I think we need different types of "follow". What about something like this:
1. Friend — this person doesn't show up in my feed. But I like them, and want to keep track of them, and maybe be reminded of them on occasion (hey hodlbod, here's what your friend X has been up to this summer). I trust them, and want to factor their opinions in to content recommendations generated for me.
2. Follow — I want to know what this person says if it has engagement, is popular, or matches some other filter, like topics I've expressed interest in. The Hacker News bot might fit in this category.
3. Super Follow — I want to see everything this person says. These are the people on my "pure signal" list currently.
4. Subscribe — these are people you don't care about, and whose opinions you don't care about per se, but are people who get paid (either by you or by advertisers) to recommend content or products. Could be bots or influencers. You'd never see their content, but you would see things recommended by them.
Items #2 and #3 are variants of the same thing, and could be conflated by assigning a decimal value to your follow (suggested by nostr:nprofile1qqsfcts2suzpxaeuhy2mnjwd9cwt69l98t3tp2r2hf09hu8uz0zzp5spzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3vamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwdehhxarj9e3xzmnyuurtjm earlier, but I used to have something like this in Coracle).
The first category is entirely different though, because the value of the relationship is not based on what they say, but who they are. I honestly don't want to see anything my mom posts to social media unless she tags me in it (in which case she'll email me). But she's one of the most important people in my life.
Likewise the final category. This is an entirely transactional-type relationship, and is exploited to provide additional social signal to otherwise neutral content.
So, any other categories? This is really quite similar to nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qyt8wumn8ghj7anfw3hhytnwdaehgu339e3k7mgpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsxp7af9 's "relationship status" nip, but with more ability to quantify what clients can do based on the relationship. It could also be implemented (of course) using NIP 32.
