Hey there followers!
Just to let you know, I usually reply to questions on this account as private messages because I don't want to spam my followers' timelines with lots of replies.
Unfortunately, even Unlisted posts seem to appear in the Home timelines of followers, so I use Mentioned visibility instead (which is basically a DM).
Please don't think I'm being weird if I reply to you privately!
p.s. To be honest I am still having trouble nailing down how Unlisted is supposed to work. It isn't documented fully.
Unlisted is public but not visible in Federated or Local or Search.
BUT... what about Home?
I assumed it would never show up in Home unless it was boosted, but I've seen unboosted Unlisted replies to conversations I wasn't taking part in.
If someone can point to proper full documentation for Unlisted including its behaviour in Home timelines, that would be fantastic.
p.p.s. Okay, thank you to everyone who replied about this. Just did a few more tests and Unlisted seems to work like this in Home:
Unlisted posts and replies from people you follow will appear in your Home timeline unless they are a reply to someone you don't follow.
...so... yeah... this is not the most intuitive setup, but seems to be how Unlisted works on Home!
@feditips Ok, that would be exactly how I would have expected it to work. However, I feel like I sometimes see replies to people I don't follow and which haven't been boosted either.
I'll have to take a closer look, I guess.
@feditips While on this subject, I recently learned that someone can start a thread with followers-only visibility and then I can see replies if someone I follow replies to the thread and then that person is replied to by someone else I follow.
(post, followers only, from someone I don't follow): invisible to me
(first reply, from someone I do follow): initially hidden from me
(reply to the reply, from someone else I follow): visible in my Home feed, clicking on it gives me above
@feditips I think all posts from people you follow show up on Home.
I always see Unlisted and even posts in a language I have filtered out if it was posted by someone I follow.
@feditips Unlisted is supposed to change behavior in these specific ways:
* Will not show up in local/federated timelines
* Will not show up in hashtag searches
It does not alter the behavior of posts on Home otherwise. So if you follow a person, their Unlisted posts will still show up.
I don't know where official documentation of this behavior is, however.
That makes sense, I once received one such private reply from you and there was nothing weird about it!
Your posts and patient replies, public or private, are a substantial service to building this place. Very much appreciated!
I had the discussion a few days back
https://norden.social/@pineforest/110185021447047117
and from the replies and my observation I think it is that way: Unlisted answers appear only on the home timeline if one follows you and the one you are responding to.
When replying to toots, there seems to be no public/private setting such that toots can be seen by anyone who is reading through the conversation but won't show up in the home timeline of followers, right?
@feditips
Unlisted only affects the public timelines, your follower's home feed is unaffected. But we have the option to hide all replies from our home feed. I only figured that out recently.
Before, I would see entire conversations of unlisted posts between people I follow. Anti-chronologically and wedged between other posts, so it was quite messy at times. Now I don't, and my feed is nice and tidy.
@feditips
Oh, you already made some tests. I'm just too slow. 🦥
So unlisted replies only show up if you follow both accounts. That's consistent with what I saw, because I never saw all replies someone made, just when I followed both.
@ShengIntegral You also have to change the visibility of the post.
In Mastodon-powered instances/servers, you need to click the globe icon.
Please see attached screenshot. A fair warning, DMs are not encrypted. It can be seen by anyone who knows how to.
@feditips Unlisted also omits from per-user hashtag searches. If you tag an unlisted reply and look for it later with a url like this, it won't come up.
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