Turning Minds Newsfeed Into Your Personal Pleasure Cruise (updated)....
NOTE: I SLIPPED IN TO UPDATE THIS AND FOUND THAT THE GRAPHICS HAD EVAPORATED.
I HAVE LEFT IT PUBLIC SO THE MINDS CODERS CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST. I'LL REPOST WHEN IT'S UPDATED AND THE GRAPHICS HAVE REAPPEARED.... :)
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Arguably more than any place on social media, Minds if you know the tricks becomes what you ask it to be. Great news therefore: our uber-annoying Minds Newsfeed has a plethora of controls, in two sets.
Facebook, by contrast, bases its choices in founder Mark Zuckerberg's whims. While, thanks to spyware, Facebook knows exactly what you like, whom you want to hear and who wants to hear you, its algorithms set your newsfeed up to enhance Facebook's profit and Zuck's political stances at the expense of what you, your friends and your followers want.
Minds developers do not spy on or intrude in our choices. They forge tools, give them to us, and let us build. Granted, precisely because the Minds admins aren't intervening , unless you take charge, the random Minds Newsfeed that confronts you when you first get here remains a repulsive non-reflection of the world of options that we draw from on Minds.
Minds' fierce dedication to free speech does have drawbacks, centered right there. You consequently not only can, but are well advised to, shape your Newsfeed to your exact specs. Using those two sets of controls, you can transform your feed and to a remarkable degree your Minds experience. No one will fool with or can ignore your settings:
THE FIRST SET OF CONTROLS IS ON THE NEWSFEED PAGE ITSELF: At the top of the page is a "Speak your Mind" box for your posts. The first line of controls is directly under that blank rectangular box. To the right on it, there's a gear icon -- Settings. Click it to get the pulldown menu that you see on the right below.
SELECT CATEGORIES on that menu that interest you, like art, politics or nature.
CONTROL THE SCROLL. The Newsfeed "auto-rotates", that is, it constantly scrolls forward as new posts are added. Annoying, right? Turn auto-rotate OFF. (Now, as you edit, you can handscroll or use the back arrow < in order to go back a post, the forward arrow > to go forward a post. The Newsfeed won't jolt out from under you. Whew.)
OPEN/EXPLICIT: No one sees your Newsfeed but you. No one is keeping tabs. What do you want done with politically Controversial and/or sexually Explicit posts? You have three potential settings:
1) DEFAULT: In order to reach you over mobile, Minds had to agree to set up a category that is censored according to the policies of Apple (iPhone) and Google (Android). In effect this is rated "G".
2) OPEN: All topics explored, tasteful nudity but no sexually explicit content.
3) EXPLICIT: No holds barred except child porn.
BOOSTED: means that you'll receive promoted material even from people to whom you have not subscribed, although your filters will be respected. Then you can mute notifications or block those channels (people) that you don't want them. All of these settings can be changed later if you wish.
Minds Plus ($5 a month) gives you more controls, including Hide Boost.
THE SECOND SET OF NEWSTREAM CONTROLS IS ON EVERY MINDS POST.
On every Minds post, the poster's icon (in this case, a lightbulb) is at top left. Tap on the poster's icon once, and you get an option to Subscribe to the poster's channel. Subscribing to a channel -- to a specific poster -- keeps the posts on that channel flowing into your Newsfeed. If you find an excellent channel, go there, take side trips into the channels that it's sharing. You'll probably find many posters you like. Subscribe to them too.
Tap the icon twice and you'll go through to the channel itself, where you can explore.
Blocking cuts off ALL notifications on your Newsfeed from the poster that you designate and prevents comments from that channel's owner on your posts. That person can still see what you're posting but can react only by posting something new on that person's channel not by interacting with yours. It's very important on Minds to subscribe to intelligent, calm people who disagree with you. No mind grows in an echo chamber. Being open to others' opinions though doesn't mean letting your channel and comment lines get jammed by ranters and trolls.
Blocking on reminded posts is trickier....
