So Manu is turning his digital input dial down to zero this month. That means no podcasts, no movies, no RSS feeds, and so on… for the entire month. I’m not doing that. But! Reading his post inspired me to finally run my own experiment that I’ve thought about for a while: a social timeline do-over. The idea is pretty simple.
- Unfollow everyone across Bluesky and the fediverse.
- Enjoy the quiet for a month. No social timeline.
That’s it! If I miss hearing from folks after the experiment, maybe I’ll start following them again. Or maybe I will be content reading blogs. We’ll see.
I performed The Great Unfollowing a couple of days before June started, so I’ve had about a week and a half without a social timeline now. So far, I do not miss it at all. Maybe it’s because I still hear from most folks via their blogs. It’s just a little quieter. Calmer. I like it!
Here’s the script I used to unfollow around 1,300 accounts on Micro.blog.
unfollow-en-masse.js:
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// A naive script to unfollow multiple users in batch on Micro.blog. Modify as
// needed and run it from your browser's console, but only if you understand all
// the source code below!
// Replace this example array with the list of usernames you want to unfollow.
// Do not include a leading @. To get a JSON file of all your followers:
// https://micro.blog/users/following/[your username here]
const USERNAMES_TO_UNFOLLOW = [
'johndoe',
'jane@doe.example.com'
];
// Micro.blog is rate-limited to 300 requests per minute. We should be fine,
// though, as we're awaiting each unfollow to finish. As long as the response
// time is slower than 200 ms per request, we're within the limit. I averaged
// around 450 ms per request.
(async () => {
let lastFetch = new Date();
for (const username of USERNAMES_TO_UNFOLLOW) {
const now = new Date();
console.log(`Elapsed time since last fetch: ${now - lastFetch} ms.`);
lastFetch = now;
await fetch(`https://micro.blog/users/unfollow?username=${username}`, {
method: 'POST'
})
.then(() => {
console.log(`unfollowed ${username}`);
});
}
})();
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P.S. This post is my contribution to June’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Nick Simson.
