mcmullin, 15 days ago

@stefan
I’m the same way about boosting selectively, but I like the non-public star button. This lets me tell someone I appreciate what they posted without spamming everyone who follows me with stuff I know they’re not here for.

stefan, 15 days ago

@mcmullin Yes, definitely, I like that as well!

To add on to what I said here https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112429006861025598, maybe the default settings for accounts you follow could be:

• [x] Show boosts in my timeline
• [ ] Show favorites in my timeline

(On and off by default, respectively.)

So people could easily opt into seeing more posts from you, and you wouldn't have to worry about spamming anyone.

stefan, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Maybe this would work if we were able to control the experience, with settings to make our favorites/likes public (off by default), and then show/hide them for individual accounts we follow as we can with boosts.

(Which is an existing option at least here on Mastodon, not sure about other platforms.)

stefan, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Come to think of it, you can see who liked/favorited a post, so one could create a browser extension to look at your home timeline and your server's public feed, check posts for likes from accounts you follow, and surface them somehow.

(No, don't look at me.)

osma, 15 days ago

@stefan
As you already figured, likes are public. However, they're not synced, so your home server can not tell which of your follows have liked a (foreign-server) toot. Only the poster's own server has the complete info (ignoring federation breaks, that is).

It would be relatively easy to make an algorithmic timeline that gives relative boost to toots liked by your network, were it not for the above.