WORKING WITH POSTS THAT HAVE BEEN SHARED ("REMINDED")
Often of course, you're working with a graphic or an article that one channel originated and others "reminded" (passed along). That changes the effect of some of your Newsfeed controls. In the example below, @n0SumGm shared a post from @WhiteRabbit of a friendly bearded man suggesting, "What if nobody was president and we could just all try real hard to be cool?"."
If you yourself opt to Remind the post, it will be sent from your channel as White Rabbit's post being shared by you, with no reference to anyone who had previously shared it....as you would expect.
When a post has been reminded though you can see two icons in the upper lefthand corner. Clicking on the lower icon, the channel where the post originated, you could subscribe and/or go to that channel, White Rabbit's. The icon of the person who most recently reminded the post is always the upper icon of the two. If you click on the upper icon, you can subscribe and/or go to that sharer's channel.
WHEN SOMEONE YOU BLOCKED IS REMINDED BY SOMEONE YOU LIKE
Blocking is not as simple as reminding once multiply-shared posts are in the mix, and it's occasionally crucial. Minds itself does not censor what people can post except to flatly prohibit kiddie porn. Instead, it is forging tools so that we can decide what we see and hear in our chosen channels.
Say for sake of illustration that you in fact hate innocuous-friendly-bearded-old-men-with-cheerful-messages-about-being-cool posts -- and never want to see one again. Yet "Block" (activated from the upper righthand corner of the friendly-old-man post) will block ONLY the channel of the last person who shared the post. That will do nothing to block the originator of the post, the source of this friendly-old-man.
Okay, you figure. Okay. Block the original poster by going to his or her channel?
Well, sort of. You've got to take additional steps.
Blocking White Rabbit's channel would indeed keep White Rabbit from posting kind-old-bearded-men in your newsfeed, but would not keep the same kind-old-bearded-man posts from being reminded on your newsfeed by anyone to whom White Rabbit and you are both subscribed.
Moreover if the kind-old-man post pops up in groups that you're in, only the group administrator can block them. Which doesn't really matter with kind old man posts. White Rabbit's reasonable. You could have just asked. What though if you're trying to block the post of, not a reasonable community member, but a spammer -- or some off-the-wall porn that you're seeing even though your Explicit and Open options are both set to OFF, Hide Boost is ON, and you're wearing opaque glasses? You'll need to find, then block or mute the notifications of both the one who posted it and all those who remind it where you could see it, and negotiate with any group administrators along the way. That's rare but it's good to know how to do it.
Whether that complex process is sufficient or necessary has lately been a topic of discussion on Minds. If you have an opinion, voice it calmly on Help and Support. The Minds coders, with a To Do list that could sink ships, are incrementally troubleshooting the blocking problem....
DISCERNING RESPONSE
Meanwhile, before you mute, block or subscribe to anyone, do click on the person's icon and scroll, carefully looking at the channel, to see if the post that you liked or didn't like was typical of that channel, of that poster. If you're still steamed, you can block from inside the channel. Just scroll down to the word Subscribe and click the gear wheel beside it, then click Block.
If the channel's instead rich, funny and fascinating, then give the channel owner a boost by Subscribing, wiring points, Boosting a post, Reminding a post, commenting, or simply clicking Thumbs Up as you scroll through his or her channel. The driving force on the user end of Minds is composed of the friendships forming, our knowledge sharing and our increasingly discerning, active response....
Enjoy.
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Seven other blog posts I've written about various aspects of life on Minds:
Dragon's Interactive Treasure Trove of Resources for Learning and Using Minds.com
Culture Shock: From Facebook To Minds
Hey Folks! How To Be a Useful User On Minds In Beta
Your Special Powers On Minds Over Internet Trolls
Easy User Workarounds While Minds Coders Construct The Future
The Best Places to Make Suggestions, Ask Questions -- And get Answers -- About Minds
Are Paid Trolls Trying to Divide and Smear Revolutionary Minds.Com Before Its Launch?