Egregoros

@phnt Of course the difference between a mute and an interaction policy is that others can use the latter to replicate the effects. So people on servers that honor them might have a different view of a thread compared to servers that don't.

However, as best as I can tell, that isn't a weakness of the GTS approach, but applicable to any attempt to introduce reply controls into a network without them. So we're either coping with that or giving up.

Agreed that it needs good UI and explanation.

@phnt I think I follow, yeah.

The flipside to that is it arguably takes two to have an interaction. If I write a post replying to yours, and you don't see it (whether because of an interaction policy or an account mute), the only meaningful difference between “hiding” and preventing interactions is that I don't get to know that I'm invisible to you.

But since current fedi platforms assume reply delivered = reply accepted, if we want reply controls, we need to break that assumption eventually.

@phnt Great post, thanks. I'm in the process of drafting a FEP for GTS interaction policies (collaborating with the team, since they said they weren't going to submit one), so the criticism is useful.

I can't say it's shifted my thinking on the feature much, but then I am in the technical weeds. I think of interaction policies as a way to declare & federate filters, so benevolent and willing servers can play along with them.

This is my current draft for the FEP summary, does it sound sensible?