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 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 No matter whether Bob replied as "followers only" or " everyone", Bob's followers should be able to see his reply. They shouldn't be able to scroll up and see Alice's orignal post unless they also follow Alice. But Alice's choice for her own post should not override Bob's choice for his.
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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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@steely_glint @evan I like it. It's a good solution. But it does risk burying dissent in some corner cases.
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@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.
Your condescension is unearned.
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@evan No matter whether Bob replied as "followers only" or " everyone", Bob's followers should be able to see his reply. They shouldn't be able to scroll up and see Alice's orignal post unless they also follow Alice. But Alice's choice for her own post should not override Bob's choice for his.
@ZenHeathen so, for Bob's followers, "Yes" with no context is worthwhile and interesting? That's what they followed Bob for -- to hear his half of a private conversation?
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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 @evan I think we have two different mental models about discussions on Mastodon (and social media more generally). And different people use different mental models, yet often assume everyone else sees things the way they do..
One model sees a “thread” or a “discussion” as belonging to the person who created the first note and sees subsequent reply notes linked to the thread as being part of Alice’s (the original note’s author) thread. The other model sees a thread as a collection of individual notes, linked together, with each reply note in the discussion belonging to the reply’s author.
In the model where Bob and Carol and Dawn and Eve are just replying to Alice’s thread, one might expect those reply Notes to go to whatever group of people Alice had originally sent her note to. In the model where each author owns their own notes, one would expect reply Notes to honor the audience specified in the reply Note itself.
The confusion is made worse because the audience settings mean different things in different circumstances, and none of the clients are yet showing what those audiences actually mean for any given Note. -
Your condescension is unearned.
@evan It isn't intended as condescension. The common saying of "you can't know until you know" applies. Until you run across what you can unsee or unthink it isn't a possibility.
The Kathy Sierra debacle that was the final push that got Twitter to have their private accounts in the manner the put in place (as a stop gap) was a brutal wake-up call for many. The frailty of that system also was problematic and those, like Kathy, ended up leaving in the tens of thousands.
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@evan EXACTLY what I imagined.
So, the answer would be visible to the intersect between them.
Of course, how that scales as *those* people reply... there lies the rub.
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@mayintoronto @evan Friendica has a system that allows you to define lists comparable to reading lists for posts (or custom-add viewers to posts as you go) - that would resolve this whole situation, and allow people to have more contextual human-shaped discussions (like taking discussion in which you’re trying to find common ground with someone outside your political sphere to the kitchen at a party rather than having your most strident friends come to chew them out for not being already correct, or being able to plan the surprise party or tabletop twist without the whole world and the targets of said surprise hearing about it.) I really want it to get some renewed developmental interest for that reason - mastodon, akin to twitter before it, is sort of a public broadcasting system….
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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.
