If Alice makes a followers-only post, and Bob replies to it, to whom should Bob's reply be visible?
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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.
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For "Other", a lot of people replied with "the intersection of A's followers and B's followers". This makes replies to replies to replies less and less visible to participants, until practically no one can see what's being said. It's terrible for conversations.
@evan it nonetheless sounds right to me when the conversation is initiated as followers-only; a choice for a semi-private audience. Each conversation thread should narrow in to smaller audience, even if that means eventually parts of it are essentially mention-only.
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@evan it nonetheless sounds right to me when the conversation is initiated as followers-only; a choice for a semi-private audience. Each conversation thread should narrow in to smaller audience, even if that means eventually parts of it are essentially mention-only.
@novelgazer the original post and the replies don't have to be isomorphic. If I post a photo of a bus, do all the comments have to be photos of buses? No, obviously not. A "followers-only" conversation where every post is visible to each author's followers is meaningless; it's much more important and natural to have a conversation amongst a group of people.
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@evan Alice should be the one to decide if she wants to hear from Bob's followers, seems to me.
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@novelgazer the original post and the replies don't have to be isomorphic. If I post a photo of a bus, do all the comments have to be photos of buses? No, obviously not. A "followers-only" conversation where every post is visible to each author's followers is meaningless; it's much more important and natural to have a conversation amongst a group of people.
@evan on reflection, I take it back. I think Alice's followers is right. Bob should be aware that he's replying to "Alice's followers only."
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@evan
Either :
1. Respect OP pref only (all replies visible to Alice followers) + inform repliers their post pref might not be respected as they're not OP & their replies will be visible to all Alice followers.
2. Also respect replier pref (so intersection of Alice followers and Bob prefs) and when that prevent users from seeing a response, show it to them (u cannot view answer unless by following x, with a button to do it if wanted)
Ideally we'd have distinct prefs for our op vs replies -
@evan
It should be visible to the original set as Alice shared the post with her followers, not followers of followers (light blue segment of set diagram). Any of Bob’s followers that also follow Alice will see the post and replies anyway. See comments on set diagram and post about the set theory maths/model - https://mastodon.social/@dahukanna/116030140984675453@dahukanna @evan @stefan
I would argue that it should be an option to allow for, or encourage, growing the group with replies.
But for certain, this shrinking of the audience (to the intersection of A and B) should be an *option* for Bob. Bob may not care to restrict their replies to their own followers. Bob may want to talk to everyone seeing the OP.
