Mastodon: Browse Other Instances' Public Timeline

[sturmen]

As a user on one of the many smaller instances, sometimes I'm interested in checking out the "local culture" of other instances and perhaps finding new people to follow. I'd like a way to browse these other instance's timeline and discover new people, and remote follow them to add to my personal timeline.

Such a feature would obviously be a privacy toggle by the instance admin, but I think it would enable greater discovery across instances.

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• [✔️] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[padpanik]

I was just thinking the same, that would be the most cool feature. That would help everyone to undestand better the Instance things.

I don't know how to vote for that feature, but count my vote in !!!

After one day on mastodon, what i like is the public stream global and local but i'm frustated to not be able to switch on different local instance (and yes instance admin just should have a private switch).

[ryanleesipes]

Everyone in my office has requested this feature! Just giving it another +1 with this comment!

[trwnh]

1189 and #1143 are duplicates.

The best way to do this would be to display the local timeline of an instance while logged out, whether on the landing page or on its own separate page. Compare this to how Twitter shows tweets and moments while logged out.

[krainboltgreene]

Marked the others as duplicates.

[madCdan]

+1

[ghost]

I've been trying to find Norwegians to follow on my new Norwegian instance. It's really hard to find people across the network. A public timeline would really help.

[foozmeat]

pulling in my comment from a dupe issue:

Thinking about implementation...a rough, incomplete, unordered todo list:

• boolean flag in admin settings (some places may not want a public timeline shown)
• copy and modify the public user template for rendering the timeline
• only show local, public, non-reply toots
• route it under /public?

[Shnoulle]

only show local, public, non-reply toots

If you give admin choice : 3 option : none / only public and nonreply toot / public + reply + favorites (boost) and repeat.

In my opinion

[2aucka05]

This just makes sense!

[Scrxtchy]

I wonder if this should be called the Remote Timeline
I like it since it will allow me to discover content more easily from specific instances

[zorun]

I just implemented a proof of concept for this "remote timeline" feature. The code is in https://github.com/zorun/mastodon/tree/remote-timeline-1.3.3 and here are some screenshots:

It's really just a proof of concept:

• the remote instance is hard-coded (mastodon.social in the code, pawoo.net in the screenshot);
• there is no automatic refresh, because the streaming API currently requires authentication (see #2006).

[Shnoulle]

@zorun : great if you already have a mastodon account :) but it didn't fix
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1436 or https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1143 :)

Maybe this feature must be separated in 2 :

1. Show public local TL on home page (with option for admin and for each user) (see pawoo fork for an example)
2. Allow to “load” a external public time line in mastodon

[kevinmarks]

I built a viewer for this a while back: http://www.unmung.com/mastoview?url=mastodon.social&view=local

[ghost]

like @zorun said, i want to see everything in the public timeline, not just the posts of the connected instances. maybe there should be something, which puts all instances together in the public timeline for a better federation. that's what i meant. creating a new instance ends up in a lonely public timeline until you boost/follow some people. that would also make follow-bots obsolete.

[Cassolotl]

Public timelines are now viewable on the /about page before logging in or registering, so this can now be closed, right?

[zcdunn]

As a user on one of the many smaller instances, sometimes I'm interested in checking out the "local culture" of other instances and perhaps finding new people to follow. I'd like a way to browse these other instance's timeline and discover new people, and remote follow them to add to my personal timeline.

There's still no way for a user to view the local timeline of another instance. The timeline on the /about page defaults to federated timeline so new users get a full view of the network, according to @Gargron. I'd like to be able to add a remote instance's local timeline as a column on my instance, which would let me participate in the culture of an instance without having to create a new account for every interest I have.

[Cassolotl]

Ohhh I see what you mean! That seems different to the first post, though.

[aa-m-sa]

I like the ideas showcased in this PR! My personal ideal would be to be able to follow several smaller instances and maybe some larger ones with ease.

The ability to preview the local timeline before joining instance would be nice. To some extent this is currently achievable with 3rd part tools such as http://www.unmung.com/mastoview?url=mastodon.social&view=local .

However, even with that feature, AFAIK you'd still need to manually check each individual instance to see what happens there, which is a hassle. So I like the "remote timelines" or "external timelines" idea too, it would be even better improvement. Ideally, you'd could simultaneously observe several timelines in a single view a la Tweetdeck.

[zer0her0]

I also think this feature would be awesome as it would also aid in discovery. While federated timeline was fine at first, on any large instance it just flows way to quickly and full of things I'm not interested in & I started creating accounts on all the instances that I was interested in to find and follow people on the local timeline. This would keep me from filling other instances w/ accounts and help me find more people to follow! There are clients that already support this it would be nice to see it be server side and therefore synced across apps/machines.

