If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?

@ori cool, thanks for your input. I'm not proposing anything, I just think your expectations are really bad for conversations.

@evan I voted “Alice’s followers”, but if Bob marks their reply followers-only, it should be only the intersection of Alice and Bob’s followers.

I would be very surprised if I posted a followers -only note that a non-follower could see.

If I posted a globally visible note in response to a followers-only note, and only the people who could see the original note could see my response, it would make sense to me.

@dougwade so, in a long conversation, the set of people who can read it gets smaller and smaller?

@evan I think so. I think in an ideal world, I would prefer an audience that expands, but in the real world where people use followers-only to feel safe online, it is important that only followers appear downstream of a followers-only post. At least, that’s what I would expect absent some other cue.

@ori I think this is where I got on the merry-go-round.

@dahukanna
Oh... I need to change my answer.
Other: the dark blue-grey.
@evan

@evan

Just visible to Alice unless she accepts the post. And she controls the visibility on her posts.

@lazysupper @dahukanna so, in a long conversation, the number of people who can see the responses gets smaller and smaller over time?

@BuckRogers1965 have you tried the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress? This is how it works; absolutely great stuff.

@evan
Yes. I initially thought that's a problem. But it respects the privacy wishes of the respondents. But ideally most of the conversation will occur within the overlap.

If Dave knows Alice and Bob but hates Chad, he shouldn't be excluded from the conversation just because Chad's a jerk. And he shouldn't need to reveal his reponses to Chad, just because Alice and Bob tolerate Chad.

@dahukanna

@evan ToAlice, but visible to followers of both.

@evan Carol and Ted clearly need to be looped in

@evan @maj But Bob may want to reply something that he doesn't want to divulge to all of Alice's followers (he likely doesn't know them all) so he may want to explicitly shrink the set to the intersection

@evan

Huh?

I'm sorry I encroached on your poll without your invitation. I saw it, it looked interesting, so I submitted my vote and explained my "other" as requested.

If you didn't want to hear people's thoughts, don't ask for them.

@evan You asked "should", not "does", so my answer is "only people who follow *both* Alice and Bob", that is, the intersection of both sets of followers. (Your 3rd option, to me, reads like "people who follow *either*", that is, the union.)

Whether Alice-only follower Carol (resp. Bob-only follower Dave) should gain access to Bob's reply by following Bob (resp. Alice) after Bob's reply is unclear to me.

@TomAoki @maj third item is the union.

@pauamma so, the audience for replies gets smaller and smaller as the conversation grows?

@evan

Intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.

@bjb so a smaller and smaller audience as the conversation goes on? Eventually too small to keep the conversation up?