Connections vs Followers vs Subscribers vs Join
Social media platforms have different ways to interact. Connect, Follow, Subscribe, and Join are the most common ways to interact with social media accounts. Hubzilla is unique in that it can handle all of those scenarios because of its robust privacy settings.
Hubzilla currently calls all connections "Connections," however, it may be beneficial to distinguish between them.
- Connect - For personal accounts or groups that may include private posts. Requires both sides to approve the connection for private content to be displayed.
- Follow or Subscribe - For public accounts that typically give public announcements. Auto-accepts followers, but followers cannot create new posts.
- Join - For public forums where you must be a member to participate.
In Neuhub themes, I want to be able to display the appropriate wording based on the type of channel.
I was thinking of deciding the wording using the following logic:
- if the channel is set to auto-accept connections, then display follow.
- if a public forum, display join.
- for everything else, display connect.
I can do this on the local side because I have access to the database and can check the settings for each channel.
For remote channels. it becomes trickier. I can detect public forums, but I am not sure if I can detect channels that automatically approve connections.