sharing vs. following

You can't prevent someone from following your public profile.

No, but that's not what I'm saying. Read my post again. If someone is following my account, I want to know that that person is following my account. That's all.

Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of 'only sharing with me' contacts in your contact list. This proposal seems to remove that control from users.

I see no need for this in Diaspora. It isn’t Twitter.

It is a privacy enhancement and a pretty common concept in social networks, so why shouldn't this be included into diaspora?

Your public posts are always visible to everyone.
If you don't want someone to follow your posts, don't make public posts.

It is a privacy enhancement and a pretty common concept in social networks, so why shouldn't this be included into diaspora?

I always think that the policy 'everyone else does it, so we must follow them!' is a bad way to go about developing a network. Let's think first and foremost about what is best for this network, not what other ones do.

I don't see the privacy enhancement here. Currently no one knows which accounts you are 'following' except the people you are following. And the people you are following don't see your public posts unless they manually look at your profile.

If you don't want a person to see posts you make to any of your private aspects, simply put them in a separate aspect - you could even call it 'following'. If you never share anything private with that aspect, the effect would be the same as what you're proposing, as far as I can tell.

Would it work for you for a new aspect, 'following' to be included in the default aspects when a new account is created, for this purpose?

Hi, I too am not totally convinced by the follow option. I already  use an aspect "followed" for that and if a contact follow me back, I switch it to "both following" aspect. This is why I am interested in goob's point of view.
@goob : I tried «Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of ‘only sharing with me’ contacts in your contact list. » but I do not see where to click to do that : could you please be more specific ? thx

but I do not see where to click to do that : could you please be more specific ?

Actually it's not in the contacts page UI: click on their profile, press 'block' and then press 'unblock', and they are no longer following your posts.

If someone is following my account, I want to know that that person is following my account. That’s all.

@goob One can easily subscribe to your profile, because in fact it provides an atom-feed. I don't understand, why you want to be notified if someone is looking at things you post public on the internet.

Actually you can prevent someone from following your public posts, by removing them from the list of ‘only sharing with me’ contacts in your contact list.

I don't think that's possible. I can not remove an account, which is not in my aspects. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Would it work for you for a new aspect, 'following’ to be included in the default aspects when a new account is created, for this purpose?

Please read the comments above.

thx goob : I tried and it worked indeed ! Looks like more an hidden feature though, and even maybe an unplanned one 😏 !
I wonder if it actually makes you disappear from the aspect you were in, and if they get a notification ?

Yes, I'm sure it's unintended behaviour, but it is possible. I'd like it to continue to be possible, especially for when I attract stalkers...

yes, it's more like a bug.. because people should not be able to remove your "i share with this person" state. It's feels like other people modifying your account.

The "I have you in my aspects" -state should be totally unaffected by your block. :)

The “I have you in my aspects” -state should be totally unaffected by your block. :)

I do not agree with that : if I block someone, I would prefer that he/she does not see my public posts anymore. That makes sens to me.

That's not possible - the person can always logout and look at your profile. Your public posts are public - hence the name.

So we should not invoke false thoughts about the visibility of posts and be consistent.

the person can always logout and look at your profile. Your public posts are public - hence the name.

I did not think about that. You are right ! And yes, that was my mistake to think public post could not be visible since they are indeed public. I thought too quickly.

@cewertowski I think D* already misses a lot of features, if we start right now to limit ourselves because of performance issues, we will never be able to compete with other social networks.

I'm not saying that we have to be like FB. I'm just saying that we need to have appealing features for the users which might have a cost and we'll have to deal with it instead of rule it out.

@creak I'm with you. The question is: How much additional calculating power would be needed? Since I don't run a pod I can't estimate it. I only know that for keeping people on a website speed is important.

Maybe it is a good idea to use other concepts? Something like 'Link up' (in german 'Vernetzen') and 'Follow' (in german 'Folgen').

I agree to the second option. Friendica has both options, but the first one (different profiles) is only partly implemented and doing it right would be a huge PITA.

The second one is easy. You would "only" need to have some system generated aspect where your followers would be added automatically. if someone then starts following you, the person would be added to that aspect (that couldn't be selected when creating a post).

If you then add this person to one or more aspects, you start to follow this person. Then your profile is shared.

When adding a person you could decide if you only want to follow the person or if you want to make it bidirectional.

reference: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/6822

Just joined D** :heart: !
Personally, I'm seriously missing a "follow" option. However it is realized, getting notified about public posts of organizations/persons/institutions that you follow is one of the greatest reasons why I use a social network.
Lacking this feature puts D* in a bad spot.
Sharing in order to get notified is not user-friendly. Nowadays everything has to be simple and intuitive. Otherwise nobody will use it.

So, even if it's only a "Follow" button that will put that person into a system-generated "Following" aspect group would already be sufficient to provide this feature (as has been suggested multiple times here). Quick and easy!

From there further options could be added to aspects like:
Aspect Family: Can see my entire profile data and all my posts
Aspect Following: Can't see anything on my profile and none of my posts (aside from public)

I agree with you and some posts above.

Example: "following" options (by default; could be checked/unchecked by the user):
[X] Contacts in this aspect can see each other (already exists)
[X] Show this aspect in my stream
[ ] Display my private profile for contacts of this aspect
[X] Allow contacts of this aspect to send me private messages
…

@timoses Amen ;)

Don't all accounts have RSS feeds?