Actually, I think you’re spreading some false-hoods here.
I’ve spoken to the core-devs about this here, and they acknowledged that being able to follow people/users would be a generally good idea, but felt that it was a lot of work and so not a priority at the moment.
I’m with you on the desire of a platform the fuses the two general mechanisms (groups and users), and I think a groups-first platform like lemmy can bring something valuable to how a user’s feed would work … but the reality is that this sort of thing is just not in the fediverse’s DNA at the moment. These aren’t for-profit companies that need to wheel out features constantly to keep their stock price up!
There’s an exception to that though … friendica, hubzilla and streams, the sort of alternative timeline or “ancient magic” for the fediverse that predates ActivityPub and mastodon by long margins. They have clunky UIs, but are quite feature full, and happily combine both groups and users.
Hmmm, when did you talk about the topic? I’m just remembering info from some of the issues that popped out not long after the exodus so either my memory is messing with me (happens often tbh) or they got more flexible with time.
later than the exodus, probably earlier this year.
There’s a chance what you saw was in part the core devs being a bit cranky toward feature requests that come off a bit “demanding”. In my case I asked them how the felt about the idea.
Actually, I think you’re spreading some false-hoods here.
I’ve spoken to the core-devs about this here, and they acknowledged that being able to follow people/users would be a generally good idea, but felt that it was a lot of work and so not a priority at the moment.
I’m with you on the desire of a platform the fuses the two general mechanisms (groups and users), and I think a groups-first platform like lemmy can bring something valuable to how a user’s feed would work … but the reality is that this sort of thing is just not in the fediverse’s DNA at the moment. These aren’t for-profit companies that need to wheel out features constantly to keep their stock price up!
There’s an exception to that though … friendica, hubzilla and streams, the sort of alternative timeline or “ancient magic” for the fediverse that predates ActivityPub and mastodon by long margins. They have clunky UIs, but are quite feature full, and happily combine both groups and users.
Hmmm, when did you talk about the topic? I’m just remembering info from some of the issues that popped out not long after the exodus so either my memory is messing with me (happens often tbh) or they got more flexible with time.
later than the exodus, probably earlier this year.
There’s a chance what you saw was in part the core devs being a bit cranky toward feature requests that come off a bit “demanding”. In my case I asked them how the felt about the idea.
But that’s pretty much the standard answer to any suggestion for improvement.
Not sure how true that is. Either way, from what I’ve seen, fediverse platforms move slowly compared to what people would prefer.