Is there a “follow” button or a “connect” button on your profile?
If you already use a non-commercial social network, is there a “follow” button or a “connect” button on your profile? Does it make a difference to you whether your social network uses one word or the other? In this context, do you think these words matter?
In the social network's choice of one word or the other, there is often a standard design envisaged for the social network's operation. It's not just about the word you read on the button, but about how it corresponds to the network's established default operation.
Following presupposes that you – when you click on this button – will basically be receiving, seeing the things that the person you follow posts. And, in fact, there are non-commercial social networks that adopt this way of configuring the link as the default: the person you follow will send you their posts, but they won't receive or see your posts. (In order for them to receive your posts, they will have to change the default contact configuration).
Connect points to a “relationship” that doesn't inform you, in the term it uses, exactly how the link will work, how the connection will be configured. However, there are non-commercial social networks that use the “connect” button – such as Hubzilla and (streams) – which, when you connect, use a standard mode in which you will receive and see the posts of the person who asked you to connect. This is the default mode of relationship between people provided by these networks. Of course, if you don't want to receive the person's posts, you can simply change the settings for that connection. This is the move you'll have to make if you don't want to receive the person's posts. (These two non-commercial social networks also allow you to create and customize, in advance, different connection profiles (“contact role” or “permission role”), from which you can choose when someone connects to you – and which will determine the possibilities for interaction with you and access to things you post and make available).
In a non-commercial social network, which of these two standard ways of working seems more natural to you?
As many users don't touch the configuration sections of the networks, or leave it until later (an later that never comes...), these initial (default) configurations for the links between people end up shaping certain “relationship cultures” in the different networks (even when we talk – as we are doing here – about non-commercial social networks).
It seems curious that some non-commercial networks have copied the “follow” model of certain commercial social networks – instead of valuing and adopting the mutual connection model, the “connect” model. After all, away from the algorithmic impositions of the “commercial online environment”, people are free to establish organic, natural, spontaneous links, which – occurring in exchanges, in mutual connections – are more interesting and rewarding.
What kind of experience would you prefer to have using a non-commercial social network?
[January, 2025] Updated: January 05, 2025