If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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@evan Carol and Ted clearly need to be looped in
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@maj Dawn's and my answer would be all of Alice's followers. I don't like the intersection answer, because it gets smaller and smaller over time. I think Alice's intent is to have her friends and family have a conversation, like it works on Instagram and Facebook.
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@jmcclure you're forgiven!
The poll is not mandatory, so please feel free to spend your one wild and precious life doing something different.
Huh?
I'm sorry I encroached on your poll without your invitation. I saw it, it looked interesting, so I submitted my vote and explained my "other" as requested.
If you didn't want to hear people's thoughts, don't ask for them.
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@evan You asked "should", not "does", so my answer is "only people who follow *both* Alice and Bob", that is, the intersection of both sets of followers. (Your 3rd option, to me, reads like "people who follow *either*", that is, the union.)
Whether Alice-only follower Carol (resp. Bob-only follower Dave) should gain access to Bob's reply by following Bob (resp. Alice) after Bob's reply is unclear to me.
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@maj does this help?
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@evan You asked "should", not "does", so my answer is "only people who follow *both* Alice and Bob", that is, the intersection of both sets of followers. (Your 3rd option, to me, reads like "people who follow *either*", that is, the union.)
Whether Alice-only follower Carol (resp. Bob-only follower Dave) should gain access to Bob's reply by following Bob (resp. Alice) after Bob's reply is unclear to me.
@pauamma so, the audience for replies gets smaller and smaller as the conversation grows?
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Intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.
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Intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.
@bjb so a smaller and smaller audience as the conversation goes on? Eventually too small to keep the conversation up?
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@bjb so a smaller and smaller audience as the conversation goes on? Eventually too small to keep the conversation up?
Yep. If there are people that Bob's not interested in, Bob should not have to deal with them.
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System moved this topic from Uncategorized
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@evan What about Ted and Carol's followers?
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@evan
Please help me, my friend, I desperately need you 🙏 -
@pauamma so, the audience for replies gets smaller and smaller as the conversation grows?
@evan Good question. I'd have to think about it more, but my hot take is "it depends a lot on context". (Consider for instance that Bob may be Alice's stalkery ex.)
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Hey, all. So, I appreciate the responses. I'll break down the options here.
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Hey, all. So, I appreciate the responses. I'll break down the options here.
"Alice's followers" is the way most social networks work with private X, Facebook, Instagram. It lets Alice ask questions or share private info with people she trusts and cares about, and lets them discuss amongst themselves. It is really the best way to use social networks.
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@evan Sure!
Does this wording make sense?
When you post a followers-only post, who do you expect replies from?
My own followers (MOF)
MOF + repliers' followers (RF)
Mutual MOF + RF
Something else?(Trying to be concise!)
@evan Well I went ahead, if you're interested:
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"Alice's followers" is the way most social networks work with private X, Facebook, Instagram. It lets Alice ask questions or share private info with people she trusts and cares about, and lets them discuss amongst themselves. It is really the best way to use social networks.
"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.
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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 That's it course. But is it also the case for Mastodon? I'd guess it is.
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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.
"Both" at least makes the full conversation visible to all A's followers, but it has most of the same problems as sharing with B's followers. It sends them a part of a conversation without context, but also violates A's privacy.
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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.