[D4nte]

Agree with the proof of concept to be able to add a remote timeline.
However I see it more as a discovery tool than anything else.

[ashemedai]

I would like to add my +1 to having an option to have a specific instance's local timeline to view. There's a few that are very focused in content and I do not necessarily want to follow everyone on that instance, but would be interested in monitoring the instance's local timeline. Federated timeline is too high noise for me and will only decrease is usefulness as the userbase grows.

[LC43]

i'm a new user ( on mastodon.social ), hope I can provide some feedback:

• I found that, in order to join other instances, I would have to create a new user. This is very frictious. It would also mean that my alias could be unavailable in some of them, but I guess this is a consequence of the model.

• As pointed before, the federated(?) timeline is too noisy, auto-refreshes and very alienating.

• I don't understand why i have to have multiple tabs, one for each instance.

• I wanted to follow ( remote-follow ) a user on another instance , but it's pending approval from someone / something.

• I can't link my profile between instances.

I have other critiques with the UI, but i'll leave it for another issue, thanks for reading.

[nightpool]

@LC43

By having an account on mastodon.social, you're already interacting with users on other instances. It's like email—you don't need an account on yahoo.com to send email there. You don't need to have multiple tabs or multiple users.

I wanted to follow ( remote-follow ) a user on another instance , but it's pending approval from someone / something.

if the user has set their account to private, they're required to approve followers. this is the same as how twitter works.

[LC43]

thanks @nightpool for your reply regarding the following users!

As for my other points, I wanted the featured that is being discussed here: to be able to replace (every) column with other instances timelines, not just #tags. If i want to join https://masto.pt and participate in its local timeline, i have to register and have a tab open there, and one for each instance that i already joined.

I'll do a bit of research, in case i'm doing it wrong, and so to not add noise to this issue.

[nightpool]

There are website that will show you this, but my opinion is that if you want to view the instance timeline of another instance as part of your day-to-day browsing of the service, you should sign up for an account on it. Otherwise you have this issue where a small number of users are "performing" for a much larger audience, and there's no way for the users viewing that timeline to "join in", and post things to that timeline. this leads to very awkward possible community issues.

I think the biggest concerns here will be solved by groups, maybe?

[aa-m-sa]

@nightpool

Otherwise you have this issue where a small number of users are "performing" for a much larger audience, and there's no way for the users viewing that timeline to "join in", and post things to that timeline. this leads to very awkward possible community issues.

This is a very good point I had not thought about before. In that case, handling several accounts on different instances should be made easier and more low-effort, in other words, the UI should suggest an easy workflow for participating on many instances.

• I think ability to browse all your accounts on several different instances in the same UI would still be a useful feature (even if you would still need to create an account to see instance's local feed), instead of a need to keep e.g. one browser tab per instance.
• The profile text is often too small to include links to your presence on other instances, especially if you have several accounts. This hurts discoverability.

Is there already related Issues on these feature requests or should new issues be created?

[remram44]

People making instances about a specific topic is the main reason we want this, but perhaps a different fix is necessary. Maybe birdsite's "list" feature would be better than creating instances?

[nightpool]

see also #139 slash https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1096

[aa-m-sa]

@remram44

People making instances about a specific topic is the main reason we want this, but perhaps a different fix is necessary. Maybe birdsite's "list" feature would be better than creating instances?

I think the topic / localized instances are a good thing, just the UI experience is suboptimal (Topic instances encourage Mastodon to be a true federation of local servers and communities that develop on them, than amplifying the "yeah we support federation in theory, but in practice everybody registers on the most famous main instance" thing that is already going on to some extent).

[NathanHawks]

I was routed here because I created a dupe issue - thanks, Cassolotl.

I feel like the issue has been overthunk. All I need is:

• If I can already see public toots from a specific instance
• Let me make/nav-to a column filtered down to those toots

Possible easy-as-pie implementations:

• a search symbol like @_[instance.host]_
• a dropdown or text-input filter in Global Timeline

[feoh]

I'm with @NathanHawks - I think the low hanging fruit nature of this would make it an excellent way to showcase Mastodon's distributed nature to newcomers and veterans alike, and allow the individual nature of some of its sub-communities to really shine.

[fsnk]

What I'd like to see is local timelines treated like a special case read-only !group that people could remote subscribe to read.

Though @nightpool's point about users on the server performing for an audience is a valid one.

I do think remote access to timelines would be useful for discovering new people to follow, but I think it could be handled as well with !groups (or even if people would use more hashtags).

I think LC's comment exemplifies the misunderstanding about what a local timeline is - I get the impression people think it's a topical discussion group. I hear a lot about "participating in the timeline discussions" which doesn't make sense to me since it's just an chronological aggregate stream of all the public posts on a server, not threaded or anything, and following interesting people from that server is going to bring their discussions into your home timeline anyway.

