Nick on Nostr: To address just one point, though, people on Mastodon often repeat the fiction that ...

To address just one point, though, people on Mastodon often repeat the fiction that we "don't have an algorithm." Of course, Mastodon has feeds which are populated by software, so by definition it has an algorithm. But my purpose in saying that isn't to nitpick semantics. I say it because admitting this then forces one to describe the situation differently: Mastodon only supports a fixed set of limited, very simplistic algorithms.

The direct implication of this is that many users will have use cases for which these don't work well (because they're fixed and simplistic), and in those cases the posts won't get from their authors to the people who want to see them. And then those users will go elsewhere, like Bluesky, which has algorithmic choice (an unlimited selection of first party and 3rd party feeds).

It's a pretty simple reality, but one that largely gets ignored on Mastodon and obscured by the comforting and self-congratulatory fiction that "we don't have an algorithm."

Personally, I feel that on Mastodon I would benefit from feeds like some of those that exist on Bluesky, but I like other things about Mastodon, so I keep using it despite this shortcoming.