If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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@skobkin the question is about how it should work.
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@evan there's the correct answer and then there's what happens on fedi
@rune the question is about the correct answer.
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@evan I'd argue it should be visible to the intersection, not the union of Alice and Bob's followers. So basically people who follow both of them. There should also be an option to have it be visible to all of Alice's followers.
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@evan Since the replie is followers-only, to Bob’s followers. Otherwise information that someone with a private account would expect not to be visible to anyone they didn’t approve could be easily leaked to people that they don’t know.
@luana what if there was a clear label on who it was going to? "Same audience" or something similar?
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By default, visible to both Alice's and Bob's followers.
But, Bob should be able to change it. Even making visible to everyone.
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@evan people who follow both Alice and Bob
@adam so, in a conversation with Charlene, David, Evan and Frances, there would just be a smaller and smaller circle of people who could follow along? That seems best to you?
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@evan@cosocial.ca when I learned that a reply to a "followers only" post in the Fediverse meant that the replier can choose any visibility they can choose for their own posts, in a discussion that the original poster meant to keep among their followers, it was one of my most WTF moments about ActivityPub.
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@evan I'd argue it should be visible to the intersection, not the union of Alice and Bob's followers. So basically people who follow both of them. There should also be an option to have it be visible to all of Alice's followers.
@LunaDragofelis so, just a smaller and smaller and smaller set of people as the conversation goes on?
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@skobkin the question is about how it should work.
@evan
As I said in my reply in another branch of this thread, different people may have different expectations.For me it should be visible for subscribers of both of them. But it's technically difficult and most likely wouldn't be implemented.
Why? Because otherwise subscribers of both of them would see only half of the thread without being able to grasp it in it's entirety.
Especially considering that most of the AP software I know doesn't allow to extend visibility level from what it was in the OP. So making it a bit more loose by default would be a sane choice to maintain consistency of threads between different instances. -
By default, visible to both Alice's and Bob's followers.
But, Bob should be able to change it. Even making visible to everyone.
@reiver what does the conversation look like to Bob's followers who don't follow Alice? Or to people who don't follow either?
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@LunaDragofelis so, just a smaller and smaller and smaller set of people as the conversation goes on?
@evan I think it should be a per post setting to choose between "intersection" and "OP's followers". -
@evan@cosocial.ca when I learned that a reply to a "followers only" post in the Fediverse meant that the replier can choose any visibility they can choose for their own posts, in a discussion that the original poster meant to keep among their followers, it was one of my most WTF moments about ActivityPub.
@panos well, ActivityPub lets anyone address anyone else on the Fediverse. You can even address collections of people, like my following list or someone else's contacts collection. The choices that are allowed in the Mastodon interface are a small subset of who you could actually address with ActivityPub.
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@evan No, I mean what visibility out of available options did Bob choose.
If we're talking about Mastodon, currently he'd have "followers" and "mentioned only".Who'll see (and who ideally should see) depends on what he had chosen.
But if we're talking about a default selection (followers only), then we really have two rather different things AFAIR: who'd really see it and who should've been able to see that for it to be easily understandable by the end user. Although I think different people may have different opinions on how exactly should it work.
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@evan
As I said in my reply in another branch of this thread, different people may have different expectations.For me it should be visible for subscribers of both of them. But it's technically difficult and most likely wouldn't be implemented.
Why? Because otherwise subscribers of both of them would see only half of the thread without being able to grasp it in it's entirety.
Especially considering that most of the AP software I know doesn't allow to extend visibility level from what it was in the OP. So making it a bit more loose by default would be a sane choice to maintain consistency of threads between different instances.@skobkin as someone who posts a daily poll on the Fediverse, I am aware that different people have different opinions on a variety of topics. That's what polls are for.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. With that option, the number of people who can read replies gets smaller and smaller as the conversation goes on. It makes followers-only posts really hard to use.
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@evan this is really hard. But thankfully I've been trying to train myself to think about potentials for abuse.
