>LinkLonk supports comment notifications ... can mute/follow individual branches
Great!
>how you would like to see it working
That's a difficult question. My primary focus is on the availability of discussions. Nevertheless, integrating LinkLonk in both directions with Mastodon should help with growth. There doesn't seem to be an algorithmic timeline, which LinkLonk could provide. Establishing LinkLonk as an integrated RSS Reader and ActivityPub Client could attract a bigger user base that makes calculating suggestions easier.
What ActivityPub can bring to new social networks like LinkLonk is the ability to share the comment section with various other providers. E.g. RSS readers or annotating browser plugins can pool their comments in one place to have an active discussion even if each tool has a small user number.
However, pooling discussions is generally avoided:
1. When there is a dupe on HN, the discussion in the old submission is not continued.
2. There exist various aggregators like lobste.rs, reddit.com/programming or tildes.net, that almost discuss the same articles as HN, but they are different communities.
3. Twitter and Mastodon could pool the replies to posts of the same url, but they don't.
The trivial approach for LinkLonk would be an integration with lemmy.ml and all Mastodon posts that discuss the same URL. That way, most posts would come with a discussion and LinkLonk instantly had a vibrant community.
With the pool-avoiding behavior in mind, some adjustments could be needed but I haven't figured out what that could be.
Great!
>how you would like to see it working
That's a difficult question. My primary focus is on the availability of discussions. Nevertheless, integrating LinkLonk in both directions with Mastodon should help with growth. There doesn't seem to be an algorithmic timeline, which LinkLonk could provide. Establishing LinkLonk as an integrated RSS Reader and ActivityPub Client could attract a bigger user base that makes calculating suggestions easier.
What ActivityPub can bring to new social networks like LinkLonk is the ability to share the comment section with various other providers. E.g. RSS readers or annotating browser plugins can pool their comments in one place to have an active discussion even if each tool has a small user number.
However, pooling discussions is generally avoided:
1. When there is a dupe on HN, the discussion in the old submission is not continued.
2. There exist various aggregators like lobste.rs, reddit.com/programming or tildes.net, that almost discuss the same articles as HN, but they are different communities.
3. Twitter and Mastodon could pool the replies to posts of the same url, but they don't.
The trivial approach for LinkLonk would be an integration with lemmy.ml and all Mastodon posts that discuss the same URL. That way, most posts would come with a discussion and LinkLonk instantly had a vibrant community.
With the pool-avoiding behavior in mind, some adjustments could be needed but I haven't figured out what that could be.