Or maybe I'm the one misunderstanding. I don't know at this point. It does seem like seeing and/or "participating in the local timeline" of a remote server is a really big deal to a lot of people?

[Cassolotl]

I hear a lot about "participating in the timeline discussions" which doesn't make sense to me since it's just an chronological aggregate stream of all the public posts on a server, not threaded or anything

This, and replies don't go to the public timelines either, so you don't see a whole discussion - only the originating posts.

[gegeweb]

I don't know if this suggestion has already been made, I'm not very good at searching through the bug list.

The possibility for each administrator to exchange public feeds between instances would be a good idea.
A bit like the feeds on the Usenet network, with the possibility to filter or restrict the subscription to certain keywords.

I'm administering my personal instance, single user, and running a robot to feed the public timeline doesn't seem like a good idea. But in this case it requires a lot of subscriptions and interractions to federate well.

[corbindavenport]

^ That is my issue as well. I'm running my own instance, which means the federated timeline is just a mirror of my own timeline.

[gegeweb]

@corbindavenport Not exactly.
From what I understand, in the general public thread, there is:

• original messages to which one of the users of the instance replied.
• shared publications (boost, rettoot) by local users and users followed by local users
• Local user publications
• User publications followed by local users

In this state, when an instance starts, the history is empty.
Local thread seems to be a mirror of general public thread (federated timeline).
Since one user on the instance start to share and interract with others, no federated. Publications remain local, and it is difficult to find other users to follow or share with.
And it is difficult for other instances to know the local users.

In my opinion, as it stands, this is not really a decentralized network, federated, but not decentralized.
I don't know how the federation works with the Diaspora* network, but it seems to be closer to a truly decentralized and federated network. Because local publications are distributed to other pods, you can find other pod users, interact with them and follow keywords to start filling in the timeline.

If, however, the network is federated and pseudo-decentralized, how its work encourages it to join a large instances, which means that it concentrates on only a few access points.

For me, the only truly decentralized network remains the Usenet network thanks to the feeds system between server and flood diffusion through all peer-to-peer connections between servers (the peers).

That's why I think the direct exchange of public feeds between servers would be a good thing, and offer real decentralization. And if the profile could be federated and used from any access point, there would no longer be dependencies on a specific instance.

But maybe it's not the original purpose.

My own principal instance, started in November, 2017 federates at this time with 438 other instances. And my testing instance (to undestand how federation works) with only one user following only the user of my principal instance, only with 15 other instances.

Have a good day (morning here) and Happy new Year to all.
And already thanks to all for this hard work, specially to the FreeBSD port maintener. ;)

[trwnh]

While revisiting this... Isn't the public timeline essentially exposed via /api/v1/timelines/public with the local parameter? Is there anything technical that remains, or does it just need to be implemented in the Mastodon web-app? I am inclined to assume the latter, since Tootdon has the ability to browse local timelines.

[wxcafe]

Instances that are up to date have their federated timelines displayed on the about page now anyways. I'm pretty sure this is implementable as a column but as said in the discussion there's no real benefit to it and it's easy to work around it for now. Closing.

[gegeweb]

@wxcafe
Did I miss something?
I just upgraded to version 1.0.0-beta.2, and I don't see the federated timeline on the about page.

[Cassolotl]

Public timelines on /about pages was added in 1.5, in August 2017, if that helps?

[gegeweb]

@wxcafe @Cassolotl shame on me! I'ts a mistake. I confused it with Peertube. ;)
I do have the public timeline on the about page of my Mastodon instance!

Sorry for the noise.

[Cassolotl]

@gegeweb No worries! :)

[arilando]

Why has this completely obvious feature not been added yet? Is there an app for desktop that has this feature?

[remram44]

@arilando keep in mind that Mastodon is an open-source project being provided to you for free. Please understand that no one owes you anything, and if this isn't here yet, it's because no one got around to making it. Feel free to help.

[BasixKOR]

I'm wondering why this issue has been closed. It is not available until now... The new public timeline feature in /about is not a local timeline. It is federated, and I want to see local timeline (or remote timeline).

[trwnh]

Yeah, /about shows a federated timeline. Perhaps it would be possible to run a bot that boosted all toots on the local timeline, and point it toward a user named @[email protected]? But that depends on each instance admin or some user there doing so. You could also reserve the username local and disallow signups with that name, but that could lead to conflicts.

Personally I'm not too concerned with "local timeline discussions could be fractured across multiple instances" because they basically already are, by virtue of federation. The only exception is if there are posts in e.g. a fork that allows for local-only posts that don't federate.

