Comment by ekianjo
4 days ago
The solution was always: provide several algos on top of chronological order, and let people choose.
Client side Algo cannot be implemented because the API does not give you enough controls (I know, I have written Mastodon clients)
If you can get the messages, you can run a client-side algorithm - just download everything in the last 24 hours or whatever, and algorithmically choose what to display in what order.
That's a huge waste of resources on the client side. If every client does that it will bring the servers to their knees.
While I agree with you, technically everything can be done with API, but what are the bottle neck of just have everything accessing a db table directly? Cutting out the http API middle man?