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@Rob On Mastodon, a thread is loosely tied together from posts and more posts. You, as a user, get them one by one. And you only get posts into your timeline

• from those whom you follow
• if you're mentioned
• if someone whom you follow boosts them

Here on Hubzilla, and actually in the whole family from Friendica to Forte, it's vastly different. Here, a conversation is an enclosed object. A thread, any thread, has exactly one post. That's the start post. Everything else is not a post, it's a comment.

This also means that Friendica, Hubzilla & Co. don't serve you single activities like Mastodon serves you single posts. Threads aren't piecemeal here. Threads come in one piece.

Instead, when you have a post (remember the distinction, "post" only means start post, as in something that isn't a reply to anything else) in your feed/timeline/stream, you also receive all comments on that post. Still under the same post and not as separate activities, not by default anyway.

It's like on Facebook or a blog or in a forum. After all, Friendica, the oldest member of the family, was created as an alternative to Facebook more than five years before Mastodon was made.

There's another big difference between Mastodon on the one side and Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte on the other side: The latter four have an unread activities counter and an unread activities list. Mastodon doesn't have either. Mastodon doesn't even have a concept of unread.

On Mastodon, you go to your timeline, and you scroll down until you either hit something that you know you've already read, or you don't have any time anymore, or you don't want anymore. What you don't scroll down to, you will never know you've ever received it.

Here on Hubzilla, I have a counter of unread activities at the top of the the right-hand sidebar. It includes

• unread posts on my stream
• unread comments on something I have on my stream
• unread edits something I have on my stream
• unnoticed reposts/boosts/renotes/repeats of something I have on my stream
• unnoticed likes/dislikes for something I have on my stream (in theory; I've turned this off)

The counter stops at 99, though. If it's 100 or more, the counter shows "99+".

If I open the counter, I get a list of all unread/unnoticed activities. I can apply a filter that only shows me new posts with one click. It's only a list, though; it's not the actual activities like in a Mastodon timeline. It only lists up all these activities so I can load them manually.

So what I usually do first is apply the posts-only filter. Then I scroll down to the oldest item on the list. I click it. In the middle (we were in the right-hand sidebar until now), the post with that activity is shown, complete with all comments known to my stream, like a post on Facebook or a blog post with its comments neatly listed right below.

Now, let's suppose this post came with 68 comments and 11 repeats (that's "boosts" in Mastodonese). That's one unread post, 68 unread comments, 11 unnoticed repeats, all loaded and read/noticed in one fell swoop. The unread activites counter goes down by 1+68+11=80 items.

And then I go on with the next new post.

Once I'm through the new posts, I turn the filter off again, and the unread activities list shows me everything that isn't a new post.

I scroll down again. I click on the bottom-most item. Whatever it is, it loads an entire thread with a post and, if there are any, its comments. And whatever was in this thread that I hadn't paid attention to yet is flagged read and removed from the unread activities list, and the counter goes down by that number again.

Now, my situation as described in the post (again, posts vs comments from a Hubzilla point of view) is that the official Mastodon account or Eugen Rochko or some Mastodon devs (intentionally not mentioning either) tend to post stuff which is then boosted by @Fediverse Report, and which may receive well over 100 replies.

Now let's suppose Eugen Rochko posts something, and Fediverse Report boosts it, and it gets 280 replies. Let's also suppose I only follow Fediverse Report.

On Mastodon, I'd only receive Eugen's post in my timeline. That's it. Unless, of course, someone mentions me in one of the replies, or someone decides to boost one of the replies to me. Then I also receive that one reply. Separately.

Here on Hubzilla, I receive Eugen's post and all 280 replies in my stream. That's 281 unread activities, and that doesn't even include boosts and edits. That's at least 281 pieces of uninteresting clutter on my unread activities list. Granted, when I click one of them, the whole thread loads, and 281 pieces of uninteresting clutter are marked read and removed from the list, and the unread activities counter goes down by 281. And I no longer have to wade through all that clutter to find the actually interesting content.

But I don't necessarily want to see that gunk. I don't want to click it.

And so I've Superblocked the official Mastodon account and the official Mastodon Development account and Eugen Rochko and some devs. In fact, I've also Superblocked a few more Mastodon users who tend to attract replies like lamps attract moths, just in case someone whom I've given permission to send me their boosts (yes, I can disallow that for individual contacts) boosts something from one of them.

Now I don't receive the actual content anymore. But if someone boosts something from someone Superblocked to me, it still shows up on the unread activities counter. It and all replies to it. If Eugen Rochko (Superblocked) posts something, Fediverse Report (not Superblocked, allowed to send me boosts) boosts it, and it gets 280 replies, that's still 281 unread items on the list.

The catch: Since Eugen Rochko's post is blocked, so is the whole thread. I can't load his post, and I can't load any of the replies either because loading any reply would require loading the post. Remember that replies aren't piecemeal here on Hubzilla, unlike on Mastodon.

And if I can't load them, I can't have them marked read the natural way. Mind you, I do have a "Mark everything read" button. The only way to mark that stuff read. But if I used it, I'd also mark the interesting unread stuff read.

So I have to scroll through a list of hundreds of unread replies to Eugen Rochko's post and boosts of such replies and whatnot to find the halfway interesting stuff, pick it out, click it, load it, read it, interact with it etc. Then more scrolling until I find something interesting again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Only when everything on the list of unread activities is from threads starting with blocked posts, I can click "Mark everything read".

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte