@mav also specifically in the Bluesky context people are trying to recover/expand their Twitter networks, and folllow all can make sense for that if it’s a pack from somebody you trust

@mav I don’t ever do a follow-all but I find them very useful. Oh look, here’s 30 experts in decolonization. Here’s 45 critical AI theorists. Etc. it’s true that it’s not that different from a public list, and the spreadsheets for academics (etc) play a similar role with a very low-tech UI for those who know about them, but I do think it’s a useful concept

It's a great point. For an academic disciplinelimiting the list size is going to be exclusionary -- and apmplify rich-get-richer dynamics (because a shorter list will include the best-known people) and in most cases diversity issues.

And I don't think this is particularly unique to academic disciplines, I see the same dynamics in other scenarios as well. But I also see @mastodonmigration's points, it really is a quandry!

@julian

@alahmnat it’s a great point, I hadn’t thought of extending the follow notification- thanks!

@newsmast very sorry for flooding your notifications, i had originally tagged you in https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113512328290399242 because I wanted to credit you for FediSky but I didn't stop to think that all the people who replied to me would also wind up tagging you as well!

@graue Thanks. In my view, it was completely the right thing for Mastodon to make full-text search opt-in. Many people in the fediverse value consent, and that battle got fought multiple times.

Starter packs are a somewhat different situation because there's already a consent option that's a close match, so I'm curious to hear what the feedback is on this.

@mastodonmigration @dansup @julian @thisismissem @djsundog @graue @laurenshof I've had discussions with all of you about fediverse starter packs or the equivalent, here's a series of polls to get some perspectives on what people think --https://infosec.exchange/@thenexusofprivacy/113512328290399242 is the first one in the thread. Any help in boosting would be appreciated!

Poll: how much of a priority should fediverse starter packs be? (7/7)

As you can tell from the previous questions, it's not straightforward to do something like starter packs on the fediverse! And we haven't even gotten to the potential "rich get richer" dyanamics and risks magnifying existing biases. But new arrivals to Bluesky certainly think starter packs useful -- and for many people it's challenging to find people to follow in the fediverse.

So given all that ... how much of a priority should starter packs be?

• It's urgent to get an initial version out. even if it's got problems -- we can clean it up later

• High-priority, but we should take the time to do it right

• It's one of many important things to work on

• Lower priority than other important things

• Not a priority at all

• Not sure

Poll: How should people who don't want to be included in a fediverse starter pack be able to opt out? (6/7)

(See the first post in the thread for more background on starter packs)

You can pick more than one!

• send a DM to the starter pack's creator

• block the starter pack's creator (which is how it works on Bluesky)

• turn off the existing profile discovery setting to opt out of all starter packs

• #NOBOT tag in the profile to opt out of all starter packs

• Some other way (please leave a comment)

• Not sure

Polls on starter packs (5/7)

Many accounnts filter unwanted mentions and DMs. If a fediverse starter pack creator notifies somebody with one of those mechanisms and there isn't any response, what should the creator assume?

• it's okay to add the account

• it's not okay to add the account

Poll: How should people be notified when they're added to fediverse starter packs? (4/7)

(See the first post in the thread for more background on starter packs)

You can pick more than one!

• An unlisted post mentioning them from the startup pack creator

• A DM from the starter pack creator

• Some other way (please leave a comment)

• No notification needed

• Not sure

Poll: If somebody's opted-in to profile discovery, have they hoped in to fediverse started packs? (3/7)

Mastodon, Pixelfed, and some other fediverse software already have a setting about whether or not a profile should be suggested to users. On Mastodon, it's the "Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms" seetting on the Privacy and Reach tab of your Public Profile settings. If somebody has already turned this on, does that mean they've opted-in to fediverse starter packs?

• Yes, no further opt-in required

• Not necessarily, there should be an additional opt in

• Not sure

Poll: how should fedvierse starter packs handle consent?

On Bluesky, adding somebody to a starter packs don't require consent, and it's not obvious how to remove yourself. But values are different here in the fediverse, and consent is important!

So how should people working on fedi starter packs (or the equivalent) handle consent?

• opt-in: accounts should give permission before being added

• opt-in for people, opt-out for organizational accounts

• notification + opt-out: people should get notified when added, and can remove themselves

• opt-out but no notification: people aren't told they're added (this is what Bluesky does)

A poll: how do you feel about the general idea of starter packs (or some equivalent) on fedi? (1/7)

Bluesky's "starter packs" make it easy to follow a bunch of accounts all at once. Anybody can create one or more starter packs, and they're used for a lot of different things; the Blacksky starter pack, for example, is great for newcomers from Black Twitter, and @newsmast's FediSky starter pack is helpful for finding folks you might know from the fedivere.

