If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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Thanks to everyone who responded or replied, even if I didn't like your answers.
Oh, one thing that is worth noting: a lot of people insisted on Bob's absolute prerogative to reply with any kind of visibility he wants: public, his followers, whatever.
This is technically true, but Alice also has some agency here. Her server maintains a collection of `replies` that can be used to read all the replies. There's also another collection for the full thread.
Her server can omit replies that violate her expectations. This limits Bob's reach somewhat.
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Oh, one thing that is worth noting: a lot of people insisted on Bob's absolute prerogative to reply with any kind of visibility he wants: public, his followers, whatever.
This is technically true, but Alice also has some agency here. Her server maintains a collection of `replies` that can be used to read all the replies. There's also another collection for the full thread.
Her server can omit replies that violate her expectations. This limits Bob's reach somewhat.
Other servers can and should use Alice's `replies` collection to see which replies she has consented to. They can and should obscure or hide altogether replies that aren't in that collection.
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Other servers can and should use Alice's `replies` collection to see which replies she has consented to. They can and should obscure or hide altogether replies that aren't in that collection.
Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
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@evan Well I went ahead, if you're interested:
Stefan Bohacek (@stefan@stefanbohacek.online)
Hey fediverse, quick question for you. Generally speaking, when you post a followers-only post, who do you expect to see replies from? #fediverse #poll #FollowersOnly #boundaries [ ] My own followers (MOF) [ ] MOF + repliers' followers (RF) [ ] Mutual MOF + RF only [ ] Something else?
Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)
@stefan I asked the question I wanted to ask. I'll boost your poll, though.
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@stefan I asked the question I wanted to ask. I'll boost your poll, though.
@evan Ah, I was only tagging you as an FYI, but thank you, appreciate it!
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Replies to FO posts should default to DM or Public scope. Defaulting the scope of replies to one FO post to a completely different, often non-overlapping set of followers for each account interacting with the thread is a recipe for hopelessly broken and useless threads. Public scope would ensure the various sets of followers can contribute meaningfully to the same conversation started by the OP even if they couldn't see OP themselves, whereas DM would prevent other people's followers from being involved at all.
The real answer is to get groups up and running, and deprecate FO all together. Scope replies to messages posted to a group back to the same group by default, and give each user a built in group of their followers. Simple.
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Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
@evan I think this is one of the problems with Mastodon being the go to for people in the fediverse, and is also why I've been looking things up and trying to work out how the good ol concept Google+ had could work well in the fediverse, and also supporting all the features of ActivityPub instead of using its own thing, and I even had the idea that if I can get a service like that off the ground, I'd be happy for a non-biased nonprofit organisation to take over. A name for it I thought of is Fedi+ and if eventually that was to be ran by something like the Social Web Foundation or something, that could really help the fediverse at large.
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Replies to FO posts should default to DM or Public scope. Defaulting the scope of replies to one FO post to a completely different, often non-overlapping set of followers for each account interacting with the thread is a recipe for hopelessly broken and useless threads. Public scope would ensure the various sets of followers can contribute meaningfully to the same conversation started by the OP even if they couldn't see OP themselves, whereas DM would prevent other people's followers from being involved at all.
The real answer is to get groups up and running, and deprecate FO all together. Scope replies to messages posted to a group back to the same group by default, and give each user a built in group of their followers. Simple.
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Replies to FO posts should default to DM or Public scope. Defaulting the scope of replies to one FO post to a completely different, often non-overlapping set of followers for each account interacting with the thread is a recipe for hopelessly broken and useless threads. Public scope would ensure the various sets of followers can contribute meaningfully to the same conversation started by the OP even if they couldn't see OP themselves, whereas DM would prevent other people's followers from being involved at all.
The real answer is to get groups up and running, and deprecate FO all together. Scope replies to messages posted to a group back to the same group by default, and give each user a built in group of their followers. Simple.
@nicholas @evan @stefan that's simple, but I don't agree. I think an open conversation protocol in this age (just describing #ActivityPub that way) should give conversants a means to set intention to grow the conversation, tools to do so (include my followers), and a way to reverse that intention (this tangent is getting specific…) and tools to do so such as limiting to the intersection of groups.
I am essentially describing boolean operations with groups. -
@evan@cosocial.ca Does it change depending of exact fediware I'm using?
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@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 @luana i think the issue can be summarised as "fedi lets you change/expand the audience, when it should only let you narrow it". however, changing what followes-only does would eliminate the second part, which is important for safety.
ideally the privacy controls for replies should be entirely different to post controls, so instead of public, quiet, followers and DM, it should be "original audience, original but quiet, mutuals, DM", at least from the maximalist safety viewpoint. -
Mastodon doesn't do either of these things, by the way. It doesn't let you reply to Alice's followers, and it doesn't use the `replies` collection for showing and hiding replies. It's too bad; these are really valuable features of ActivityPub.
@evan I like the house analogy for things like this. In theory, we are visiting Alice's house — her post (a digital home) — and her original posting should set the terms for the next set of interactions, be it tea, a post or a comment.
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@evan @luana i think the issue can be summarised as "fedi lets you change/expand the audience, when it should only let you narrow it". however, changing what followes-only does would eliminate the second part, which is important for safety.
ideally the privacy controls for replies should be entirely different to post controls, so instead of public, quiet, followers and DM, it should be "original audience, original but quiet, mutuals, DM", at least from the maximalist safety viewpoint. -
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@evan Let's talk about implementation. In many cases, Bob don't know Alice's followers. The only way to deliver the reply to all Alice's followers without needing Alice to disclosure all her followers is relaying the message for Alice to deliver. This approach even have the advantage of federating Alice's moderation actions over her replies.
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@evan @luana
yeah, and i want to emphasise that in my original comment the main point that audience shouldn't be allowed to be expanded, but should definitely be allowed to get narrowed. hence why i'm saying privacy controls for replies should be entirely different, with the most *broad* option allowed being "original audience". -
@evan @luana
yeah, and i want to emphasise that in my original comment the main point that audience shouldn't be allowed to be expanded, but should definitely be allowed to get narrowed. hence why i'm saying privacy controls for replies should be entirely different, with the most *broad* option allowed being "original audience". -
@evan Let's talk about implementation. In many cases, Bob don't know Alice's followers. The only way to deliver the reply to all Alice's followers without needing Alice to disclosure all her followers is relaying the message for Alice to deliver. This approach even have the advantage of federating Alice's moderation actions over her replies.
@cochise this isn't a problem with ActivityPub. We have two different ways to do this.
