I would like to be able to unfollow someone who follows me without feeling like I'm destroying some kind of tenuous relationship, the way I do on Twitter, and I would like others to be able to unfollow me without that.
"Breaking mutuals" on Twitter feels like a big decision and it's led to me muting some people whose posts I am really not interested in seeing, but who I don't want to risk upsetting by unfollowing. I heavily prefer the Cohost approach where someone's importance to me is not determined by some manifestation of a site feature, but by whether we talk and get along or not.
A common thing I've seen users describe liking about cohost over the past few months is the low risk of offending someone by unfollowing them, because there's no convenient signal as to whether the other person is following you. Personally, having lived with this dynamic on other sites, I'm quite happy that cohost doesn't have it. I'd personally request this feature not be added.
Agreed, but also I'd like a "you follow this account" badge. Sometimes I see a post I like, and I don't remember if the person it's from is someone I already follow or not, so I have to go to their page to check. (Especially if they just changed their display name or avatar!) It would be convenient if I didn't have to do that. This would also be solved by just putting a follow/unfollow button somewhere on people's posts.
This is one of those metrics that I'm actually okay not knowing, similarly to how we can't see the number of likes we have on a post, or the number of followers we have.
The most common case I can think of is learning that a user who was previously following you has decided to unfollow. Some people get really hung up on this, where ultimately it's the user's decision, and information that I do not need to know. Free yourself, let everyone's "follows you" status be unknown.
From my perspective, this isn't a metrics things. I'm all for the "no metrics" thing cohost is going for. To me, it's more a question of making the site and my interactions with it more legible. "Is the person replying to me or rechosting my post someone who follows me or not" is a question that informs how I might respond to them, as it spells the difference between someone who already knows my bullshit and someone who does not.
As to cases where this feature may provide unwanted information about unfollows, while I agree that's possible, It's not going out of it's way to provide this information to you (in that you'd have to remember that an account was once following you and notice that now it's not). It's also information that could come up purely as a result of social interaction. As long as the followers page exists (and let me state that i believe removal of all information about who follows you would be a very bad idea), that's information that could be surfaced.
There is also the third path of opt-in for this, but too many option flags can make things difficult to maintain, so I would leave the question of that to the judgement of staff.
I'm a no vote on this, it strays too close the kind of clout metrics that I feel it's part of cohost's core mission to avoid
People interact differently with followers and mutuals than with randos, and with good reason. Providing context about your relationship with another user is not the same as incentivizing clout-chasing and metrics. It's true that it could sometimes lead someone to realize another user unfollowed them, but I don't think that's so terrible that otherwise useful features should be avoided because of the possibility. Others in this thread have already explained how it would be valuable to them.
we may at some point add a function similar to tumblr's ability to search your follower list, but we do not intend to add a "follows you" notification to profile pages.
It absolutely does fall into hostility-inducing metrics, because if that information is surfaced it makes it easier to see when people unfollow. There's no real value in doing this.
I respect what you're saying, but I don't think "cultural issues" and "technical issues" are two different things! The purpose of the technology and design of a social media site is to encourage or discourage a particular culture from forming. Site features don't *force* you to behave in a specific way, but the site design and its affordances *influence* user behaviour. Part of the purpose of designing a social media site is choosing what things to subtly emphasize, and what things to subtly discourage.
(In fact, if you take a look at the cohost landing page, staff talk about this pretty explicitly - check the "nobody wants a digital panopticon" and "metrics are ruining our lives" sections.)
That's not to say that cohost has all the UI it'll ever need or that its presentation is perfect, but design elements that *make things easier* or nudge users in one way or another creates a culture. I know staff is paying attention to what they design and why. Having been on Twitter long enough to see what the "X follows you" can encourage, I have pretty strong reasons not to want it here. That's not everyone's experience, so I understand why other people have different perspectives on this.
I'd also be interested in seeing if people you follow follow you back and vice versa.
I think it's nice to celebrate being mutuals.
I would disagree that this gets into clout territory. Again, this information is already available from the followers page, and to have it presented in the disconnected form of "the account I'm looking at follows me" does not, I don't think, give you the kind of metrics that we want to avoid here.
i would personally not like to have this information immediately available, it's possible to dig for the information now in the followers page if you really must know, and having it only available there discourages the behavior that leads to the "breaking mutuals" issue socially
Addressing previous claims of usefulness: I'm extremely skeptical that this could help "monitor risk of harrassment" by seeing someone follow you. If you're concerned someone might harrass you you should just block them immediately? I'm extremely unclear what other use cases could be related to that that aren't frankly, getting into spying territory. Your use case of "I can't remember if I follow them" seems unrelated. I don't see this adding any useful functionality that a search bar on the follows page can't handle, at the cost of CONSTANTLY reminding you about follow metrics.
gotyaoi
A marker next to an account's name if they follow you would be nice. Currently you will get notified if someone follows you, or you can look through your follower list, but that's not necessarily at hand when you're just browsing.
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