Consider this alternative to the local timeline

[Freeplayg]

https://mastodon.social/@cassidyjames/108167074237232537

Under the Search (probably better named “Discover”) tab, have either:
• A list of popular accounts from your instance
and/or
• Recent top posts from your instance
The idea being to encourage discovery of things on your instance while not immediately overwhelming users.

Maybe it could be interesting to offer a local instance tab, but I think it gets super out of hand on all but the smallest of servers. It’s just SO much noise. Instead, encourage people to discover and follow other people from their own instance so it shows up on Home.

I think this is also in line with what I have heard from the Mastodon team, which is that you should follow people if you want them to show up in your feed. So this feels like a middle ground where you hand-hold finding the right people to follow.

[Xabellee]

It seems that they only want to make another Twitter.

[realpixelcode]

Why do we need to focus on the home server's content at all? Isn't the entire point of Mastodon being able to communicate with other servers? Focusing on the home server undermines this.

[Gargron]

Worth noting that the linked suggestion describes something we were supposed to have in this app and do have in the iOS app; we released our app a few weeks earlier than planned due to the increased attention on Mastodon because of potential Twitter ownership changes, and this feature slipped through the cracks: After you sign-up, you are supposed to be prompted with follow recommendations in your language. Those are sourced from accounts that have the most followers on your server.

[spicewiesel]

Why do we need to focus on the home server's content at all? Isn't the entire point of Mastodon being able to communicate with other servers? Focusing on the home server undermines this.

I know many people joining different servers especially for the server's topic. The've got an account on a roleplaying/d&d instance and another one to use on a local (like your city's) one. Using the fediverse that way local timelines are the feature you want.

[humrochagf]

+1 to have local tl with single click access and I would consider having federated tl at least available inside the search

[marcofaion]

+1 to have local and federated tl accessible with one click (like a tab). Thanks

[dermoth]

I know many people joining different servers especially for the server's topic. The've got an account on a roleplaying/d&d instance and another one to use on a local (like your city's) one. Using the fediverse that way local timelines are the feature you want.

I beg to disagree, having multiple accounts should not be the norm - it's an option, and quite a valid one if you want to follow very specific topics intensively, but I should also be able to use a single account for everything.

I can easily open almost any server's local tl from the browser so this is fine, but from the app I should be also able to get to any server's tl and see the posts, or at least any open server (I believe there is a locked down mode that could block this, and having foreign tl directly accessible from your local server is likely a different topic and may require backend changes...)

P.S. Whatever the OP proposed wasn't this, and isn't even clear either, so I'm tempted to open a new issue to propose having either a way to access a foreign server's local tl or to filter the global timeline to a specific server (but then if I'm not mistaken I would only see foreign posts being followed locally, not the entire tl for that server. Or maybe follow servers in lists, which could make even more sense if we end up with many servers covering similar topics (but then lists aren't even available in the app yet).

[nemobis]

This recommender system was already implemented in the "explore" tab, wasn't it? #8 (comment) If so, this issue should be closed. However, see mastodon/mastodon#18128 which asks the opposite.