As previously announced, live feeds are now disabled on our servers by default.

[untilted@social.lol]

@staff Surely you can provide a better experience on your server by moderating the users who regularly post spam and other offending content on the live feeds a little better instead of having to resort to disabling the live feeds...

[rebekahwsd@mastodon.social]

@staff I use to use the everything everywhere feed, but more like how one views an extremely fast moving river, it was for watching it all scroll by and not really absorb.

[staff@mastodon.social]

@untilted We certainly do, but the live feeds on mastodon.social are things posted in the last few seconds, it is essentially a pre-moderation view.

It is neither the best way for newcomers to find their community, nor much use to many established users. If people want to drink straight from the firehose, they can, but we do not recommend it.

[untilted@social.lol]

@staff to be fair one can say the same about the Trending feed, in the sense that it features a pretty homogeneous side of Mastodon that focuses on the same subjects over and over (e.g. exclusive focus on U.S. issues, technology, cats when people have other pets or none at all, etc.) and this can discourage people with more varied interests or lived experiences beyond that. We should be encouraging more diversity of interests beyond those things. The Trending feed does not sufficiently do that, despite the lack of an algorithm.

(this is kind of tangential to my earlier point about moderation, but I still feel it is worth mentioning)

[ranx@mastodon.social]

@staff if it weren't for all the sport bots that jam the feed it'd have been cool to keep seeing it

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@staff

It may be a non-moderated stream, and it may be a fire hose, but it is still people and topics and events that happen in real time. I used it often to see an unfiltered view.

Users already had a choice about it being seen or not by its own toggle.

I get it that you want some degree of safety by having ample time to moderate -but- you know a users sign-up date, and if they have histories of being reported, so why not have a threshold of some kind before including new users in the feed?

[lumiworx@mastodon.social]

@staff

Thank you... I assume it's a new wrinkle that understandably takes time for adjustments and smoothing out.

[davemasondotme@mastodon.social]

@staff

Well damn. I found out about this the hard way. 🙁

https://mastodon.social/@DaveMasonDotMe/116015411664635183

[davemasondotme@mastodon.social]

@staff
For what it's worth, I browsed the Local/Federated timelines regularly. (I primarily use a desktop browser with the Advanced Web Interface enabled and in Slow mode.)

Yeah, there was a lot of 'junk' in there. But there was a lot of good too. (If we'd had the ability to mute all automated/bot accounts, it would have been an even better experience...for me, anyway.)

https://mastodon.social/@DaveMasonDotMe/115709594590493795

[gnaddrig@mastodon.social]

@staff
Great, that's my main way of using Mastodon switched off. I don't like the trending feed because that just amplifies the same accounts everybody knows already.

Now, how would I even find stuff that is not currently trending? Serendipity is dead around here, I guess. A pity.

[mrskycar@mastodon.social]

@staff There has to be a better way to filter for bots and still have a live feed towards breaking chatter that is not dependent on manual refreshes.

[davesmeg@mastodon.social]

@DaveMasonDotMe @staff
So did I.
I like to scroll the world feed a while. Occasionally I'll find something new there.

I guess it's time to migrate again.

[davesmeg@mastodon.social]

@staff
Anybody know of another server to migrate to where the live feed is still active and won't be removed that I could migrate to?

[westsibe@mastodon.social]

@staff , please enable Local Timeline at @westsibe (Local Timeline is empty now 😣)

[sam@break3.social]

@staff@mastodon.social This seems really strange especially as there's not really many other solutions to finding lots of content on the fediverse and picking out 'useful' / wanted content.

Well I don't use mastodon.social or mastodon.online directly the feed is helpful as I use an alt to mute accounts I really don't want to see and then I pick out accounts and content I do want to see and push them to my instance.

Is there anything that could be used to do this instead of one of the biggest instances in the Fediverse? How does a small instance actually get more content on it if not by finding the majority of it on instances like yours?

[morb@mastodon.social]

@staff howdy! is this something I can opt-in or opt-out of through settings? I'd like to be able to view the firehose.

[staff@mastodon.social]

@sam We can grant access to the live feeds for anyone who wants it.

https://www.fediscovery.org/ is particularly intended to help ensure small instances will be able to find content without having to bear the load of consuming a full relay with larger servers.

[sibshops@mastodon.online]

@staff I wonder if there is another reason too. Like to stop AI scrapers.

[mcslibinas@mastodon.social]

@staff @untilted live feeds was much cleaner than home tab. At least there was no porn in live feeds.

[mxjaygrant@triangletoot.party]

@staff Maybe if y'all actually moderated your server instead of failing to do your jobs you wouldn't have to turn off features that people use and enjoy

Have you tried that instead?