Shorter-term improvements (certain or likely)
Problem: You can’t quote posts
Solution: The Mastodon team is working on quote posts – announcement on 2024-10-08:
Now that 4.3 is done, our focus for the next release will be on implementing the highly requested features of quote posts [...]
Problem: You don’t see all replies
This is one of Mastodon’s biggest weaknesses at the moment: When you are on your server and visit a post from another server, you only see the replies that your server is aware of. To get a full picture of a conversation, you have to go to the other server. Thankfully, help is on the way:
Pull request: “Fetch All Replies v2 – Service Edition”
Problem: On other servers, you only see part of a profile’s data
This weakness is related to the previous one: If you look at a profile from another server through your server:
You only see the posts that your server has stored locally.
Pull request with a fix: “Add: Backfill old posts on first follow of account”
You only see followers and followees that your server is aware of.
Discussion about this issue is ongoing (e.g. here). It’s unclear if and when this will be fixed.
Problem: no global search and algorithms
Mastodon now does have full-text search and an algorithm (the “Explore” section of the user interface) but those only have a local perspective of the Fediverse and are therefore limited – especially on small servers.
How do we fix that? We need search engines for the Fediverse. Those can provide global search and algorithms for global discovery. In a way, that’s what Bluesky’s Relays are: They crawl all Bluesky accounts, as hosted by Personal Data Servers.
The project “Fediverse Discovery Providers” is working on the foundations for Fediverse search engines: “This project explores the possibilities for better search and discovery on the Fediverse in the form of an optional, pluggable service. This service should be decentralized, independent of any one specific Fediverse service and respect user choice and privacy.”
On Bluesky, you can create and share custom algorithms. That would be a neat feature to have for Discovery Providers.
Problem: You can’t schedule posts
Mastodon servers can already schedule posts but that functionality is currently not exposed in the web app and Mastodon’s official native apps. I don’t know what Mastodon’s plans are but it seems like user interface support would be added eventually(?)