Fediverse client Phanpy is great, and one of the reasons I’ve given in a shoutout a few times already is that it combines the regular vertical feed with horizontal feeds, to make distinctions between types of content.

What Phanpy does, is to take all the boosted posts in your feed, and relegate them to a ‘carousel’. The carousel is a horizontally scrolling feed that intersperses the regularly scrolling horizontal feed. This creates a distinction between posts by the accounts I follow and posts that are boosted into my timeline. Posts by the accounts that I follow stand out more, and I read them all when I scroll through my timeline. Boosted posts are a bit less important to me, and I sometimes scroll past and skip the carousel if I have a little less time and only want to read the more important posts.

I think it is valuable to create distinction between different types of posts:

• Posts by my mutuals are the most important, and I don’t want to miss those.
• Posts by accounts I follow is something I try to keep up with.
• Boosted posts are interesting, I want to see most of them but I’m okay if I don’t see all of them.
• Followed hashtag posts are not a priority, and I don’t mind if I don’t check those for a few days.

By relegating boosts to a separate horizontal feed, it becomes easier for me to prioritise, and make sure that I see the posts by the accounts I follow. As a result I sometimes do not see all boosted posts, but thats fine with me. I would like have the same with posts that I only see because of the hashtag that I follow, those posts are not a priority either, and I think it would be nice if they are also placed in the carousel.