Showing the comment to just Bob's followers creates the risk that Bob and followers will create an eco chamber opposed to Alice's original sentiment, and worse towards Alice herself. That's bad, and reminds of cliquish negativity that you find in adolescent groups and office environments.
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@evan this is really hard. But thankfully I've been trying to train myself to think about potentials for abuse.
Showing the comment to just Bob's followers creates the risk that Bob and followers will create an eco chamber opposed to Alice's original sentiment, and worse towards Alice herself. That's bad, and reminds of cliquish negativity that you find in adolescent groups and office environments.
Showing the comment to just Alice's followers raises a different risk. What if Bob's comment is a good faith critique, but runs against the conventional wisdom within the majority of Alice's followers? Will Bob be potentially drummed out of Alice's circle? This regardless of the relative merits of the argument.
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@rune the question is about the correct answer.
@evan there isn't any protocol to communicate consent with all parties, so it just has to be a broken mess.
Even if Bob gets a return list of Alices followers and allows those the thread is still broken for all of Bobs followers who are not in Alice's list. Even if you had reply controls for Alice to approve Bobs reply it would have to retroactively apply to all of Alice's posts to be useful to Bobs followers. And beyond just retroactively applying this change it'd be a mess to communicate that this was happening in the UI. And we didn't even wonder what happens with a 3rd participant yet.
I think the concept is mostly just flawed and the best we can do is mostly broken threads and a working implementation for the people who are in the subset of all followers lists.
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@evan
I’m surprised at the results here. To me it seems like a cut-and-dry consent issue: Alice has indicated in the original post that she only consents to communicating with people who follow her on that post. By making Bob’s replies visible to Bob’s followers (or anyone else) you’re exposing Alice to accounts she did explicitly did not consent to communicating with. 🤨 -
If Alice explicitly limited the visibility why could the reply need a broader range? Bob's subscribers won't see the original post anyway.
They shouldn't see the OP. They should see the thread from the interaction. Otherwise it makes no sense that since they interacted their subscribers would only see separate replies without any knowing to what it was or wasn't.
If they don't want anyone to see that, let them use DM to not confuse other people.This would better be better applied to quotes
No, he shouldn't because Alice set the OP visibility like that.
And before you say "then why comments", I've already said that it confuses people around them. Force them to use DM or show to subscribers of both.
That's one part of fediverse's main problems: lack of obviousness.
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@panos well, ActivityPub lets anyone address anyone else on the Fediverse. You can even address collections of people, like my following list or someone else's contacts collection. The choices that are allowed in the Mastodon interface are a small subset of who you could actually address with ActivityPub.
@evan@cosocial.ca it's worse than I thought then 😅
I think there probably should have been a distinction between who you can address in the discussions you start, compared to the discussions someone else starts. It's a privacy issue. Say for example that for some reason I don't want everyone to know I am online and posting, so I restrict the visibility of my posts. Then someone else can see one of my followers replying to me (since including the handle in the replies also practically reveals who you are replying to).
Say for example I am asking my friends on fedi what to do about someone who harasses me. And someone replies to my post with advice about harassment. The person who harasses me could very well understand what I'm talking about.
It is what it is, of course, just saying, I think this particular aspect is not optimal behaviour for social media.
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@evan I think the default presumption that everyone is welcome to become part of any conversation is only that: an unconsidered default assumption inherited from Twitter and specifically from early Twitter's growth-at-any-cost corporate goals. At the very least we should be considering counterbalancing options.
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@evan (though there are threat models to think about, like 'is one of alice's friends bob's stalker and they might see bob's reply and glean information from it?', which you just kind of have to bake in to the world-weary hellhole that is planet earth)
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@stefan@gardenstate.social @stefan@stefanbohacek.online the empty API result is expected, per https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/10/mastodon-4-5-for-devs/
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@evan yeah my experience in FB with friends-only posts is pretty great. my friends can post in my replies and see each other even if they're not friends themselves, and I believe I can nuke individual replies if I feel they're disruptive.
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@mhoye that's a great way to shut down conversations.
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