On Local Timelines

Published: 2024-09-01 9:25 PM

Category: Technology | Tags: mastodon, social media, controversy

I came across a post from Kev Quirk this morning about Mastodon potentially removing the local timeline which linked to a different post by R Scott Jones, who wishes you could post to your local timeline only.

First, I never look at the global timeline. I'm surprised that there is debate about whether or not to include the local timeline in official apps. The entire point of decentralized servers is that you can join communities of interest and not have to see the main feed. If the core Mastodon project got rid of local timelines, I would have to make a hard choice about to interact moving forward.

That said, I hadn't considered local timelines only. I look at the local timeline a lot and generally don't follow people from Fosstodon on my account precisely because of this. I like the idea of being able to post to my local network exclusively and it made me wonder if I'm really in the best instance. I do work with open source projects and I have some toy stuff written of my own, but I'm not so into the nitty gritty that I can even follow a lot of what others on the instance talk about. It doesn't mean I can't learn, but it's definitely not my wheelhouse.

Is it better to silo off those interests? Or are small generalist instances the better approach? My guess is that it's "both/and" rather than "either/or," but it's made me think more about the ways in which we interact in these spaces moving forward.

And please don't nuke the local timeline.