If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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@stephaniepixie @mayintoronto I think "followers only" only makes sense if you manually approve followers.
@evan @mayintoronto I actually do manually approve but I’m not chatty with every single person who follows me. I don’t always follow back.
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Respecting blocks fixes this, obviously. But sometimes there are cases where B doesn't know C follows A, and hasn't blocked them.
I think giving B some options for replies -- reply privately to A, reply to same audience -- makes sense.
I don't think making replies visible to B's followers only is the answer, though.
@evan I’ve always leaned toward having A's wishes respected as a first order priority.
I've worked to help platforms work through options for B to respond in a manner (it was a two tiered response model) where the one to A is clear, but one that filters out A from the response (either as script to remove it, or giving B the option for a public version).
These options were never implimented.
I know Traction software (for enterprise and “secure" focussed organizations) did this really well.
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@evan if "mutuals only" were a visibility option, then I'd be okay with reconsidering "followers only" visibility.
@mayintoronto @evan Yes! I would commit crimes for mutuals only posts to be an option, here and on most other platforms I use. Followers only isn't always enough.
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@evan I'm going to need a diagram! This is like set theory.
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@stephaniepixie @mayintoronto I think "followers only" only makes sense if you manually approve followers.
@stephaniepixie @mayintoronto @evan followers only mostly acts as a "can't be boosted" technique imo. the audience limitation is secondary.
side note: why are boost controls and audience controls the same thing! bothers me to no end
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@evan this is what happens when people want to have a moderately private conversation, yeah: think of it like the pub/bar/café table filling up for a given subthread
@flippac it's not how most other social networks work. If Alice posted a private photo on Instagram, and Bob commented, Alice's other followers could see Bob's comment, but Bob's followers could not.
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@evan@cosocial.ca if Bob is malicious, he could simply screenshot Alice's post and share it with his followers.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable for his reply to be sent to his followers, with an off-by-default checkbox to also forward Alice's message to his followers.
People who don't follow Bob probably shouldn't see Bob's reply.
It would also make sense for Charlie to have a profile-wide option to not see replies to posts that he can't see. Even if I'm interested in Bob, I don't need to see his reply to an invisible post by Alice.
I realise that has some uncomfortable implications, but as you describe, all of the options seem to. That's what makes it a tough question 🤔
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@flippac it's not how most other social networks work. If Alice posted a private photo on Instagram, and Bob commented, Alice's other followers could see Bob's comment, but Bob's followers could not.
@evan yeah, but we actually have an opportunity to have at least one mode work that way whereas the current effect of "followers only" is for everybody to have to ask themselves if someone is following them who shouldn't be party to the conversation
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@evan yeah, but we actually have an opportunity to have at least one mode work that way whereas the current effect of "followers only" is for everybody to have to ask themselves if someone is following them who shouldn't be party to the conversation
@evan ("private" here being the DM analogue, ofc)
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@mayintoronto @evan Yes, this! I know many people would love “mutuals only” posts. I would definitely use that more than “followers only”
@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)). -
@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 followers only mostly acts as a "can't be boosted" technique imo. the audience limitation is secondary.
side note: why are boost controls and audience controls the same thing! bothers me to no end
@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. -
@evan ("private" here being the DM analogue, ofc)
@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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@evan The venn intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.
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@evan The venn intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.
@mhoye so, as the conversation goes on, the audience gets smaller and smaller?
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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.
@evan (in general i'm a big fan of making "spaces" with clear scope and privacy rules that, once you're in them, you're in a little community.
on the small scale: people who can see a post and engage with replies to it
on the medium scale: private and public groups/forums with moderatable membership
on the large scale: instance-level communities
vs just stringing together a graph of connected individual posts)
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@evan I would tend to say "Both", but I am saying Alice.
Mastodon (not ActivityPub) specifically lacks level of privacy "local". Therefore I use the "followers only" mode to run moderator's account, which confirm follow requests only to local accounts. I want this discussion restricted only to followers, but actually, I wouldn't mind, if I could restrict the privacy to "local users" (some other ActivityPub implementations allow this). But I guess some users in followers-only mode have the same need for privacy.
