things like, "You haven't talked to your friend Kevin in a month. Here are some of his pictures from his trip to Boston." Or "Did you know that you and your friend debs both share an interest in baking? Here's some of her latest posts about baking."

This is *our* network.

Just because these tools are used for engagement and ad clicks on other social networks doesn't mean we need to use them for that purpose here.

Our social tools should serve our own social needs.

I *don't* need controversy or outrage in my life.

I *do* need connection, deep relationships, and community interaction.

If the tools serve *our* purposes, and are under *our* control, why wouldn't we use them?

who is we in this context? Is there going to be a democratic one person one vote decision? Or are the loudest voices entitled to decide for everyone else? And how are these algorithms going to be implemented? A chronological timeline has always worked, on FB, Twitter and here. You suggest to change that and create a curated experience which leads to plenty of unintended consequences, such as ppl being left out, outrage amplified and accounts gaming the algorithms.

if the majority here want to overhaul the timeline and start a huge experiment in algorithms, I'm out of here. I have no interest in replacing what has always worked well thanks to its simplicity with a variety of algorithms and endless discussions about how to implement them.

I was thinking third-party tools, like an alternative mobile or web client. If it was useful enough, an alternative way of sorting input for the main web client.

everything sounds good except: do you have specific examples? And have you thought about unintended consequences? I don't care about any suggestion where unintended consequences (which are plausible, such as the emergence of silos, tribalism, outrage gaming of the nonchronological algorithms etc) are ignored, dismissed and glossed over. And for what? What is the actual benefit of nonchronological algorithms specifically on which platform?

If I build my own fedi app with a non-chronological timeline, or indeed no timeline at all, in what way does that affect you? In fact, how do you know I'm not doing that right now?

maybe you do and maybe you don't, a persuasive argument. Do you have your own fediverse app? And how are the algorithms changing your timeline? Show us the outcome.

Anyway, my argument is about changes that affect everyone, such as instances or popular apps like Mastodon doing it. Few people will build their own apps, so that is not relevant for most users.

Ah, so what we're talking about here is software governance. How do you think users could or should be involved in the governance (i.e. making the roadmap and feature decisions) of an app like Mastodon?

certainly not by having a few loud voices impose a model that has always failed. If we must renegotiate the rules every minute, there's no governance, and people will leave. Having a chronological timeline and no Quote blogs seems like a sound basis.

Chronological timelines have worked on FB, Twitter and here. If that changes, people can draw their own conclusions. I will move somewhere else.

Federation means a distributed locus of control.

We have a many different server software implementations;

Many different clients for those servers;

Many instances with different patches and configuration options;

Many, many user accounts with different user settings.

It's unlikely that the default Mastodon home timeline will change from reverse chronological order. Many people consider it a crucial feature.

If it were to happen, you would be able to change user settings, client software, instance, or server software without losing access to your social graph or data.

Noone can force any kind of algorithm on you in this network. Not even the Mastodon dev team!

Can we put please this topic to rest?

Telling people to move from one server to another is exactly one of the problems that should be solved rather than focusing on changing the chronological timeline, which is something that works.

And changing settings doesn't work. You can't have a chronological timeline once you follow ppl that have a nonchronological timeline. Just like Twitter didn't really have a chronological timeline anymore.