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We conducted a two-part study with 21 Mastodon users: first, interviews exploring how they perceive and manage their feeds; and second, a design probe study using BRAIDS.SOCIAL, a web-based feed curation prototype informed by the first part of our initial findings. We learned how seamful design can increase people's trust in algorithmic curation, and surfaced trade-offs people navigate between machine learning-based and rule-based filtering approaches. We also identify a core design tension in decentralized platforms: whether to support personalization through new applications or extensions layered atop existing ones.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3757688","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]],"date-time":"2025-10-16T17:06:01Z","timestamp":1760634361000},"page":"1-25","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Understanding Decentralized Social Feed Curation on Mastodon"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"9","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6852-6218","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yuhan","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-3178-8091","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Emmy","family":"Song","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0008-2949-7379","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Owen Xingjian","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0002-0035-0978","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jewel","family":"Merriman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3584-6754","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lei","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4889-9484","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andr\u00e9s","family":"Monroy-Hern\u00e1ndez","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2303.08774"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3543507.3583487"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aaa1160"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3449152"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2015.00024"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_6_1","volume-title":"Workshop on Microblogging: What and How Can We Learn From It (CHI EA '10)","author":"Bernstein Michael","year":"2010","unstructured":"Michael Bernstein, S Kairam, B Suh, L Hong, and EH Chi. 2010a. 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