@tao we definitely need to be much more mindful in our designs, experiments, and then what we push into the world, we may be trying to model digital space on the 'real world' but sometimes technology ends up modelling/shaping the real world right back. That's a lot of responsibility and needs to occur much more transparently, with user input and control at every step, and with the ability to press the big red button and cancel an experiment (even if it is 'successful' or profitable)
@yaaps I rather put labor up front to calmly curate my circles of trust rather than deal with shitstorms or simply way to noisy feeds later. It could also allow for people to have safe spaces to discuss sensitive issues like mental health, unionizing, etc
Why not just have standard groups, you say? Well we need those too (and they are coming to the fediverse in various places), but this is a bit different: you can address a post to several circles at once, rather than post it only in the context of one group ; and ideally circle names and members are known only to the OP. Its a privacy and sanity preservation feature....
You could create lists of people (eg. IRL friends / colleagues / shitpost buddies / etc) that you could address particular posts to (or even say 'post to all followers except colleagues').
In Mastodon terms, the dropdown that has Public / Followers-only / Direct options would additionally have each of your circles. Effectively this would work like a group DM, except without having to @ mention (and posts would appear in the feed, not notifications).
In ActivityPub pub terms instead of the 'public' flag or followers Collection being addressed, it could address it directly to each circle member's actor, or to a Collection that represents them. Still need to think through how the list of members could be private (they wouldn't be public, but may need to be knowable to their members so that replies can be addressed, or maybe we just go further and have a Group actor for each circle).
@dredmorbius@liw Well that's an unfortunate software implementation flaw. In terms of cost, it's much cheaper buying your own memory than paying Apple's crazy overinflated margin.