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 this is a tough one. From a theoretical perspective I'd have gone with "Bob's followers" because each post is a post in its own right and the fact that it happens to have a reply on top shoudn't change that. (Which is also how it works today, right?)
But seeing too many fragmented conversations has made me think that in practical terms it's better to have replies "inherit" viewership from the starting post—i.e. Bob's post is visible to Alice's followers
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@evan this is a tough one. From a theoretical perspective I'd have gone with "Bob's followers" because each post is a post in its own right and the fact that it happens to have a reply on top shoudn't change that. (Which is also how it works today, right?)
But seeing too many fragmented conversations has made me think that in practical terms it's better to have replies "inherit" viewership from the starting post—i.e. Bob's post is visible to Alice's followers
@evan a related interesting question to think about: if Bob's reply is visible to Alice's followers, and Alice later gets a new follower, should Bob's post automatically visible to that new follower too?
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@evan I know Alice. Alice is fedi-famous. WTF is Bob?
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@vanderwal actually, most social networks default to having Bob's reply visible to Alice's followers. That is how followers-only posts work on X, Instagram, and Facebook.
@evan With early Twitter as they were releasing their “private" option this was discussed a lot. At the time keeping servers up was a primary concern. The reply model they have was intended to be fixed, but never was.
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@evan I think both is a problem because if we keep going, the conversation will be among a very different public each time anyone answers. I put "something else", but I wish I put "Alice's".
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@evan Oh, I know. It makes keeping tabs on people wishing to be quiet or unseen more visible. It really breaks the "for followers only" intent a badly broken promise and rather dishonest at the worst and poorly (or not even) thought through at the lightest.
Private posts let you have intimate conversations with people you know. They are a great way that people share personal updates with their family and friends. They enable connection.
I have never, ever, *ever* seen anyone on Instagram complain about their comments on a private photo being visible to other followers.
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@evan people who follow both Alice and Bob
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@evan probably. I don’t see that as an intrinsic problem. The constant broadening of the audience is one of the vices of commercial social media. Maybe Bob has 2 options , Alice’s followers or the (smaller) intersection. But he shouldn’t be able to widen it against Alice’s intent.
That's kind of a neat solution.
It's all public in the long run of course, so everybody needs to keep that in mind.
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@reiver so, like sitting in a room with someone while they talk on the phone, and you only hear their side of the conversation.
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@evan
It should be visible to the original set as Alice shared the post with her followers, not followers of followers (light blue segment of set diagram). Any of Bob’s followers that also follow Alice will see the post and replies anyway. See comments on set diagram. -
@evan
It should be visible to the original set as Alice shared the post with her followers, not followers of followers (light blue segment of set diagram). Any of Bob’s followers that also follow Alice will see the post and replies anyway. See comments on set diagram. -
undefined evan@cosocial.ca shared this topic
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Private posts let you have intimate conversations with people you know. They are a great way that people share personal updates with their family and friends. They enable connection.
I have never, ever, *ever* seen anyone on Instagram complain about their comments on a private photo being visible to other followers.
@evan Because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they aren't out their in abundance. Doing simple user research you quickly find this model is really problematic for people thinking they were private, it is an amazing tool for stalkers to take advantage of and oh they do. The stories are abundant and can be brutal.
Following bad practices and putting people at risk isn't great. People are looking for a better social platform that has their wishes upheld, not another that breaks them.
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@evan Because you haven't seen them doesn't mean they aren't out their in abundance. Doing simple user research you quickly find this model is really problematic for people thinking they were private, it is an amazing tool for stalkers to take advantage of and oh they do. The stories are abundant and can be brutal.
Following bad practices and putting people at risk isn't great. People are looking for a better social platform that has their wishes upheld, not another that breaks them.
@vanderwal show me the data.
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@evan
It should be visible to the original set as Alice shared the post with her followers, not followers of followers (light blue segment of set diagram). Any of Bob’s followers that also follow Alice will see the post and replies anyway. See comments on set diagram.@dahukanna @evan Yes! This! This has always been the right answer.
The simplicity in this venn diagram is the “yes" is only Alice's followers.
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That's kind of a neat solution.
It's all public in the long run of course, so everybody needs to keep that in mind.
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It doesn't seem misleading
Did you try to look at it from end-user's perspective?
I'm writing a reply to someone's followers-only post. The form shows me "Visible for followers only". How isn't it misleading for me?
When I do that as a post from the same form, my followers see that.Why should I expect anything else when writing a reply with such option enabled?
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@dahukanna @evan Yes! This! This has always been the right answer.
The simplicity in this venn diagram is the “yes" is only Alice's followers.
I’ve always modeled this challenge as a set theory maths problem and the answer is the original set regardless of who is replying, as the original poster set the limiting constraint conditions + selected the members of the group with access to the conversation thread.
Plus there are “n” Bob’s, where “n” is the number of Alice’s followers. -
So that etiquette would demand that Bob limit the visibility of his reply to just Alice, and let her decide how far it should reach beyond that. There's a certain grace there, but does the etiquette of telephony translate to microblogging?
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@vanderwal show me the data.
@evan You've never asked anybody who has a private or follows only account about this have you? There doesn't need to be a massive data, but takes one response and it becomes really difficult to decide to follow the sloppy pattern and keep pushing it forward.
It is an easy path forward to do the right thing.
I’m here to help you.
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@reiver so, like sitting in a room with someone while they talk on the phone, and you only hear their side of the conversation.
Yes, that seems like a good analogy.
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@evan The venn intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.
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@evan xitter not working that way was also the source of some easy social faux pas if you so much as forgot that one of the people in a thread had their account locked while you were looking at an individual post (in which case in practice you should stay out of it)
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@inherentlee @mayintoronto @evan Yes, I mainly only use “followers only so it can’t be boosted”.
It never occurred to me to think of boost control as a potentially separate thing. That would be a good feature even in public posts.
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@evan I chose Alice's followers on the understanding that "should" means "what I would expect to happen as a user and how I would want to strive to make it work as an implementor, even though I think that's not now it works now"
This is on the basis that I believe the replies to a standalone post belong "in the space" of that user's posts, and so they should "live" on their instance, and they should have ability to moderate within that space.
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@stephaniepixie @mayintoronto @evan
Yes! Mutuals Only would be a great feature. I don't think it's possible to express in current ActivityPub, but that could be solved by introducing a Mutuals Collection, or set arithmetic for existing Collections (to: (Followers AND Follows)).
