Soooooo, a #Mastodon update. Toots can now be private, which means, visible only to your followers. In tandem with that, you can now "lock" your account, which means you'll be able to approve or reject followers, and the privacy setting would default to "private".

You can still toot publicly as a locked account if you wish. To strangers, locked accounts display only public/unlisted toots. Federation is wonky though