Mastodon: Ask for a new privacy level : "mutuals"

[Korbak]

Hello,
thank you for both reading and being one of the contributors for Mastodon.

SITUATION :

As you know, for now, there are 4 privacy levels in Mastodon :

• Public ;
• Unlisted ;
• Private ;
• Direct.

The fact is that it is a really well thought feature, but incomplete in my mind. Actually, a lot of people are followed by totally unknown fellows. So, they have to think about what they are tooting, even in "Private" mode, because they don't know or trust the people that will read their toot.

When you have some hundred or thousand followers, you just can't imagine tooting anything that you want only some people to know. Because you don't actually know the people that are going to read this.

So some people have to create a second account, private, with a filter of their followers, in order to create a confident circle. But that's a heavy way to deal with this situation.

SOLUTION :

It might be interesting to add a perfect middle between "private" and "direct", that could be called "mutuals".

Whenever a Mastodon user selects this privacy level, only the people that are followed by they and follow them can see the toot.

So it doesn't spreads too much, and isn't limited by mentions. It allows you to toot a "global" thing without screaming it loudly to untrusted ears.

I hope it will please you as an idea, and I thank you for the reading and thinking time you allowed me.
Keep tooting,
Korbak (@[email protected])

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• [ x ] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.
• [ ] This bug happens on a tagged release and not on master (If you're a user, don't worry about this).

[trwnh]

Potentially related: #422, #5686

[Cassolotl]

This has been suggested before, by several different people, and I would really love this feature.

For me "mutuals" as a privacy/visibility setting could replace followers-only, but I understand that people may want both to be available.

[agateblue]

This would be great! FWIW, if it was implemented, I'd still like to have the "followers only" setting available, as I would use both.

[remram44]

"following only" is dangerous because it is not a strict subset of "private", contrary to "mutuals". So people might want to post a toot that is accessible to both followers and followed people, which makes everything way more complex. I think "mutuals" is sufficient.

However being a subset, it would be better if "private" was renamed, since it is no longer the most private setting.

[edit: read too quick, you meant "followers only" not "following only". We agree then 😅 sorry]

[Cassolotl]

However being a subset, it would be better if "private" was renamed, since it is no longer the most private setting.

@remram44 None of the settings are called private currently! :)

[remram44]

Will have to send a patch to Subway Tooter, Tootdon, and a few other apps. They all show "private" 😐

[Cassolotl]

Ack. :S I think it used to be called private a while back and then it got renamed because it was misrepresentative? So that could explain it.

[ghost]

I think this a nice feature request, but I'm also afraid that we are getting to much privacy options.

So I like to suggests that we make this available as an opt-in option in the user settings.

[Laurelai]

There's no such thing as too much privacy options. Granular control over your content is good, actually.

[nightpool]

it is nearly impossible for many users (I would guess around a quarter to a
half) to understand intuitively the privacy levels we have already.
Introducing a new one will just increase the confusion and make many people
even more intimidated to use mastodon. we need to find a balance between
providing good defaults and meeting every single use case.

On Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 12:13 PM Laurelai [e-mail] wrote:

There's no such thing as too much privacy options. Granular control over
your content is good, actually.

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[Cassolotl]

If I was designing it I'd have two visibility settings: public, and mutuals. And then DMs would be separate. But I totally get that if even other people do think something like that is a good idea, such a big change would be extremely disruptive. (There would probably be a huge outcry over the loss of unlisted toots and stuff.) :(

[ghost]

@Laurelai I didn't mean that more privacy options are a problem, but more than 4 displayed. My suggestion is to make extra privacy options optional.

[steckerhalter]

I never really understood why we have "followers-only" toots. it just makes everything complicated. then you have to "lock" your account and approve followers, whereas with mutual toots none of this would be necessary and I as a user would have better control even over who gets to see the toots or not.

[lapineige]

Is this still in discussion ?

Since last comments in this topic, private accounts evolved with additional features (in particular followers-only boost) that increase the gap between a "public" account when everyone can read your content (except DM) and a private account where you.
In my opinion this add even more interest to a "mutuals-only" feature, that allows a public account to post kind-of private content without locking its account or create another account. And for private accounts it gives an additional level of granularity that can be useful in many cases.

[ThibG]

I realize that while I have discussed it multiple times, I have not done so on the actual issue. My issue with this is that we cannot currently do this efficiently. I can see two ways of doing this, none is very satisfying:

• add a “mutuals” collection to actors and address it rather than addressing followers. This would require special handling in all software (including Mastodon itself. This wouldn't be compatible with older versions). This would be really hackish and further outside of ActivityPub specs than we are for follower-only posts (we address the followers collections although, according to the spec, we should expand it to the individual people in the collection—but that is inefficient and makes mapping to the privacy scope impossible). This wouldn't have performance downsides, but it would have the same issues as followers-only posts do already have (servers might not agree on who follows whom, replying to a mutuals-only toot of someone else would change mean displaying to your mutuals, etc.)
• actually address every mutual separately. This is more generic and would be retro-compatible with Mastodon releases from several months ago, and would match ActivityPub's spec much more closely. However, this means that every mutual-only toot would carry a copy of the list of mutuals, and that every such toot will be sent to every recipient individually, instead of instance-per-instance. It would also, in general, not be possible to tell apart a mutual-only toot from a followers-only toot once it is posted.

[trwnh]

@ThibG option 2 is just support for custom addressing, a la "circles" or "audiences". i don't think mastodon needs to hardcode a mutuals-only scope which would only make things more messy. just use the way that's already supported, then address to mutuals from the sending side.

yes, this is still somewhat messy, but it's no different than adding or removing participants in an email thread.

However, this means that every mutual-only toot would carry a copy of the list of mutuals

not if you use bto/bcc. or, since mastodon doesn't use c2s api, just send out separate copies. at that point the issue changes from

not be possible to tell apart a mutual-only toot from a followers-only toot once it is posted

to not being able to tell apart a mutual-only from a direct post. but this is already kind of an issue with "followers-only" as it is, a la #9300

[ThibG]

However, this means that every mutual-only toot would carry a copy of the list of mutuals

not if you use bto/bcc. or, since mastodon doesn't use c2s api, just send out separate copies. at that point the issue changes from

I mean, the instance still needs to store that to know who to displaying the message to (at least for local recipients, and storing the full list is also useful if you want to later know to whom you addressed a post)

[dualhammers]

I basically made the same suggestion on 5686