Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 6:00:59 GMT -5
One of the best things about Mastodon is the large number of applications available. The official Mastodon app is fine, but there's also Ivory, Mona, Fedilab, Ice Cubes, Elk, Mastoot, and many others. This openness is part of the overall appeal of the social media ecosystem powered by ActivityPub and has already led to some strong new ideas. (Personally, I've been a very happy Ivory user for a while now.) Mammoth gained some fans earlier this year with a very well-designed Mastodon client, and then added a "For You" feed that makes Mammoth a little more personalized automatically.
Now, with the release of Mammoth 2 for Mac, iPhone Luxembourg Mobile Number List and iPad, the app goes even deeper into curation and customization: It's launching a series of "Smart Lists" full of good posts, a set of suggested people, and accounts to follow. . , and more. Smart lists are a lot like what Twitter lists used to be: Users select groups of people by topic or interest or whatever, and others can subscribe to those lists. Mammoth has a couple dozen of them so far, from “Space” and “Nature” to “Indieweb” and “Queertech,” each of which is curated by a specific Mammoth user. I've been testing the app over the past few days and the lists are helpful, if not exactly earth-shattering.
Most lists are full of well-known websites and posters, so they are more of a starting point than a long-term solution. Over time, Mammoth co-founder Bart Decrem says he hopes to combine this human curation with more automated curation, including post-by-post, with the help of AI. "I'd be a little surprised if we weren't using AI to help organize and make smart lists," he says. But he's also aware that AI begets more AI, and he doesn't want to bring in robots that try to game the system or incentivize people to flood his posts with hashtags.