[Tagadda]

The public timeline in /about is configurable. It's up to the admin to choose between Local, Federated, or no timeline.

[MichaelTunnell]

@wxcafe

I'm pretty sure this is implementable as a column but as said in the discussion there's no real benefit to it and it's easy to work around it for now. Closing.

I could not disagree more!

There is no benefit to it? I am on the main mastodon.social instance and I would like to see the timeline of a smaller instance and interact with that. Going to the website of that instance and reading the latest in the about section without having the ability to interact with it is not very useful at all.

I would like to interact with another instance more so than the main instance I am on. I joined before this smaller instance existed so I dont want to lose what I already have but I would like to interact with this instance as well. Right now, I can only interact directly with people of the instance or look at the incredibly cluttered federated timeline.

The local timeline of mastodon.social is just as cluttered as the entire federated timeline so I'd like to see the timeline of another instance that is focused on a topic that I am interested in. Right now, this is just not possible and thus this thread should not be closed, in my opinion.

[deni]

How can this issue be closed? This is really useful.

[Scrxtchy]

It was closed 4 months ago

[deni]

And so what? The feature has not been implemented and looking at the about page of the instance is just a really ugly hack.

[Scrxtchy]

Ask for it to be opened, not closed

[remram44]

@DSDeniso see #6942

[edit: 4 messages in 10 minutes, in a thread watched by hundreds. Come on man, stop the spam]

[deni]

@Scrxtchy Sorry. I was unclear. What I meant was "how come this issue has been closed".

[deni]

@remram44 Are you sure that was the reason that this issue was closed?

[crashb]

As a relatively new user, I'd like to weigh in: this functionality seems absolutely crucial! I think it's reasonable to say that each person who joins Mastodon will have multiple interests. From what I've seen, each Mastodon instance can only cater to a subset of those interests! In a perfect world, there might be an instance that's perfectly tailored to an individual's interests, but realistically this seems very unlikely.

As a (fictitious) example, let's say I'm a new user interested in movies. I sign up for an account at movies.social (or whatever). I'm also interested in video games, so I'd like to engage with the users on games.social (or whatever) - but now I discover I can't do that without visiting the incredibly cluttered Federated timeline, which shows me posts on every conceivable topic! Of course, I could make another account on games.social, but I'd lose my profile and followers, and _requiring_ users to create multiple accounts for their varied interests strikes me as a counter-intuitive design decision.

Being able to browse other instances' local timelines seems like the simplest and most intuitive solution to this problem. I'd urge the developers to take another look at this issue!

[naught101]

It would be good if the default behaviour of the preview on the About page was set to show only local toots. As it stands, if I visit any random instance, nearly all of them show the federated timeline, which is very similar on many instances, so I get basically the same thing on each, and don't get any feel for the local culture.

Another option might be to show two separate previews on the about page.

Is this the place to discuss this, or does it make more sense to open a separate issue?

[arilando]

Why exactly is this labeled closed?

[eloquence]

@wxcafe closed it and provided a rationale, but I agree with the earlier comments that a more convenient view of remote instances' timelines from your home instance would be a great feature to encourage exploration and to help users discover communities, users and posts. As it is, you have to use hacks like http://www.unmung.com/mastoview for this purpose.

It looks like issue #6942 is still open which discusses a similar idea, so there may be no need to re-open this issue.

[Noxmiles]

So, can I View other instances Local Timeline now or why is it closed?

[Scrxtchy]

Use your eyes and find out! 📄 👀

[tmladek]

I'd like to add my voice to the people saying this is definitely a feature worth implementing; it doesn't make sense for me to create a separate account on each of the instances that I'm interested in just so I am able to see what they publish. That's not how federation is supposed to work.

[dmend]

I also want to add to the dogpile. I think implementing this feature would enhance the usability of Mastodon as a whole. The alternative of creating a new account on every instance you're interested in is a terrible user experience.

[bobcanthelpyou]

I love that feature, it is already implemented in the Mastalab Android client, it is possible to 'follow' other instances to browse the other public timelines and interact with all those amazing toots. Could suggest the client on Android https://gitlab.com/tom79/mastalab/

But i miss that feature within the desktop browser, too. It is really annoying to open the public timeline of another instance and can't interact with the toots. So sad :(

[ealgase]

Going to also add support and say that this is still important and (probably) easy to implement.

[mattcoxonline]

I notice that https://mastodon.social/public exists showing the Federated timeline.

You could use the same layout / format and create https://mastodon.social/local which then shows posts from that instance.

[MichaelTunnell]

@mattcoxonline this would be an improvement and some instances have a local timeline listed on their About pages . . . it is still rather worthless from the user perspective because I want to use it in my dashboard rather than having to go to each instance separately, that's a rather ancient method of consumption at this point.