Unlisted posts:
1. Your followers see them
2. They’re public on your profile
3. Anyone can link to them
4. Others can boost them
5. They show up in lists
They do not:
* Show up in the local feed
* Show up in the federated feed
* Show up when searching hashtags
Unlisted posts seem like a great way to post without cluttering the local/federated feeds.
1/3
The federated feed seems pretty useless because it’s a firehose, so hashtags and the local feed of smaller, more-focused instances seem more useful for discussing topics with others you don’t follow or who don’t follow you.
If an instance has a theme, it seems like posting unlisted might be a good way to make far off-topic posts or if you’re generally being noisy.
I’m just thinking “out loud.” None of this will become policy on phpc.social.
2/3
Addendum… it turns out that unlisted posts with hashtags do not show up when following or searching for a hashtag. Oops!
See discussion starting here: https://bsd.network/@ellotheth/109398217415699336
3/3
@ramsey
Especially in generic instances like I'm in, it doesn't make sense for personal use at all.
Perhaps bots could make use of it for like tracking trends.
@ramsey
I think posting unlisted in replies is great.
You get the first post of a thread, and the rest is not on the timeline. So threads do not clog up the timeline and people can early stop reading topics they do not care about (instead of finding out later)
chronological timeline forces me to click the threads anyway to read in correct order.
@ramsey
Yes.
So the question is, could it help to edit them at the end into the first post?or add another last post with hashtags that is public again?
No solution is perfect,but getting a lot of 5-10 posts threads condensed on the local public timeline might be worth something.
IIRC answers are usually in the same view scope.So having a unlisted post to reply to will default errors on "unlisted" posts as well with users not aware
Again, probably worth watching busy timelines and styles
@lunasspecto @ramsey as always seems to be the case with #masto UX, there's some interesting discussion from back in the day:
Okay so like. Unlisted means "does not appear in public timelines". A hashtag timeline is a public timeline. I think we're pretty clear on this. Use case:
Talk about #followfriday without interrupting real #followfriday toots.
@lunasspecto @ramsey oh yeah and a couple comments later, the origin of the warning we have now:
I don't fundamentally disagree with that, but it's not explained anywhere in Mastodon and it's quite confusing. I think the following things should be done to limit that confusion:
Aykut Ersoy 🐘
Ben Ramsey
leanhsi
Richard Bagshaw 
baspeeters 
panigrc
Daniel Rotter
…might work for coffee…
Logan Five (aka John)
Cardboard Robot
Rabi'a Elizabeth
gemma lynn ⇒ ello@void
Dominique Cyprès
#hashtag is written down in the toot text area and the privacy setting for the toot is “unlisted”@ellotheth @ramsey Maybe it's just me but I would use # FollowFriday or #/FollowFriday if I wanted to talk about a hashtag without getting into the searches.
I would like to use hashtags in unlisted posts so I can do mildly self-promotional stuff without showing up in the Federated and Local timelines, though. But it seems unlikely to change now after people have had a few years to get used to it
MrCopilot
Chris Saylor
EllisGL