Evan ProdromouIf Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
Alice's followers
Bob's followers
Both Alice's and Bob's followers
Other (please specify)
Poll ended at .
I'm not speaking about any particular two people but if you need it please consider @alice_watson and @bobwyman as the characters in this story.
Maj - 🇨🇦@maj yes, that's the default for Mastodon, I think. It is only visible to Bob's followers.
@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.
So, the answer would be visible to the intersect between them.
Of course, how that scales as *those* people reply... there lies the rub.
@maj Dawn's and my answer would be all of Alice's followers. I don't like the intersection answer, because it gets smaller and smaller over time. I think Alice's intent is to have her friends and family have a conversation, like it works on Instagram and Facebook.
Mark Andrew
James M.@evan @maj that's my answer too, i.e. "Alice's friends", since that's Alice's original intent, a conversation among her friends.
There are advantages to having Bob's reply go to only Alice first, who then fans it out to her followers. For example, it allows full reply controls. It also allows semi-anonymous replies, where Alice can see that Bob sent it but no one else can. This is useful when Bob doesn't want to reveal himself (his profile etc.) to all friends of friends, and it still protects against abuse because Alice still knows it's Bob.
The main disadvantage of routing all replies through Alice's device first is that Alice has to be online for the conversation to continue as it happens. However, Alice could have a trusted (!) server handle the fanning out instead, assuming she doesn't need to manually approve replies.
My social media app FriendSafe routes all replies through the OP (Alice) first. It allows those semi-anonymous replies but doesn't have reply controls now (but it could).
Lyall
Stefan Monnier
Daniel Hernández
Nordnick 🌐Not the visibility of Alices's post, but of his (Bob's) reply.
And of course, if you have access to content, you can copy it... via #ActivityPub or e-mail or...
Zimmie
Alexey Skobkin@evan We don't know visibility of Bob's reply.
@skobkin the question is about what that visibility should be.
@evan No, I mean what visibility out of available options did Bob choose.
If we're talking about Mastodon, currently he'd have "followers" and "mentioned only".
Who'll see (and who ideally should see) depends on what he had chosen.
But if we're talking about a default selection (followers only), then we really have two rather different things AFAIR: who'd really see it and who should've been able to see that for it to be easily understandable by the end user. Although I think different people may have different opinions on how exactly should it work.
rayslavaIf Alice explicitly limited the visibility why could the reply need a broader range? Bob's subscribers won't see the original post anyway.
They shouldn't see the OP. They should see the thread from the interaction. Otherwise it makes no sense that since they interacted their subscribers would only see separate replies without any knowing to what it was or wasn't.
If they don't want anyone to see that, let them use DM to not confuse other people.
This would better be better applied to quotes
No, he shouldn't because Alice set the OP visibility like that.
And before you say "then why comments", I've already said that it confuses people around them. Force them to use DM or show to subscribers of both.
That's one part of fediverse's main problems: lack of obviousness.
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?
@skobkin the question is about how it should work.
@evan
As I said in my reply in another branch of this thread, different people may have different expectations.
For me it should be visible for subscribers of both of them. But it's technically difficult and most likely wouldn't be implemented.
Why? Because otherwise subscribers of both of them would see only half of the thread without being able to grasp it in it's entirety.
Especially considering that most of the AP software I know doesn't allow to extend visibility level from what it was in the OP. So making it a bit more loose by default would be a sane choice to maintain consistency of threads between different instances.
@skobkin as someone who posts a daily poll on the Fediverse, I am aware that different people have different opinions on a variety of topics. That's what polls are for.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. With that option, the number of people who can read replies gets smaller and smaller as the conversation goes on. It makes followers-only posts really hard to use.
@evan
Yes, that's exactly my point.
I try not to use such posts even if I want to because it would confuse people and I don't want them to see separate meaningless replies.
Jeremiah Lee@evan Alice, Alice’s followers, and the subset of Bob’s followers that follow Alice.
🏳️🌈🎃🇧🇷Luana🇧🇷🎃🏳️🌈@evan Since the replie is followers-only, to Bob’s followers. Otherwise information that someone with a private account would expect not to be visible to anyone they didn’t approve could be easily leaked to people that they don’t know.
@luana what if there was a clear label on who it was going to? "Same audience" or something similar?
@evan As an extra option which happens to become the default and has a different name in the API? Sure. As a substitute to the current options? Definitely not.
Not only this would be misleading if one is using a 3rd party client that didn’t update all the strings for all languages yet, risking leaking sensitive information, but also the current behaviour is ideal for some kind of discussions about topics one might consider more private and wouldn’t want to share with unapproved people.
In addition to this new “same audience” option, it’d be interesting to have extra privacy options for regular toots too such as “mutuals only” (already present in some fediverse software), “followers except <these users/users on this list>” and “only <these users/users on this list>”
But definitely don’t change the behaviour on the same option/api endpoint assuming everyone would see the “same audience” label change. Add that as an extra, separate option, that clients would need to add support for instead of leaking sensitive information automatically from a server update.
Talya (she/her) 🏳️⚧️✡️@evan @luana i think the issue can be summarised as "fedi lets you change/expand the audience, when it should only let you narrow it". however, changing what followes-only does would eliminate the second part, which is important for safety.
ideally the privacy controls for replies should be entirely different to post controls, so instead of public, quiet, followers and DM, it should be "original audience, original but quiet, mutuals, DM", at least from the maximalist safety viewpoint.
ideally the privacy controls for replies should be entirely different to post controls, so instead of public, quiet, followers and DM, it should be "original audience, original but quiet, mutuals, DM", at least from the maximalist safety viewpoint.
@evan @luana
yeah, and i want to emphasise that in my original comment the main point that audience shouldn't be allowed to be expanded, but should definitely be allowed to get narrowed. hence why i'm saying privacy controls for replies should be entirely different, with the most *broad* option allowed being "original audience".
yeah, and i want to emphasise that in my original comment the main point that audience shouldn't be allowed to be expanded, but should definitely be allowed to get narrowed. hence why i'm saying privacy controls for replies should be entirely different, with the most *broad* option allowed being "original audience".
Adam Millerchip@evan people who follow both Alice and Bob
@adam so, in a conversation with Charlene, David, Evan and Frances, there would just be a smaller and smaller circle of people who could follow along? That seems best to you?
@evan I think so. The wishes of any of the participants to keep the message to followers only is not respected if both presence of the conversation and parts of it are visible to followers' followers.
ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIESAlice started the thread, so in this context, we respect her communication style choices for that post and everything that follows underneath it
if Bob can come in and hijack the conversation with their communication style, this is disrespectful to Alice
in the context of a thread Alice started, we respect Alice's communication style, and no one else's
this is the most responsible approach
Marcos Dione
Luna Dragofelis ΘΔ🏳️⚧️🐱@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 so, just a smaller and smaller and smaller set of people as the conversation goes on?
@evan I think it should be a per post setting to choose between "intersection" and "OP's followers".
@reiver ⊼ (Charles) 
By default, visible to both Alice's and Bob's followers.
But, Bob should be able to change it. Even making visible to everyone.
@reiver what does the conversation look like to Bob's followers who don't follow Alice? Or to people who don't follow either?
Ideally —
...
For the former —
From a UX point of view, they (Bob's followers who don't yet follow Alice) could see a placeholder post for Alice's post(s), that says that the content cannot be shown.
If a follower of Bob's then followed Alice, then the placeholder post(s) would turn into the actual post(s).
...
For the latter —
Again, from a UX point of view — Placeholder posts, until they follow Alice or Bob.
.