@vanderwal actually, most social networks default to having Bob's reply visible to Alice's followers. That is how followers-only posts work on X, Instagram, and Facebook.
@evan Oh, I know. It makes keeping tabs on people wishing to be quiet or unseen more visible. It really breaks the "for followers only" intent a badly broken promise and rather dishonest at the worst and poorly (or not even) thought through at the lightest.
@vanderwal so, I think I see where we went askew here.
You said, "Most services get this wrong and make the replies visible to B's followers only."
I disagreed, "Most services get this *right* and make the replies visible to A's followers only."
I don't think we disagree about the right way to do it -- we disagree if services actually do it that way.
I am not sure why you think they don't. As far as I can tell, X, Instagram and Facebook all make replies visible to A's followers.
@vanderwal I also agree that making B's responses visible to all of A's followers can be a problem.
Especially in families and friends groups, A might approve both B and C as followers, but B might not want anything to do with C. C might be an ex-lover or a racist uncle or whatever.
Unfortunately, when we sever connections, not all of our friends and family do, too.
Edited 15d ago
@evan Twitter / X have public replies from B visible to A's followers as they are open. But, B's followers can see the response, which is where things get to be problematic.
I wasn't intending to say only B's followers saw the reply, but that they could see the response to a private account.
Marketers, stalkers, and worse have easy pickings in that model.
What @dahukanna lays out in the venn diagram is the good approach.
Respecting blocks fixes this, obviously. But sometimes there are cases where B doesn't know C follows A, and hasn't blocked them.
I think giving B some options for replies -- reply privately to A, reply to same audience -- makes sense.
I don't think making replies visible to B's followers only is the answer, though.
@evan I’ve always leaned toward having A's wishes respected as a first order priority.
I've worked to help platforms work through options for B to respond in a manner (it was a two tiered response model) where the one to A is clear, but one that filters out A from the response (either as script to remove it, or giving B the option for a public version).
These options were never implimented.
I know Traction software (for enterprise and “secure" focussed organizations) did this really well.