@feditips Again, thanks for the posts and the writeups on your website...
I have a question about replies and who sees them. I didn't find anything directly related in your FAQs/FGAs.
If I reply to a random message - not someone I follow - where is my reply distributed to? I'm guessing it's not "my followers plus whoever the original message was distributed to", which would be useful and obvious
Is it just my followers plus whoever's @-mentioned in my post? Thanks!
It depends on the visibility of the reply. If it's mentions only then it will just go to you and the accounts mentioned in the post.
If it's a public setting like public or unlisted, it will be visible to your followers and everyone on the servers of your followers, everyone on servers where it was shared, possibly even further if relay servers are involved.
For privacy purposes, assume public posts are visible to everyone, because they can be distributed surprisingly far.
More info about what servers can see: https://fedi.tips/which-posts-and-accounts-can-i-see-from-my-server/
More info about post visibility settings: https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon/
@feditips Right - thank you. I get the visibility effects.
To confirm, regarding the people who saw the original message (because they followed the author or group or whatever) -- they won't see my reply unless they follow me, they're @-mentioned, or browse the local/federated timelines on an instance that received it because of @-mentions or follows. Correct?
I hoped the in_reply_to_id and in_reply_to_account_id would share it with readers of the original message, but figured not.
As far as I know, if they're not mentioned, their viewing of the original message will not by itself automatically push all the thread's replies to them.
A workaround for this is groups, as they actively push all their content to all their members, technically just sharing everything they see to their members so that all members see it. More info at https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-groups-on-the-fediverse/