How I use Lists to curate my Mastodon feed
Did you know that Mastodon lets you create lists of people you follow? While people use these for many purposes, here’s my approach.
Every time (well, most times) I follow someone, I also add them to one of my lists. Right now, I have lists for Artists, Boosts, Bots, Humor, Law, Med, Nature, News, Politicians, Scientists, Tech, and Writers. If nothing fits, I make a new group. If they fit in multiple places, I add them to multiple lists.
So, why do I do this? There are two main reasons: curation and hankering.
Curation
I follow people widely. If someone posts something interesting, whether as a reply or a post that is boosted, I open their profile, follow them, and add them to lists. As you can imagine, this results in a home
feed that at times is a firehose of posts. So, when I find myself overwhelmed, I do a bit of judicious trimming. In general, I don’t unfollow or mute people. Instead, if I haven’t interacted with someone for a while, or they are posting way more than I can keep up with, I just remove them from my home feed. This just means that means that I won’t see their posts in my Home feed. Sometimes, when I look at someone’s profile, I see that they are a very prolific poster or booster, and I choose to just add them to a list or two and not put them in the home feed at all.
Hankering
Sometimes, I feel a yearning for a specific kind of post. Maybe I want to see some art. Maybe I’m looking for any news about a specific topic. Maybe I just want to read something funny. I can just tap on the appropriate list and see posts from people who specialize in those things, including people who I followed, but for some reason removed from the home feed.
Do you use lists in Mastodon? What do you use them for? I’d love to hear how others are using this tool.
