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The solution was always: provide several algos on top of chronological order, and let people choose.

Client side Algo cannot be implemented because the API does not give you enough controls (I know, I have written Mastodon clients)

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If you can get the messages, you can run a client-side algorithm - just download everything in the last 24 hours or whatever, and algorithmically choose what to display in what order.

That's a huge waste of resources on the client side. If every client does that it will bring the servers to their knees.

While I agree with you, technically everything can be done with API, but what are the bottle neck of just have everything accessing a db table directly? Cutting out the http API middle man?

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