Following a conversation I had with Eric Vicenti at lunch, about limiting interactions to a single action—Follow—I don’t believe this approach works.

We have accounts and sites. Although they share a common ID, in practice, they represent different things.

An account signs content. For example, my Gabo account may sign content across many different sites. When another user follows my account, they want to follow what my account is doing across the entire hyper.media network.

A site, on the other hand, represents a shared space of activity. When I join a site, it’s because I’m interested in participating in the collective activity taking place there, involving many different accounts. If I subscribe to or join Ethosfera, I want to follow what the Ethosfera community is saying to itself as it pursues a shared goal. In this case, I’m subscribing to a knowledge repository and an ongoing conversation—not to a specific user.

Because of this, a single “Follow” action is insufficient. Following an account and joining a site are fundamentally different intentions and should be treated as such.