But Bluesky's implementation has some major problems: people can be added to starter packs without their consent, aren't even notified when it happens, and it's not obvious how to opt out. And any mechanism like this potentially creates "rich get richer" dyanamics and risks magnifying existing biases -- guys tend to mostly add guys to starter packs, white people tend to mostly add white people to starter packs, etc. Still, despite the problems, they're very helpful for onboarding.

I've had discussions with multiple people working on ideas for fediverse starter packs or the equivalents, and similar questions keep cropping up. So I figured I'd do a series of polls to get feedback on what people think.

To start with, the basic question, how do you feel about the general idea of starter packs (or some equivalent) on fedi?

the Mastodon iOS app cuts off long text in the polls, so I'm including it here as well

• No, Bad idea for fedi, don't do it

• Maybe, depending on how it's implemented

• Yes, this is important functionality - get something out now, we can fix it later!

• Not sure

#fediverse #bluesky #starterPacks

@mastodonmigration thanks, and good catch on Bluesky accounts as an analogy to Threads -- I had missed that!

@mastodonmigration Unfortuantely I think you can only find out indexable via API. Here's another discusison of consent mechanisms, Julian might know. https://fietkau.social/@julian/113469285233683859

And yeah, I don't know a great answer about how to do the notification. It's similar to Ryan's problem with Bridgy Fed .... what's really needed is a general consent mechanism but that's a lot easier said than done.

And yeah there's a real tension between wanting to provide something that could help with this long-standing problem of "how do I find people to follow?" but also wanting to be careful. In general I feel like it's worth taking a little time to do it right. These current waves of people leaving Xitter and Threads will go on for a while, and depending on how things on Bluesky work out at some point there may well be another wave of people looking for something to complement it or even replace it.

@mastodonmigration Glad the input's useful, there are a lot of these projects around and similar issues crop up. Bluesky doesn't have opt-in or notification, the opt-out mechanism is non-obvious (you block the starter pack's creator, how intuitive!) nd there's no way to find out what starter packs you're on ... it's already causing problems in practice. So it's a good chance for fedi to do better.

For the threads issue, that seems like a good approach -- and if you're encouraging others to create their own, make sure they take a similar approach.

On the curation, it'd be good to describe the process. A couple of questions to think about: why should people trust these random suggestions? And, how do you deal with the situation where somebody's suggested an account that many people see as racist, anti-trans, and/or a troll -- or a scammer?

In terms of opt-in, there's an existing consent mechanism -- profile discovery (I think it's the "indexable" tag). If you've included somebody who hasn't opted in to that, it's a consent violation, and you should expect to get flamed (very justifiably IMHO) and "it would be prohibitive to get people's consent" hasn't been a convincing argument in other consent-based controversies.

Using indexable with an additional notification / opt-out mechanism on top of that might be seen as enough -- others are taking similar approaches. I don't have any intuition here ... the wording for the Mastodon profile discovery option arguably covers this case (at least in English) but I'm not completely sure everybody will see it that way.

Tagging people for notifications is one solution -- but what if they're filtering notifications from accounts they don't follow? Dan was thinking of DM notifications for his starter packs, but that's got a similar problem, probably even worse. It's tricky ... no sure what the right answer is.

An interesting approach! A couple of questions

• Did people who are listed opt in to this?

• Are you the person who's curating all these lists? If so might want to say a bit more about your criteria.

• You should probably mention that some of these accounts are on threads and so uploading the CSV could potentiall lead to your information being shared with Meta, whose privacy policy says they can use it for targeting ads and training AI. (It's not clear whether or not the current implementation does that, but they can change it without giving notice.). Some people don't care, but others do, so letting them know is important!

@mastodonmigration

@smallcircles It depends a lot on circumstances. if the person running the project describes themselves as BDFL, then of course it's accurate to describe them that way. If not, but volunteers on the project see them are acting in a dictatorial way and are demanding something different, then it'sc legitimate but I'd want to know more about the circumsnaces before saying whether or not I agree with the characterization.

Even "hobby projects" can have BDFL's. And whether or not it's a hobby project, whoever's running it can run it however they want -- it's their project! And many people think that BDFL-style organization can work better for certain kinds of projects (as long as the BDFL's making good decisions of course). But if whoever's leading the project wants to have community involvement, and the community's complaining about decision-making, it's a problem no matter what term gets used.

Resources for choosing the right fediverse instance -- and I'm not just talking about Mastodon (DRAFT)

It would be great to have some kind of portal or tool to help people find and evaluate potential instances ... alas, that doesn't exist yet. Still, there are some useful instance catalogs and directories, and ways to get more information about instances you might be interested in. It just takes a little work to find it.

https://privacy.thenexus.today/resources-for-choosing-instances/

Feedback welcome as always!

@fediversenews

#fediverse