No matter which sort you use (except for new), content is recommended to you by activity. Depending on the sort (active, hot, top) it uses a slightly different mixture of votes/comments/time since post to determine the order.
The only exception is scaled, which boosts a little bit midsized communities, but still doesnāt manage to improve visibility of niche ones.
If lemmy is to truly start having active hobbyist communities instead of being 95% lefty US politics, Shitposts, and some tech stuff, it needs a sort that takes into account the userās engagement.
For example, if I upvote / comment often in a community, there should be an option to have posts from the community be boosted in my feed, even if itās a tiny community.
Letās say Iām subscribed to !world@lemmy.world and !news@lemmy.world because I want to occasionally see news. However, Iām also subscribed to a couple hundred other communities, some of them who donāt manage to get more than a couple upvotes on their biggest posts. And whenever I see them Iām replying/upvoting because Iām passionate about that topic.
My feed shouldnāt be 95% c/news and c/world because those are the most upvoted and commented. I shouldnāt have to scroll down hundreds of posts to find ābigā posts in small communities I interact with at any opportunity I get.
Thatās why I think it would be beneficial to lemmy if the sort/algorithm took into account your engagement in a way.
It doesnāt have to be complicated, you can have a single number āengagement scoreā for every community calculated with a basic formula, and that number is used as a boost to the community.
Iām aware that there are some examples of successful niche communities on lemmy. But thatās mainly because either a significant chunk of the lemmy userbase is into that niche (letās face it the lemmy community is not a representative sample of the world population, we tend to be very similar people), or because the posts on it are simplified image/video type posts which appeal to people who donāt know much about the subject.
Try Quiblr. Itās a lemmy client with exactly the features you ask for. It checks your engagement, and filters and sorts your feed based on what it learned from your habits.
Weird question, but does it not have a Subscribed view? I canāt find it anywhere
Just replying here with the community link !quiblr@lemmy.world
because it doesnāt seem to be federated with my instance, it will once I subscribe though.
Can I use it on Android?
I havenāt tried it, but I think itās on android. Might be a PWA, not sure.