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

@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.

@LunaDragofelis so, just a smaller and smaller and smaller set of people as the conversation goes on?

@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.

@reiver what does the conversation look like to Bob's followers who don't follow Alice? Or to people who don't follow either?

@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.

@skobkin @evan why?
If Alice explicitly limited the visibility why could the reply need a broader range? Bob's subscribers won't see the original post anyway.

This would better be better applied to quotes: should Bob be able to open an Alice post to his followers with the quoting?

@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 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.

@evan

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.

@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.

@evan
I’m surprised at the results here. To me it seems like a cut-and-dry consent issue: Alice has indicated in the original post that she only consents to communicating with people who follow her on that post. By making Bob’s replies visible to Bob’s followers (or anyone else) you’re exposing Alice to accounts she did explicitly did not consent to communicating with. 🤨

@rayslava @evan

If 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.

@evan@cosocial.ca it's worse than I thought then
I think there probably should have been a distinction between who you can address in the discussions you start, compared to the discussions someone else starts. It's a privacy issue. Say for example that for some reason I don't want everyone to know I am online and posting, so I restrict the visibility of my posts. Then someone else can see one of my followers replying to me (since including the handle in the replies also practically reveals who you are replying to).

Say for example I am asking my friends on fedi what to do about someone who harasses me. And someone replies to my post with advice about harassment. The person who harasses me could very well understand what I'm talking about.

It is what it is, of course, just saying, I think this particular aspect is not optimal behaviour for social media.

@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.

@evan if "mutuals only" were a visibility option, then I'd be okay with reconsidering "followers only" visibility.

@evan Given all the complexities and real and potential vectors of abuse, maybe replies to followers-only posts should be forced to be private mentions?

Sometimes people share personal things using followers-only visibility, and replying directly without exposing private details seems the most appropriate.

Eg. not announcing "Hope you'll recover from the diarrhea soon, Bob!" to potentially thousands of strangers, or even people who do know Bob, but Bob was not addressing in his post.

@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.

@evan
I think subsequent replies should CC both Bob's and Alice's followers, so those who follow Bob but not Alice would still be able to see all subsequent replies.

@rune

Bob can send his reply to Alice's followers.

Anybody can send anybody anything on the Fediverse. You don't have to read it, but they can send it.