please read thoroughly and make sure you understand what you're getting into here. this is experimental, i didn't make the tool it uses (and i assume no responsibility if it doesn't work right or you get rate limited lol). i'll update this blog entry if/when i manage to solve some of the mysteries or find better solutions. basically i don't have enough data yet to know whether or not this 100% works as intended. if you have something useful to add here, comments are open even to people without dreamwidth accounts.
what i am doing here and why:
the bluesky users cry out in desperation for a "followers only" interaction setting for their posts. the punishment for posting good is ending up in the Discover feed and getting a bunch of braindead replies from strangers and bots, at which point your options are to either mute/delete your good post or restrict the replies to "none" or "mutuals only", cutting off interaction from the rest of your followers. i only have anecdotal data to back this up but i would say 99% of the most annoying interactions i have had on bsky since the deluge of new users late last year have been from people who do not follow me.
you can set an individual post or thread's interaction settings to only allow people from a specific list to reply; therefore, if you were to add all your followers to a list, you could use that to close your posts' replies to anyone who isn't following you, effectively casting a warding spell against a lot of annoying drive-by reply guy types, LLMs programmed to "repsectfully disagree" with random posts, etc.
so basically what i've done is usedBlockenheimer ListMyFollowers (thanks ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kayin for the rec) to create a whitelist of people who are allowed to reply to you.
caveats:
1. new followers WILL NOT BE ADDED AUTOMATICALLY to the list. you'll have to update this manually. this is annoying, but could also be something of a blessing in disguise; one of the things i really hope for in an eventual official followers-only reply gate is a cool-off period, like, 24 hours where new followers still can't reply to you. like those waiting periods some states have for buying a gun, except for bad posts.
2. the more followers you have, the longer this will probably take. i have no idea how long this would take if you had hundreds of thousands of followers.
3. YOU MIGHT GET RATE LIMITED IF YOU HAVE A LARGE FOLLOWING. "rate limited" means you sent so many requests to bsky's server in such a short time that it trips an anti-spam switch. when i originally tried using Blockenheimer for this, i got rate limited after trying too many times in a row, and i couldn't post for like an hour (literally the worst). using ListMyFollowers with about 4300 followers didn't get me punished, but getting rate limited is a known consequence of using automated tools to do Big Actions (ex. using Blockenheimer to block all of some stinky guy's followers). this is maybe something to do before bed.
(previously, i tried using Blockenheimer to accomplish this, and the problem was that it wasn't finding accounts that followed me before i switched over to my domain name. ListMyFollowers seems to actually find everyone... hopefully.)
the how-to part:
1.go to https://nws-bot.us/bskyListMyFollowers.php and enter your bsky account handle and an app password, which can be generated under Settings -> Privacy and Security -> App Passwords. if you have a custom domain, you'll want to enter it like "@customdomain.com". i had to enter "@doodlemancy.com".
2. wait. leave the tab open. if you've got the little "page loading" binglebongle on your tab or whatever, it's working. it will take a while. the more followers you have, the longer it'll take. for me, with 4300+ followers, it took like... 5 minutes? if you have like 10k+ followers maybe go play some Balatro or something for a while.
3. when the list is done, there'll be a message at the top of the page that tells you it's completed. now you can go edit your list, which i really suggest doing-- people who don't know what it's for might get confused and think they're in trouble or something.
that's it! as of 2/5/2025 this seems to be working ok for me. here's hoping bluesky gives us the real deal, but i think this will make an acceptable stopgap for the time being.
what i am doing here and why:
the bluesky users cry out in desperation for a "followers only" interaction setting for their posts. the punishment for posting good is ending up in the Discover feed and getting a bunch of braindead replies from strangers and bots, at which point your options are to either mute/delete your good post or restrict the replies to "none" or "mutuals only", cutting off interaction from the rest of your followers. i only have anecdotal data to back this up but i would say 99% of the most annoying interactions i have had on bsky since the deluge of new users late last year have been from people who do not follow me.
you can set an individual post or thread's interaction settings to only allow people from a specific list to reply; therefore, if you were to add all your followers to a list, you could use that to close your posts' replies to anyone who isn't following you, effectively casting a warding spell against a lot of annoying drive-by reply guy types, LLMs programmed to "repsectfully disagree" with random posts, etc.
so basically what i've done is used
kayin for the rec) to create a whitelist of people who are allowed to reply to you.caveats:
1. new followers WILL NOT BE ADDED AUTOMATICALLY to the list. you'll have to update this manually. this is annoying, but could also be something of a blessing in disguise; one of the things i really hope for in an eventual official followers-only reply gate is a cool-off period, like, 24 hours where new followers still can't reply to you. like those waiting periods some states have for buying a gun, except for bad posts.
2. the more followers you have, the longer this will probably take. i have no idea how long this would take if you had hundreds of thousands of followers.
3. YOU MIGHT GET RATE LIMITED IF YOU HAVE A LARGE FOLLOWING. "rate limited" means you sent so many requests to bsky's server in such a short time that it trips an anti-spam switch. when i originally tried using Blockenheimer for this, i got rate limited after trying too many times in a row, and i couldn't post for like an hour (literally the worst). using ListMyFollowers with about 4300 followers didn't get me punished, but getting rate limited is a known consequence of using automated tools to do Big Actions (ex. using Blockenheimer to block all of some stinky guy's followers). this is maybe something to do before bed.
(previously, i tried using Blockenheimer to accomplish this, and the problem was that it wasn't finding accounts that followed me before i switched over to my domain name. ListMyFollowers seems to actually find everyone... hopefully.)
the how-to part:
1.go to https://nws-bot.us/bskyListMyFollowers.php and enter your bsky account handle and an app password, which can be generated under Settings -> Privacy and Security -> App Passwords. if you have a custom domain, you'll want to enter it like "@customdomain.com". i had to enter "@doodlemancy.com".
2. wait. leave the tab open. if you've got the little "page loading" binglebongle on your tab or whatever, it's working. it will take a while. the more followers you have, the longer it'll take. for me, with 4300+ followers, it took like... 5 minutes? if you have like 10k+ followers maybe go play some Balatro or something for a while.
3. when the list is done, there'll be a message at the top of the page that tells you it's completed. now you can go edit your list, which i really suggest doing-- people who don't know what it's for might get confused and think they're in trouble or something.
that's it! as of 2/5/2025 this seems to be working ok for me. here's hoping bluesky gives us the real deal, but i think this will make an acceptable stopgap for the time being.
