Now I'll say something controversial: I somewhat miss the algorithm. What it was good for -- for me -- was pointing me to what I might have missed while I was gone. I do believe that one of the values that will be offered in a federated, open ecosystem will be recommendation services: ones that we seek and control and that provide value to us as users. See this provocative discussion from experience:
https://social.lot23.com/@jon/109372257422277945

@jeffjarvis That's a very fair comment and I hope we can have a reasoned discussion about it. Part of my frustration with Twitter was that they FORCED the algorithm on you. In addition, I'll add that it didn't work that well fo me (sample size of 1, etc etc)

If Mastodon could have a transparent yet optional 'show me the good stuff' option, I agree, that would be very helpful.

More importantly, it's not heresy to talk about it.

@scottjenson @jeffjarvis Also if you're running your own instance you can afford to deploy staggering amounts of CPU power. Like, you could plausibly run GPT-NeoX-20B on your own dual-GPU rig to try to guess which Fediverse posts you'd be most interested in seeing.

The NSA can do this with Twitter, but you're not allowed to.

@radehi @jeffjarvis How about we walk a bit before we start sprinting? Honestly a ranked list based on something ridiculously simple, e.g. some combination of boosts and likes, would go a long way.

The same thing applies to following hashtags by the way. It would be helpful if this sorting wasn't buried only in the home feed but something we could summon for any column view (in the advanced UI at least)