I would be totally fine with that tbh. Though I wonder if we’ll ever get to the place where a Mastodon client somehow incorporates an algorithmic timeline for those who want that?

I’d be totally cool with that. I’ll take quality discussion with less people to talk to over huge quantities of slop and rage bait any day of the week.

I think we need to let go of this idea that online platforms need to be as big as possible or be considered huge failures. This is a lie told by the owners of corporate-run and owned social media that needs to grow at the expense of basically everything else, because they somehow managed to convince investors to pour money into what is effectively a shitty glorified message board and they expect a return on that investment. There used to be thousands of niche forums all over the internet before corporate social media and link aggregators effectively staged a hostile takeover and homogenised everything, they did numbers that would look pathetic in comparison to daily users of X or Facebook, but they still had a busy feel balanced with a sense of community. It doesn’t actually take that many people to achieve that, it’s a fraction of what some people will have you believe.