Some thoughts about using the Microblog functionality in kbin and why, controversially, I think it might actually beat Mastodon at it’s own game - browsing toots.

Kbin let’s you have a curated feed of posts from the fediverse (including Mastodon toots) which is sorted by new, hot, top etc.

Steps:

  1. First, if you are subscribed to the https://kbin.social/m/Random magazine, I’d suggest you unsubscribe - kbin drops everything which it can’t allocate to a magazine into here, which for the Microblog stuff is a lot of noise.

  2. Do make sure you’ve subscribed to a few magazines, but also you can subscribe to domains like https://kbin.social/d/social.bbc

  3. Follow people (I’m not sure of they will show up, but can’t harm)

…now look at “Subscribed”, and then choose the Microblog section (on desktop it’s a tab at the top, on mobile you’ll need to scroll to the bottom of Page 1 to find the Microblog button).

You should find this Microblog has stuff linked to the magazines you subscribe to, this is due to hastags being linked to those magazines, and also included posts from domains you’ve subscribed too. I’m not actually sure if people you’ve followed show up here(?)

Better still you can now sort and filter this list, New, Hot, Top / 3h, 6h, 12h, day, week etc.
This is sorting based on boots and upvotes.

In summary you’ve now got a custom curated feed of fediverse posts, and you can sort this feed by the posts which are most popular.

…I don’t think Mastodon let’s you sort your feed like this - this is power!

Edit: Fixed the hyperlink to Random

  • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
    3·
    11 months ago

    I think people are just used to how Twitter works and how to interact with it. Mastodon is the closest thing there is. It’s simple.

    Kbin is nice and all with many features, but sometimes people like to have different apps for different functions.

    • Teppic@kbin.socialOP
      5·
      11 months ago

      This is true, but twitter also has an opaque algorithm to choose what appears in your feed. By default Mastodon only allows you to view your feed in chronological order, so there is an argument to make that kbin allows a more twitter like experience…

      I do also get there is a steeper learning curve with kbin, and it’s basically still only an alpha release (it’s clearly not going to be right for everyone).