[danabramov]

I realize that we might be arguing over definitions here, but to me part of the experience of Twitter-like conversation is seeing other replies appear in real time even when they’re not directed at me — same as how you’ve noticed this thread on HN.

Seeing the existing convo in real time lets me decide which points to engage with and which have been explored, and to navigate between branches as they evolve in real time (some of which my friends participate in). I do earnestly navigate hundreds of times within an active thread — maybe it’s not your usage pattern but some of us do enjoy a realtime conversation with dozens of people (or at least observing one). There’s also something to the fact that I know others will observe the same consistent conversation state at the time I’m observing it.

You might not consider such an experience important to a product you’re designing, but you’re clearly taking a technological limitation and inventing a product justification to it. If Mastodon didn’t already have this peculiarity, you wouldn’t be discussing it since replies appearing in realtime would just seem normal.

In either case, whether you see it as a problem to be solved or not, it is a meaningful difference in the experiences of Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon — with both Twitter and Bluesky delivering it.

[shadowgovt]

(update: it turns out fetching all the discussion posts is now supported in Mastodon v4.4. https://mastodon.exitmusic.world/@james/115147206129637513)

[shadowgovt]

Oh, that's supported (though the UX is not really ideal): if they're not on the same server as you, you can navigate to the post on its host server and you'll see all replies there. To join the conversation, you can hit reply on one of the posts and you'll get a UI popup to route you back to your own server to respond from there.

It's definitely not as clean as a centralized solution though.

[hoidofyolen]

This kind of UX is the main reason I personally dont use Mastodon. It's just not intuitive