#MastodonThreads - Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

How to read #MastodonThreads:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads-daa33943ac31

Here are some tips for being a better reader of Mastodon threads:

Put threads in order with one click: Posts from a thread show up out of order in your timeline, which is confusing! But clicking any of those posts will switch to a properly ordered view of the thread.
Expand every post in a thread with one click: A thread that uses content warnings will show up in your timeline as a series of one-line headers (“Long thread /1,” “Long thread /2,” … “Long thread/n”), and any graphics associated with them will be rendered as blank rectangles. This is by design. To expand all of these posts with a single click and unmask their graphics, just click the little “eye” icon in the top right corner of your screen.

Image

Unfollow and switch to another feed: Mastodon doesn’t have algorithmic boosting. The only posts you’ll see in your home timeline are posted or boosted by people you explicitly follow. If you don’t like Mastodon threads, consider unfollowing users who post them. No one is obliged to read anyone else’s feed! This is especially good advice if the person you’ve followed offers their threads in another medium, like a blog with RSS. Just switch from following them on Mastodon to following them via RSS.
Use lists and filters: If you want to follow someone who posts threads, you can filter out those threads (provided they use consistent content warning labels), and follow thread-based accounts via a list.

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Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

The problem with #MastodonThreads

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads-daa33943ac31

If you follow someone who posts long threads, this presents a problem. Threads show up in your timeline out-of-order, crowded amongst the “conversational” posts made or “boosted” (Mastodonese for “retweeted”) by the other people you follow.

This is a direct consequence of the lack of a built-in Mastodon threading system. There are lots of potential ways to handle Mastodon threads that would allow them to more peacefully co-exist with other kinds of Mastodon content — for example, any time a client identifies two or more consecutive replies from a user to themself, it could “collapse” them into a post that has a little arrow to “unroll” the thread.

I am a threader. I’ve been posting threads to Mastodon almost since its inception, and over that half-decade, I’ve spent a lot of time discussing, disputing and experimenting with ways to post threads to make life easier for people who read threads.

I have concluded that the best approach is to use content warnings to tag threads.

Every Mastodon post can be labelled with a “content warning” that causes it to be “collapsed” to a short headline (e.g. “Long thread /3”).

Using content warnings for each post in a thread reduces the amount of vertical space it takes up, and thus the number of other kinds of post it displaces.

This approach also lets readers make use of Mastodon’s built in filters: users can create filters that hide posts that include the phrase “Long thread /”

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

How To Make the Least-Worst #MastodonThreads: (An opinionated guide) (for the perplexed)

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads-daa33943ac31

The mastodon mascot tangled in a snarl of thread.

Eugen Rotchko, AGPL, modified Apr 15 2023

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mastodon_Mascot.png

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

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