@manton Can we please get link previews instead of images for articles auto-shared via RSS on the Micro.blog Timeline over to Bluesky and the Micro.blog ActivityPub viewed from Mastodon? As it is Micro.blog deemphasizes links by not even showing the full URL but showing images instead from the link makes the issue worse. More so when it pulls multiple images from the post. The link feels like the lowest priority then. :(
@moonmehta We added the images in cross-posting because people asked for it, because otherwise if you are mostly photo-blogging it doesn't look great on other platforms if there's just a link preview. We could adjust it to try to detect if it's more like an essay post and not a photo post (more text than photos).
@manton Is the ratio of people positing primarily photos inside titled posts more than those writing essays and articles? I would be surprised if so because I thought people post pictures directly as microposts more often. In any case, I’d at least like an option to show link previews or at least full URLs. As a writer who frequently publishes information-dense articles, it honestly seems like Micro.blog does everything but focus on longform links.
@moonmehta I haven't measured it, but that would definitely be interesting to know. Photo posts with titles are most often from WordPress or other external systems.
@manton One can argue that if you have link previews instead of images, people posting photos inside titled posts still get a visual preview at least. But vice versa is not true. Links currently get negative focus in some cases and barely neutral in others.
Also, do people who post via WordPress but don’t crosspost outnumber those who do? My guess is yes because Micro.blog offers WordPress as a free joining option.
@moonmehta I think Micro.blog hosting outnumbers our WordPress users, but I haven't looked closely in a while. Perhaps we optimized the wrong thing. Or maybe it needs to be a preference.