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

@raymaccarthy It's a microblogging platform, not a blog, and not a forum where one can make a post and control who can post under it. Alice can control her post and who sees it, and can control for herself who's posts she sees, but she should not have any control over what anyone else's posts. You cannot convince me on this point. Alice controls Alice's posts, Bob controls Bob's posts, Alice must not be allowed to control Bob's posts and Bob must not be allowed to control Alice's posts. Period. @evan

@benroyce@mastodon.social @evan@cosocial.ca this idea occurred to me, but in general I think this hardly ever actually matters in practice.

If Bob is the kind of person to fake screenshots, then everyone, especially Alice, will presumably block him.

I could be wrong on this, but it seems to me like a trick you can only pull once, and not that impressive of one.

And if I'm right that fake screenshots isn't an important attack vector, then there isn't much difference between sharing the post and sharing the screenshot of it.

@evan

Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but I can't quite square the original poll options with "of course it should be defined by Bob's settings".

My thought was that and / all settings that Bob would ever have for his own posts should be available to him, and the default should be whatever his default normally is.

Essentially, (my view is) the fact that Bob's post is in reply to something else is beside the point: Bob's post is Bob's post, just like any other he'd make.

@ZenHeathen @evan
In your opinion.

What's the point of starting a Followers only thread if anyone can trivially make it all public. That's not how chat groups or a conversation in the office works.

"Followers only" a is pointless feature if all followers of each person replying see it.

@raymaccarthy I think we're talking about different things. I'm saying Bob should be able to show Bob's own post to whomever he wishes (short, of course, from anyone who has blocked or muted Bob, or filtered out a word in Bob's post, etc. etc.). Are you saying that, once Bob posts on Alice's thread, that action makes Alice's thread visible to others? That's not my understanding, and it shouldn't be that way. @evan

@danso @evan

sure but caveat emptor

since we're already assuming malicious actors, we shouldn't assume a floor on their behavior. and since malicious actors implies people blocking them, anyone who might come around to correct the lie might never see the lie. thus the liar can effectively seed and propagate lies about people in a silo, and manufacture enough false impressions to create anger and distrust of the liar's target

thus, i never trust screenshots

@benroyce@mastodon.social @evan@cosocial.ca that sounds reasonable to me. We all have some level of duty to be skeptical, especially of claims about people

@ZenHeathen @evan
Bob ethically shouldn't be showing his reply to a limited audience thread to all his followers. He can trivially do it by simply a copy / paste anyway.

In the real world in Mastodon all privacy features are flawed. Assume everyone sees everything.

"Private" is misnamed on Mastodon. There are no private or limited messages.

@raymaccarthy I'm sure I've replied to "followers only" things from time to time, *guaranteed* without knowing that they were, because unless I'm digging, and reminded for some reason to do so, I don't even remember where in the interface that I would find that. And I've never posted anything to my followers only.

But if what you describe is how it works, then... No one should ever reply to anything posts "followers only", ever. Because as soon as they do, it moves beyond what the original posted intended. Like, there's no way to even participate in good faith in that conversation, you can't possibly say anything at all. If anything, the setting should be between Normal and Read-Only. @evan

@ZenHeathen @evan
I don't know what the "correct" answer should be for here, nor do I quite understand it.
I do know that if either party puts the actual mastodon ID of someone anywhere in the supposed private 1:1 message, that person gets it too. Is that by design or a mistake?
Certainly the actual real Mastodon isn't remotely like using groups on Viber (A Japanese owned app like Skype used to be before MS broke it, except better). Viber is on all platforms as a program or app & is encrypted.

@raymaccarthy Whoa, "private messages" is a completely different animal, though I agree, they're crap here, and misleadingly named. But I thought we were talking about a regular post, but with the selector moved to "followers only" instead of "public". That's not the same thing. Maybe we should let it lie, before further misunderstandings. @evan

@ZenHeathen @evan
Yes.
I think what is illustrated is that people might misunderstand what any of the filters do and have different opinions on what they think ought to happen.

Still, it's far better than Facebook, X-Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok or even Bluesky.

If someone wants a private group they should set it up on Viber. "Followers only" here is almost pointless.

@evan Only Alice's followers. Those of Bob's followers who are not Alice's followers cannot see the context Bob is replying to. Reading answers without any context introduces a lot of noise in the channel (ambiguity specifically). Ambiguity also has the tendency to trigger a lot of anxious questions in people who read them (and sometimes then reply to ask for the context). For me, these kind of interactions lowers the quality of my network.

@evan
Either Alice's only or intersection of Bob and Alice. There's a reason it wasn't visible to all of Bob's at the start so audience shouldn't be enlarged without Alice giving permission.

The intersection of Alice and Bob's followers.

@ori so as the conversation continues, fewer and fewer people can see what's being said?

@jmcclure you're forgiven!

The poll is not mandatory, so please feel free to spend your one wild and precious life doing something different.

Yes. Either you do that or you ignore someone's privacy settings.

@ori *or* you give Bob an option to reply to Alice's followers.

Yes. That's equivalent to Alice setting their post followers only, and Bob setting their post public, but less confusing to the user.

(Edit: realized you hadn't said what Bob's visibility was set to. Anyway: UI quibbles aside, the answer is that you intersect the people who are able to view)