2) Maybe y'all shouldn't be directing every possible newcomer within your grasp *to* Mastodon dot Social?
Ya think?
Nah, how silly of me
Whatever am I even thinking?
#Mastodon #MaxiFedi #Fediverse
Mastodon.social Staff
in reply to FinchHaven sfba • • •FinchHaven sfba
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •I am currently homed on three instances of 39K total users, 57K total users, and 79K total users and I keep one tab open to the /public/local feed for each of them simultaneous while I'm online, which is basically seven days a week
They are not "unappealing" in any sense of the word, and certainly not because of volume
They are not, however, the mega-monster that you have allowed Mastodon dot Social to become
Admit it: you have created a monster of your own devise, and it's out of control
All the spam posts I receive are from your instance without exception
I've simply stopped bothering to report spam; there's no purpose to it
Your (Gargron's) greed has simply metastasized beyond your control
urig
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •no longer a newcomer here and missing both the local and federated feeds. Would love to have them back.
When I was a newcomer I didn't mind unmoderated content on those. Didn't expect moderation at the firehose.
Marty Fouts
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •*sigh*. I guess I missed an announcement on online when you disabled the feeds. I have spent days trying to figure out why the client I use was failing on them. Did you also do something to trending? My client now only returns a smallish number of trending articles rather than the apparently endless stream it did before.
I am disappointed to lose the federated feed. I find it a far more interesting form of discovery than trending. Please reenable it at least optionally
PaulaToThePeople 😷
in reply to Mastodon.social Staff • • •Large, unmoderated-signup servers have limited use* to the Fediverse.
*are harmful