Mastodon, the decentralized and open social network with over eight million accounts and nearly seven hundred thousand monthly active users, is planning to introduce a new feature called Packs. This feature is designed to make it easier for newcomers to discover curated collections of users to follow.
The idea is similar to a feature that Bluesky, another open social platform, introduced last year. These starter packs are intended to solve the cold start problem people face when joining new social networks. When you first sign up for an account, you often do not know who to follow or where to find posts about topics that interest you.
Bluesky addressed this with its Starter Packs, a feature that allows everyday users to curate collections of suggested accounts. Today, you can find Starter Packs focused on nearly any topic, including those that highlight popular users on the app or provide other recommendations.
The concept proved so popular that Meta implemented a similar feature on its X competitor, Instagram Threads, late last year. Now, Mastodon has announced it is ready to do the same, but with some important differences.
Mastodon believes users should have control over their inclusion in Packs. The service plans to make Packs an extension of its existing account discoverability features. To opt out of Packs, a user would disable the account setting called “Feature profile and posts in discoverability algorithms.”
Additionally, users will be notified when they are included in a Pack. On Bluesky, a user who wanted to be removed from a Starter Pack had to report the pack or block the user who created it. Mastodon aims to offer a simpler self-removal mechanism, similar to how users can remove their posts from the recently launched Quote Posts feature.
The nonprofit developing the Mastodon software, Mastodon gGmbH, is collaborating with other developers in the fediverse on a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal. The organization says the initial version of Packs, along with other onboarding improvements, should be available in the Mastodon 4.6 release. The current version of Mastodon is 4.4.5.