I guess I understand correctly that in #Friendica you can 'Follow a thread', 'Ignore a thread' and 'Unignore a thread', in that order. These actions are all done from the 'More' menu on the top post in a thread, which may show as an icon with three dots. You can only ignore a thread you were following; unignore undoes that. When you like a post or reshare it, you automatically follow the thread.

What surprises me is that this influences the notifications you get, not so much the timelines. With regards to the network timeline, in the 'Latest post' setting you never get updates to threads whether you follow them or not, while in the 'Latest activity' you get updates, by everybody, for all threads even the ones you don't follow. There's no in between like 'Latest activity for followed threads' or 'Latest activity by people I follow'.

So if you like a post that consequently many people reply to, maybe because it is some good news story, you keep getting notifications on the bell icon from people you don't follow and that don't @-mention you. That takes a bit of getting used to.

Also I'm still trying to figure out the five different notification streams that exist in Friendica. Only one of those is attached to the notification bell and it's not the one I'm expecting.