(2023-05-03) Erlend Sensemaking In Federated Discourse

Erlend Sogge Heggen: Sense-making in federated discourse. In Feed Overload I made a brief case for some content gardening tools I'm missing in my fediverse experience (2023-03-27-ErlendFeedOverload)

This been on my mind again whilst trying to follow the vibrant discussion on #bluesky. That hashtag receives close to a hundred posts per day.

Of the 100 daily posts on the topic, only 20% are adding something to the conversation. The remaining 80% is a mix of:

• redundant repetition
• invite requests
• bad-faith attacks and misinformation

We lack tools to meaningfully move critical conversations forward

When browsing #bluesky I wanna be able to filter for:

• Most popular (boosted/liked) posts in the last day/week/month.
• Posts by people I follow
• Most shared links
• Editor's picks

Most shared links

Posts linking out to longform articles are of the highest priority to me, so a dedicated sub-feed of posts with links would be 💯

I don't use the News tab, but what I do want is basically that same sidebar tab scoped down to a specific hashtag and the Links posted within it.

Editor's picks

Imagine if you could subscribe to a client-side editorial service that highlights a few hand-picked posts for you every day/week.

In short: Design UIs that elevate the voices of experts in their respective fields.

I believe the next paradigm shift in the fediverse is going to happen client-side even more so than server-side. Elk has a major opportunity to be a leader in this space, and I'm also beyond excited about the impending release of the backend-agnostic Gobo.

The purpose of our globally networked communications is to break down systems of oppression, such as surveillance-based social media.