Another post by Fediverse gang
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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On the iOS app, is there a way to see a “trending feed” or something that that lets me see beyond who I’ve followed? I followed like one or two people and it feels like my feed now only ever shows stuff from them now.
I assume you are talking about mastodon here not lemmy but yes there are two main ways to discover posts from others that you don’t follow.
Your “home” feed is a feed of all users on your instance independent of whether you follow them or not.
Your “federated” timeline is a feed of all users who users on your instance follow independent of whether you follow them or not
I have trouble finding stuff with the Android app too. It really needs a "for you" tab or something to make discovering content easier.
Maybe I just like the Lemmy/reddit style of social media better. It makes more sense to my brain.
My favorite part about the fediverse is that you get to explore social media without feeling pressured, manipulated or like you have to do a lengthy sign up process. It encourages you to try different mediums of social media and find one that vibes with you.
I think it's Jerboa that has a for you tag, but it's kind of hidden and they don't let you follow general hashtags so I don't use it.
Mastodon is more like a garden than a grocery store. If you spend the time to slowly build your network by following interesting people and hashtags, Mastodon can be an amazing experience where you actually have real human interactions.
It's not good for viral marketing or mass produced content in my opinion, but if you start by following a few people that boost a lot of other posts, then you'll find content in time. Every time you see an interesting post, follow that person. If it later turns out that it's not for you you can unfollow it and it's not a big deal.
I don't have iOS but you can see trending hashtags on the web so maybe there's an equivalent on the app? You could also see all the latest post from you server and the entire Mastodon.
The best way to diversify the timeline for me is to directly follow tags of things you like.
On iOS, I’ve found great usability in Firefish. Custom emojis, better scrolling, live microblog updates.
Making it into a shortcut onto your homepage basically makes it an app in its own right.
I don't use the official app. However if you would like to try out Ice Cubes that would be another fully open-source and free as in beer and speech app which has trending hashtags, trending posts, and suggested users in it's search tab.
The algorithms it uses are pretty simple and fully auditable. I think it's mostly just tags with the most posts in the 24 hours etc. Discovering important news like back in the days on Twitter works the same with this feature.
Follow tags for subjects you like and peak at the global/federated feed now and then.