If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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@Jeremiah isn't that third set already included in the second?
@evan You're right. I would change my vote, but Mastodon.
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@evan there's the correct answer and then there's what happens on fedi
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@evan people who follow both Alice and Bob
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@skobkin the question is about how it should work.
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@evan there's the correct answer and then there's what happens on fedi
@rune the question is about the correct answer.
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@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.
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@evan Since the replie is followers-only, to Bobβs followers. Otherwise information that someone with a private account would expect not to be visible to anyone they didnβt approve could be easily leaked to people that they donβt know.
@luana what if there was a clear label on who it was going to? "Same audience" or something similar?
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By default, visible to both Alice's and Bob's followers.
But, Bob should be able to change it. Even making visible to everyone.
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@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?
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@evan@cosocial.ca when I learned that a reply to a "followers only" post in the Fediverse meant that the replier can choose any visibility they can choose for their own posts, in a discussion that the original poster meant to keep among their followers, it was one of my most WTF moments about ActivityPub.
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@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?
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@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. -
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?
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@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". -
@evan@cosocial.ca when I learned that a reply to a "followers only" post in the Fediverse meant that the replier can choose any visibility they can choose for their own posts, in a discussion that the original poster meant to keep among their followers, it was one of my most WTF moments about ActivityPub.
@panos well, ActivityPub lets anyone address anyone else on the Fediverse. You can even address collections of people, like my following list or someone else's contacts collection. The choices that are allowed in the Mastodon interface are a small subset of who you could actually address with ActivityPub.
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@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.
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@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.
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@evan this is really hard. But thankfully I've been trying to train myself to think about potentials for abuse.
Showing the comment to just Bob's followers creates the risk that Bob and followers will create an echo chamber opposed to Alice's original sentiment, and worse towards Alice herself. That's bad, and reminds of cliquish negativity that you find in adolescent groups and office environments.
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@evan this is really hard. But thankfully I've been trying to train myself to think about potentials for abuse.
Showing the comment to just Bob's followers creates the risk that Bob and followers will create an echo chamber opposed to Alice's original sentiment, and worse towards Alice herself. That's bad, and reminds of cliquish negativity that you find in adolescent groups and office environments.
Showing the comment to just Alice's followers raises a different risk. What if Bob's comment is a good faith critique, but runs against the conventional wisdom within the majority of Alice's followers? Will Bob be potentially drummed out of Alice's circle? This is regardless of the relative merits of the argument.
The outcome would deprive Alice's followers and Alice of a potentially interesting viewpoint. Not to mention the potential for hard feelings.
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@rune the question is about the correct answer.
@evan there isn't any protocol to communicate consent with all parties, so it just has to be a broken mess.
Even if Bob gets a return list of Alices followers and allows those the thread is still broken for all of Bobs followers who are not in Alice's list. Even if you had reply controls for Alice to approve Bobs reply it would have to retroactively apply to all of Alice's posts to be useful to Bobs followers. And beyond just retroactively applying this change it'd be a mess to communicate that this was happening in the UI. And we didn't even wonder what happens with a 3rd participant yet.
I think the concept is mostly just flawed and the best we can do is mostly broken threads and a working implementation for the people who are in the subset of all followers lists.
