Improve support for aspects/circles

[Gargron]

Improve support for aspects (feature that is allowed to exist in ActivityPub, and is implemented in Hubzilla and possibly other implementations). Allowed recipients are explicitly listed in the audience fields.

Before: A message with explicitly listed recipients would be delivered as a DM notification to all those recipients, but only as long as those were also tagged.

After: Save silent mentions, i.e. those that appear in to/cc but not in tag for access control, do not create a notification for silent mentions, push those into home feeds instead (only if the author is followed by the recipients), and ideally mark the post as "private" instead of "direct" in the REST API.

[ClearlyClaire]

Having it show as private might lead the receiving person to think every one of the author's followers are allowed to see that information.

Also, what about mentioned accounts that are not part of the audience?

[Gargron]

• The look of the UI does not affect internal behaviour
• These messages are closer to private than DM in terms of UX (i.e. less personal, not to be highlighted)
• Adding a new visibility level would be a big API change in regards to apps

Whatever happens internally, it is easier to mask as "private" in the API to get the desired UX.

[Gargron]

Also, what about mentioned accounts that are not part of the audience?

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/app/lib/activitypub/activity.rb#L100

[trwnh]

push those into home feeds instead (only if the author is followed by the recipients)

I think I understand the reasoning for this, but there is one concern: if a message is shared without a mention, as is possible in other systems, then how does a Mastodon user know to follow the sender in order to receive the message?

Typically in those other social models, a notification is generated for "x has started sharing with you". This lets you know that someone has made you part of an audience, and you can then choose to receive those posts. But because Mastodon uses a follow-first model instead of a share-first model, only follower notifications are currently generated.

My interpretation would be that there should be an "incoming share requests" section, similar to "follower requests". This "incoming" section would show either the messages themselves directly as a column, or it would show just the profiles listed with a follow button.

[Gargron]

Typically in those other social models, a notification is generated for "x has started sharing with you". This lets you know that someone has made you part of an audience, and you can then choose to receive those posts. But because Mastodon uses a follow-first model instead of a share-first model, only follower notifications are currently generated.

My interpretation would be that there should be an "incoming share requests" section, similar to "follower requests". This "incoming" section would show either the messages themselves directly as a column, or it would show just the profiles listed with a follow button.

Not interested in that at all. It's just a venue for spam. Marketing account sends share requests to every single person in the fediverse etc etc. The idea behind aspects/circles is that you choose which of your followers you share something with, not that you just arbitrarily pick random people to share with. Non-followers do not need to be supported in Mastodon.

[trwnh]

Non-followers do not need to be supported in Mastodon.

OK, this definitely matches up with my expectation. But might there be a difference between to and cc interpretations? If to is direct targeting and cc is visibility targeting, then would that logic apply only to rejecting messages from non-followers with cc: you? Or would messages to: you missing a mention still show up (in your notifications and/or your direct messages)? Related: #7394, #8067

[Gargron]

I do not think that there is any meaningful difference between to and cc when we're not talking about a magic value like the public collection, that's why process_audience clumps them together. The deciding factor is the presence of a tag. I believe that this will work alright.

[ClearlyClaire]

Also, what about mentioned accounts that are not part of the audience?

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/blob/master/app/lib/activitypub/activity.rb#L100

So this doesn't push the message to those users' feeds, but they are still able to see them (by viewing the thread, the poster's toots, etc.)?

[Gargron]

@ThibG Yes, I think so.

Addressed