The idea is an follow and star features (like GitHub) for follow Glitch profiles and star projects and playlists.
I think there are two things here:
- Making it easy to remember/track a project, playlist, or user you’re interested in
- Getting “clout” by having more stars than other people to prove your stuff is popular
From what I’ve seen, Glitch has a central philosophy of avoiding the harms that other social networks have, where users compete for stars/followers etc. So they’re careful about introducing features like this.
I asked a couple of years ago (before collections/playlists were added) if we could have some “healthy” social features that let us bookmark stuff without the whole Battle Of The Influencers vibe:
Shortly after that (not because of it) we got collections, now playlists. Every user has a “My Stuff” collection and that’s your alternative to Starring things; I think it’s a good compromise.
All that said, there’s probably more that Glitch could do. It would be useful to be able to follow a user (and you could still keep the follower count a secret).