If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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Some repliers insisted that it should be whatever Bob wants, which is trivial. It sidesteps the issue and doesn't address the question at its own level.
I asked, what should be the outcome? Not, who should decide?
What options should Bob have to choose from? What should be the default? What should he choose?
Anyway, I agree with the vast majority that the reply should be to Alice's followers. I think the rule of thumb for replies is that they should address about the same audience as the original post, or optionally a subset of that audience. Expanding the audience confuses readers and violates privacy expectations.
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Anyway, I agree with the vast majority that the reply should be to Alice's followers. I think the rule of thumb for replies is that they should address about the same audience as the original post, or optionally a subset of that audience. Expanding the audience confuses readers and violates privacy expectations.
Thanks to everyone who responded or replied, even if I didn't like your answers.
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"Bob's followers" is the literalist version, with the worst possible dynamics. "You should reply to a followers-only post with a followers-only post" retains the same UI choice while completely changing the audience. Most of the other people who read Alice's post won't see Bob's comments. Bob's followers who don't follow Alice won't understand the context of his post, and won't be able to read Alice's post. It also violates Alice's privacy to share a response to her question with strangers.
@evan to be fair this is what is happening when my instance is banning another one where people is commenting in the middle of a thread.
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@evan @stefan
This has always irked me. What I want and what I expect are different.
I expect replies to *followers only* posts to be visible to the replier's followers, only. And yeah, that means they get a hint about me, and can't see my post, and therefore it's just all-around inappropriate.
contā¦@evan @stefan what I *want* is to be able to choose between three things, none of which match what I expect.
A: every reply is essentially a DM from the perspective of the replier, *and* a followers-only boost from the perspective of my followers. Basically a closed group.
B: every reply grows the circle so that the followers of the replier can see the whole conversation. This could be a great default setting.
contā¦ -
@evan Alices followers only. I am tired of fragmented discussions
@kariboka correct
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@evan @stefan what I *want* is to be able to choose between three things, none of which match what I expect.
A: every reply is essentially a DM from the perspective of the replier, *and* a followers-only boost from the perspective of my followers. Basically a closed group.
B: every reply grows the circle so that the followers of the replier can see the whole conversation. This could be a great default setting.
contā¦ -
Thanks to everyone who responded or replied, even if I didn't like your answers.
Oh, one thing that is worth noting: a lot of people insisted on Bob's absolute prerogative to reply with any kind of visibility he wants: public, his followers, whatever.
This is technically true, but Alice also has some agency here. Her server maintains a collection of `replies` that can be used to read all the replies. There's also another collection for the full thread.
Her server can omit replies that violate her expectations. This limits Bob's reach somewhat.
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Oh, one thing that is worth noting: a lot of people insisted on Bob's absolute prerogative to reply with any kind of visibility he wants: public, his followers, whatever.
This is technically true, but Alice also has some agency here. Her server maintains a collection of `replies` that can be used to read all the replies. There's also another collection for the full thread.
Her server can omit replies that violate her expectations. This limits Bob's reach somewhat.
Other servers can and should use Alice's `replies` collection to see which replies she has consented to. They can and should obscure or hide altogether replies that aren't in that collection.
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Other servers can and should use Alice's `replies` collection to see which replies she has consented to. They can and should obscure or hide altogether replies that aren't in that collection.
Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
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@evan Well I went ahead, if you're interested:
@stefan I asked the question I wanted to ask. I'll boost your poll, though.
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@stefan I asked the question I wanted to ask. I'll boost your poll, though.
@evan Ah, I was only tagging you as an FYI, but thank you, appreciate it!
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Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
@evan I think this is one of the problems with Mastodon being the go to for people in the fediverse, and is also why I've been looking things up and trying to work out how the good ol concept Google+ had could work well in the fediverse, and also supporting all the features of ActivityPub instead of using its own thing, and I even had the idea that if I can get a service like that off the ground, I'd be happy for a non-biased nonprofit organisation to take over. A name for it I thought of is Fedi+ and if eventually that was to be ran by something like the Social Web Foundation or something, that could really help the fediverse at large.
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@evan I think this is one of the problems with Mastodon being the go to for people in the fediverse, and is also why I've been looking things up and trying to work out how the good ol concept Google+ had could work well in the fediverse, and also supporting all the features of ActivityPub instead of using its own thing, and I even had the idea that if I can get a service like that off the ground, I'd be happy for a non-biased nonprofit organisation to take over. A name for it I thought of is Fedi+ and if eventually that was to be ran by something like the Social Web Foundation or something, that could really help the fediverse at large.
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@evan Ah, I was only tagging you as an FYI, but thank you, appreciate it!
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@stefan I asked the question I wanted to ask. I'll boost your poll, though.
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Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
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Other servers can and should use Alice's `replies` collection to see which replies she has consented to. They can and should obscure or hide altogether replies that aren't in that collection.
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Oh, one thing that is worth noting: a lot of people insisted on Bob's absolute prerogative to reply with any kind of visibility he wants: public, his followers, whatever.
This is technically true, but Alice also has some agency here. Her server maintains a collection of `replies` that can be used to read all the replies. There's also another collection for the full thread.
Her server can omit replies that violate her expectations. This limits Bob's reach somewhat.