On the other hand, if there can be more privacy level, there would be very useful level of both status privacy level and reply allowance mode, which would be "people, who I follow only". This would effectively allow me to mix functionality of "anybody can follow" accounts with "confirmation of follow requests": simply, all people, who I follow, would be considered friends and would be considered my inner circle. No need for blocking - just unfollowing someone would remove them.
Adding privacy level "people, who I follow" privacy level besides existing "followers only" and using this also to determine who can reply, would make things much easier, at least for me.
I want to keep open follow policy, but there are certain topics, which I don't really want to discuss openly with general public. But the fact, that I follow someone, usually means, that there are some common interests. If they don't follow me back - well, it is their fault, who cares. Technically, I see zero implementation difference if I compare "who I follow" to "who follows me". These two are very similar SQL queries. But it would be "5th level of privacy" (local users are 6th level).
But there can be different privacy preferences and maybe, some people may like to use lists also as "target groups" (called Circles on Googe Plus)... but this would be probably very hard to implement in federated environment.
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@evan (in general i'm a big fan of making "spaces" with clear scope and privacy rules that, once you're in them, you're in a little community.
on the small scale: people who can see a post and engage with replies to it
on the medium scale: private and public groups/forums with moderatable membership
on the large scale: instance-level communities
vs just stringing together a graph of connected individual posts)
@evan (this is something i'd love to bring to wikis/mediawiki/wikipedia too, but i don't have the time or headspace to deal with that and it would really need more community-management input than i could provide alone. something to think about down the road!)
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@mhoye so, as the conversation goes on, the audience gets smaller and smaller?
@evan Absolutely. People can still seek out threads of conversation, but the set of people automatically tagged in get narrowed quickly.
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@evan (in general i'm a big fan of making "spaces" with clear scope and privacy rules that, once you're in them, you're in a little community.
on the small scale: people who can see a post and engage with replies to it
on the medium scale: private and public groups/forums with moderatable membership
on the large scale: instance-level communities
vs just stringing together a graph of connected individual posts)
@brooke I like how conversations happen when I make friends-only posts on Facebook.
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Ideally visibility should be thread scoped with replies able to restrict it but not expand it
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if Bob replies to a post by Alice, they are implictily relinquishing their communication style to the style of Alice, because it is Alice's top level post. Alice "owns" the conversation as top level poster
Bob must consider the implications of that before replying
that solves the problem
the structure of a conversation is beholden to the imperatives of the starter of that conversation. it should not be hijacked
your other concerns are valid
but are overruled in this context
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@matz già! Ho vissuto cose di gran lunga peggiori in viaggio, e poi questo è niente rispetto a quello che sta vivendo la popolazione sfollata.
Pero, uno spera sempre di partire per fare avventure diverse, ecco 😊
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@simonperry Tenete duro! Abbiamo avuto di nuovo sole e cielo azzurro sulla costa dell'Algarve. Con questo vento forte, dovreste arrivare a Siviglia in un'ora.
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@simonperry marie che avventura!
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it's about principals
i chose "Alice's followers"
to me the imperative here is:
Alice "owns" their top level post and all replies to it
thus Alice's communication style overwhelms the style of anyone who responds to them, in that context
this has much further architecture implications than just your question. but for the matter here, all replies to a top level post defer on all communication style questions to style of the author of the top level post
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@evan Hm. I chose "other" but now I think what I meant to select was
"both Alice's and Bob's followers"
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👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻
Ma oltre al freddo che ho preso in questi giorni, mi aspetta una brutta sorpresa: l'appartamento prenotato non è attrezzato per i 9 gradi che ci sono a Siviglia. Nessuno si aspettava questo tempaccio umido e l'acqua a secchiate su porte e finestre.
Entra acqua nell'appartamento, e devo asciugare tutto. Per riscaldermi ho solo 1 pompa di calore, spero solo che non mi abbandoni. Per fortuna c'è un piumone spesso!
Che dire... Speriamo che il meteo ci azzecchi x domani (tempo variabile). 🤞🏻
