Pretty neat! If you're on mastodon.social (or another server running the latest in-development version of Mastodon), you can go to the Explore page eg. https://mastodon.social/explore/links and view posts that discuss trending news articles (see the "X posts" below the headline link).

via https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/112729592397936855

#mastodon #SocialMedia #news #design #UXUI

@stefan Wasn't the whole point of this NOT having an stupid ragebaiting algorithm on top ?

@hashraydamon I wouldn't necessarily compare this to the kind of algorithms used on corporate social media, it really is more of a shortcut to regular search, it just saves you having to copy the article URL and pasting it into the search box.

But I hear you, I am curious to see if this has any potential of abuse.

@hashraydamon I guess you could argue that this does make it easier to start random fights with strangers. Well, this is not yet officially released, so we'll be able to observe the impact.

@stefan I mean just look at it

@hashraydamon Yeah, maybe it would be enough to just show the number of posts, for added context, and just not link to them?

@stefan @hashraydamon eh, idk, like you said: this is just an auto-search for the urls being posted frequently. it doesn’t seem significantly different than the list of current hashtags. maybe i’m missing something but it doesn’t rly get my hackles up as far as algorithmic manipulation.

Mastodon wants to be nothing more than a Twitter clone.

@kapuzenhund I've said in another thread that linking to the posts may not be necessary, or maybe even the best idea, but I do like seeing the numbers, personally. They provide context, and make Mastodon feel a bit more social. (To each their own though!)

@EmperorHenry I was referring to the "45 posts" label, but yeah, the Twitter rebranding makes using that format a bit confusing nowadays.

@stefan What counts as a “news article”?

@greytheearthling Great question!

I believe this can be any link, really, it's just typically news. Server administrators can also moderate these.

Here's a bit more about this: https://fedi.tips/where-are-the-trending-posts-and-hashtags-on-mastodon/