Mastodon, the federated social network built on ActivityPub, is taking cues from Bluesky and introducing its own version of the social platform’s “Starter Packs.” The hope is that Mastodon’s “Packs” will make it easier to find people to follow when you first join a server, a sometimes daunting task given the distributed nature of decentralized social networks.
In comparison to Starter Packs, which let Bluesky users curate a list of accounts that you can follow in one foul swoop, Packs will come with some modifications and improvements. For one thing, Mastodon’s nonprofit developer Mastodon gGmbH says that users will have a say in whether they appear in Packs. Packs will be incorporated in the discovery features Mastodon already has, so if you don’t want to be included in a Pack, you can just toggle off the existing “Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms” setting.
The developer also says that there will be a more “neutral” way to remove yourself from a Pack once you’re added. On Bluesky, to be removed from a Starter Pack you have to either report the pack or block its creator. According to Mastodon gGmbH, once you’re notified you’ve been added to a Pack, you’ll be able to remove yourself in a similar fashion to the way Mastodon lets you remove yourself from Quote Posts.
Mastodon gGmbH says it’s collaborating with other Fediverse developers on a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP), that once completed, will allow the feature to be used by any developer building an app on ActivityPub. Bluesky’s feature is one of its better additions to the microblogging format, so it makes sense Mastodon would want to adopt it. In fact it’s so good that Meta added a clone of it to Threads late last year.
