Mastodon: Feature request - add accounts to list without following them

[yogthos]

Currently, you have to be following an account in order to be able to add it to a list. One of my primary use cases for lists is to follow bots that post news or media feeds. It would be nice to be able to follow such accounts without adding noise to the timeline, and lists would be an ideal solution for that.

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• [X] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[lifning]

I think it would be much safer* to add a way to hide certain accounts from the home timeline, such that the account you're following via list is still made aware that you're following them, and so the toots still get federated to your instance via the existing follow mechanism.

(* back on birdsite I'd seen lists used to stalk and harass people without necessarily following them - they saw tremendous backlash when they decided the solution was to simply not tell people when they'd been added to a list at all, which obviously gave more power to the wrong people and further endangered their victims)

[yogthos]

If the person being added to a list is notified, then that should address the problem. Just treating that as a follow from the perspective of the person being added to a list would be reasonable as well. Personally, I would prefer having the semantic separation between lists and follows in the UI, as they're orthogonal concepts in my mind.

While harassment is an important issue, I think it would be better to focus on tools for dealing with it explicitly as opposed to making UI compromises in other areas.

[trwnh]

With consideration to how lists were done on Twitter and the mistakes made there:

• Adding people randomly to lists could be perceived as harassment and/or generate spam notifications
• People could not remove themselves from lists except via blocking or softblocking the list creator
• Private lists did not notify anyone added (by design) and could therefore be used to stalk without notice

Treating being added to a list as a follow sounds like something more akin to treating lists as their own Actors who can follow and be followed (semi-related: #189), although the metaphor could use some work.

[Silversalty]

I'm a newbie here so maybe there's a workaround, but privacy seems a dodge at best. Have a profile option to block List inclusion. This lack makes Mastodon into a clique site where a member can 'talk' to approved others. What it destroys is having the site act as a news provider. News of all types. I might want a List of science gurus. Another of music experts. Etc. They may have tens of thousands of followers. Not being able to make such lists greatly limits the value of this site.

[trwnh]

@Silversalty Fundamentally, Mastodon isn't designed strictly to be a news provider; it's a somewhat-opinionated personal communication service. The "proper" way to aggregate news is to use an RSS reader, which doesn't track subscriptions at all. If you want to use Mastodon for news, you have to be willing to at least follow the person that you want to keep track of. You can then use the Lists feature to filter through your follows as desired.

[yogthos]

@trwnh unfortunately you can't even do that with the latest change to the way filters work.

[zecamigo]

I agree with the privacy concerns here.

The ideal would be to be able to follow, mute on the timeline, but posts still visible on the lists.

[yogthos]

Being able to mute posts on the timeline would address the issue for me. I think that being able to apply filters to individual column would be the most flexible solution. That way you could filter content using a different set of rules for each timeline. For example, I might want to have one type of filter for local timeline, another for global, and yet another for a tag I pinned.

[zecamigo]

@yogthos

For example, I might want to have one type of filter for local timeline, another for global, and yet another for a tag I pinned.

Yes! For me the ideal would be to be able to do that for each list, while still being able to see older posts (which seem to disappear from lists after a while).

[cm2]

Hi everyone!

As I understand it, being followed happen on a per account basis and lists are private within a person's account and the concerns on the dev side are that having the lists tracking a person without the following is asking for abuse.That's totally fair. I I'm still a bit new to mastodon and can also see the difference in volume between posts of different accounts being a problem. News as a use case is a good example but some people are more prolific than others and so I don't feel that one has to be to be very opinionated about whether Mastodon should be used for news or not for this to still come up--instead I would propose considering the "main timeline" as list with a special status (in that its shown on the interface when you load up "home") and have the account holder choose which of the private lists they want the newly followed account to be in, defaulting to the main timeline?

Consider the following:

• An account can follow another account.
• An account has one or more private lists.
• An account must have a Default list, which is the home timeline.
• When an account follows another account, that account is notified (as already exists)
• When an account holder follows another account, the account holder may choose to add the followed account to one or more lists (including the default one). If the account holder does not choose any list, the followed account is added to the default list.

Doing this would preserve the existing privacy structures people have brought up to protect the followed while giving the follower the ability to control what accounts they see on their home timeline.

I know I'm coming to this conversation super late but maybe this could help a little 😄

Thanks!

[zecamigo]

Being able to mute posts on the timeline would address the issue for me. I think that being able to apply filters to individual column would be the most flexible solution. That way you could filter content using a different set of rules for each timeline. For example, I might want to have one type of filter for local timeline, another for global, and yet another for a tag I pinned.

Please, I suggest you change the issue title and description. A similar request #8294 was made and everyone basically agrees getting contents without following someone is not a good practice for privacy sake (and I'm adding it's not effective as some profiles aren't open to the world).