Solved Manually set location preference

[bencodesall]

Well, I don't know what to say @Hadden89 , but here's my settings ...

[bencodesall]

And cookie settings are pretty locked-down. Will purge and reply with result. Thanks for the

[bencodesall]

Nope ... still wrong hemisphere ...

[Ayespy]

@bencodesall So weird...

[bencodesall]

Maybe theres some filtering based off of cookies that happens on the backend, but since I'm ZERO TPC it's messing with it. I put in a bug/feature request.

[bencodesall]

I've also set macOS to allow location sharing to Vivaldi in System Prefs ... ¯l_(ツ)_l¯ ???

[Hadden89]

@bencodesall oh, you meant mastodon (please always be clear with screenshots/affected sites). Try to check if there is a locale switch into the setting. We can only presume en-us is your wanted locale. Locked cookies settings might cause strange quirks, but probably you already know. Unsure if mastodon use 3rd parties to store locales.

[bencodesall]

@Hadden89 Ummm ... not sure what you mean by

Oh you meant mastadon ...

Can you clarify, plz ...?

Also, you can see that my accepted languages (per screenshot above) are en, en-US if that's what you are referring to.

[Hadden89]

@bencodesall you meant vivaldi social/mastodon. Never mentioned it clearly. It was deducted by screenshots.

[bencodesall]

@Hadden89 regarding ...

Locked cookies settings might cause strange quirks, but probably you already know. Unsure if mastodon use 3rd parties to store locales.

That's why I put in a bug/feature request. Don't think cookies should dictate what locales I'm fluent in. Browser should allow me to drop non-locale relevant feeds arbitrarily.

[Hadden89]

@bencodesall that's a total valid point

[bencodesall]

@Hadden89 No worries though. I am working on being a better communicator, and sometimes clarity isn't my strong suite. I welcome your grace in this regard. Thanks in advance.

[Hadden89]

@bencodesall No problem. That's why screenshots are important... to overcome language barriers (also I'm not english mothertounge so I'll likely do mistakes)

[Pathduck]

@bencodesall Local in Mastodon does not mean what you think it does.

"Mind that “local” here refers to the server, not to a geographical location."
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/network/

"Your Home timeline shows you posts from people that you follow, similar to Twitter. The Local timeline shows posts from all users in your server, while the Federated timeline shows you all public posts from users that people in your server follow."
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/24/what-is-mastodon/

It even clearly states so at the top of the Local timeline:
"These are the most recent public posts from people whose accounts are hosted by vivaldi.net."

This has nothing to do with the browser, something you'd have seen if you had tested in other browsers.

If you want to filter languages you can't read, do so in preferences/other. Note that this doesn't always work well, because the server can't always know the language of every post unless the user has specified it.

I guess the Japanese Vivaldi community is very active on VS. Learn to love an international community

[bencodesall]

@Pathduck That is super helpful.

[DoctorG]

@bencodesall That was irritating for me, too, when i started at mastodon; i thought Local was meant in terms of geolocation, in my area.

[bencodesall]

So @Pathduck ... this means that it's a organic feature of the vivaldi.net service then? Or better said an effect of the organic user signup process within the "mastadon" framework as it historically emerged on vivaldi.net?

I mean, ok ... so there's a large international community on here. That's great. But it also means that nearly everything I'm seeing in "Local", (at least to my reading eyes) is utterly meaningless to me. Local seems an unfortunate name ... feel like "server" is more semantically terse and conveys the intent much better, but ... ¯l_(ツ)_l¯ .

Makes me kind of sad, because I really like everything else about vivaldi.net. Was hoping this new model of social network could be relevant for me. But if my social "feed" is only tied (or fed/filtered) by actual location of the server and what language-group dominates it, then I'm forever beholden to useless information (again ... to me) ... because I don't speak said language.

[bencodesall]

Also, sorry to be such a noob at mastadon-ing. I guess I need to spend time reading the docs, but I drown in doc all day so ... not high on the list / it could be clearer in the one-sheet before actual account creating and diving in to this new "mastadon" world. Anyway ... thanks for all the help ... you helpful people.

[Pathduck]

@bencodesall said in Manually set location preference:

this means that it's a organic feature of the vivaldi.net service then? Or better said an effect of the organic user signup process within the "mastadon" framework as it historically emerged on vivaldi.net?

Mastodon is Mastodon - it's a web server software for "microblogging" or whatever they call it these days. When you sign up for Vivaldi Net you get access to this service, but it's not developed by Vivaldi (even though they do contribute code to the open source project). Mastodon started in 2016, Vivaldi Social only came about last year.

I mean, ok ... so there's a large international community on here. That's great. But it also means that nearly everything I'm seeing in "Local", (at least to my reading eyes) is utterly meaningless to me.

In Mastodon you don't follow users because they're "local" or "popular in your area" - you follow them because they are interesting/funny/useful to you.

The local/federated feeds are (IMO) mostly "useless", that's true especially on large instances with thousands of users. On small instances with just a few users then Local is great for finding interesting people. There's more good stuff under Explore I think as it shows "popular" posts, tags and news (more like Twitter I guess although I never used it...)

[hlehyaric]

@bencodesall Local Timeline is just posts from users on your Mastodon instance/server. It's not your feed. Home Timeline is. Start building your own feed, i.e follow accounts & hashtags, so posts you want to read will show up in your Home.

If you're new to Mastodon & the fediverse, take a look here. That's a useful guide to get around Mastodon & the fediverse. You can also follow @[email protected] from your Vivaldi Social account.