Mastodon Takes Cues from Bluesky for Innovative New Starter ‘Packs’ Plans

Mastodon, the decentralized open social network with over 8 million accounts and nearly 700,000 active users each month, is preparing to launch a new feature known as “Packs.” This feature is designed to help newcomers easily discover curated groups of users to follow.

This idea is similar to a feature introduced by Bluesky, another open social platform, last year.

Starter packs are aimed at addressing the “cold start” dilemma that new users encounter when they join social networks. Newcomers often find it challenging to decide whom to follow and may feel uncertain about who shares content that aligns with their interests.

Bluesky tackled this issue with Starter Packs, allowing regular users to curate lists of suggested accounts to follow. At present, Starter Packs cover nearly every topic, as well as featuring top users or other recommendations within the app.

The popularity of this concept has led Meta to create a similar feature for its competitor to X, Instagram Threads, late last year.

Now, Mastodon is gearing up to introduce a comparable feature, though with some distinct differences.

Mastodon highlights that users should have control over whether they are included in Packs. It suggests integrating Packs into its existing account discoverability settings. To opt out, users would need to turn off the option labeled “Feature profile and posts in discoverability algorithms.”

Moreover, users will receive notifications if they are included in a Pack. In Bluesky, users who wish to be removed from a Starter Pack must either report it or block the creator. Mastodon intends to offer a more straightforward way for users to exit Packs, akin to how they can remove their posts from the newly launched Quote Posts feature.

The nonprofit organization behind Mastodon, Mastodon gGmbH, is collaborating with other fediverse developers on a Fediverse Enhancement Proposal (FEP), now available on GitHub. They anticipate that the first version of Packs and additional onboarding enhancements will be rolled out in Mastodon version 4.6, with the current version being 4.4.5.