Probably the nicest bonus feature of Mastodon is that I can subscribe to a friend's original posts but unsubscribe to their "boosts," which is Mastodon's way to quickly share content. This way I can follow artists that make cool stuff I want to keep up with, but I don't have to see their political reblogs and other interactions, which helps to cut down considerably on the noise.
It's great because it's granular at the friend level. Some of my follows do legitimately act as curators, infrequently boosting cool content that I do want to see. Some are more noisy, and I can pick and choose and tailor my own feed accordingly. It's a nice happy medium, one I'd like to see other platforms emulate if possible, but I suspect they won't because the algorithmic feed is much easier for advertisers to pay to manipulate.
I may follow a software engineer that writes books on functional programming but I just don't care about his stupid dogs or his alt right political ideas.
My Pleroma feed is not 100% actual friends of mine, but that's because I choose to follow certain organizations or public figures. The Fediverse is great because it's exactly what you make of it.
It is. On Facebook you can sort your feed that way and also on Twitter. Not sure about Instagram.
In my opinion, people are bored out of their mind also on a chronological feed from their friends. Not because they dislike their friends, it's just all very repetitive and time-consuming with very little to show for it.
By the way, the article doesn't even mention Mastodon.
I gave up social media owned by billionaires, Tweeter mainly, and I am very pleased with Mastodon.
