Mastodon: "Send existing posts to user" button on followers

[BenLubar]

Pitch

A button in the dropdown menu on a user profile in the web interface that sends all of your posts (except for direct messages, and except for followers-only posts if they don't follow you) to them.

This would use the same mechanism as normal post federation; it would simply queue up a delivery job for each of your existing posts to that server.

This would be most useful for followers-only accounts, and could possibly also be a button on the follow request screen right after a follow request is accepted.

Motivation

When a user from an instance that hadn't previously followed you follows you, none of your post history shows up to them. For followers-only posts, this means the posts will only ever be visible if you boost them, which would also affect all of your other followers.

[ghost]

I feel like this request is not user-centric enough because it requires too much technical knowledge about the implications (posts being federated via server). You could end up with someone expecting a particular follower to see old posts, but not another on the same instance.

I think this could however be a routine (optional to enable for the admin) push job for when a user is first followed by anyone on a different instance (within reasonable limits).

[Gargron]

Mastodon supports authenticated requests for statuses. If the HTTP request is signed with an authorized follower's key, the status can be downloaded. So it can be a pull task when following, rather than push task.

[trwnh]

if it's pull instead of push, then that's basically #34

[BenLubar]

Alternative idea based on what I actually did:

A tootctl command that creates DistributionWorker sidekiq tasks for some combination of local username and remote domain name for any toot that user made that should be visible to that instance.