The Unlisted / Quiet Public issue
I shall generalise a bit to set the scene.
When posting on the Fediverse there are usually four settings for the audience. That is, who can see the post: Public; Unlisted; Followers; Direct.
Mastodon recently decided that Unlisted was confusing and changed it to Quiet Public, which in my view helps not a jot.
- Public is obvious. Anyone can see it.
- Followers and Direct are clear enough too.
- Unlisted/Quiet is still public, but will not appear in public, local, or federated timelines. It is still pushed to all your followers.
If someone looks at the thread of a post, it will also include Unlisted posts.
However, GoToSocial has an interesting quirk. There's a setting to decide if you show Unlisted or Not!
User Choice
Under the 'Visibility And Privacy Settings' for a user's profile there's an option to decide the "Visibility level of posts to show on your profile"
This can be set to Show Public Only, Show both public and Unlisted, or Show no posts. The default is "Show Public Only".
Sounds ideal.
I tend to use Unlisted for replies to keep posts tidy. However, there's an issue here.
I recently had a conversation with someone. I'm on a GoToSocial server and they are on a Mastodon server. Our conversation went back and forth. My replies were "Unlisted". The other person was also Unlisted (or Quiet Public in Mastodon speak).
All good so far. I wanted to quote some of the replies in a future post, but they're then not visible. I can of course see them as me, but others can't. If you start at the top of my post via my own profile on GoToSocial, you eventually miss some of the various replies. In fact GoToSocial is happy to tell you "14 more replies hidden or not public".
If I look at the same conversation on the Mastodon server (profile of the other participant), I can see the entire chat and it all makes sense.
Solution?
Maybe there isn't a solution needed? Perhaps a better understanding by users is more appropriate? After all, they have the tools on their GoToSocial account to show Public and Unlisted.
Should the default actually be to show 'Public and Unlisted'?
As a happy compromise, GoToSocial should at least allow users to directly link to an Unlisted post URL to allow it to be referenced. After all, they are Public.