An interesting item, first, how can I tell when a post to me is a private message, and second, is there a way to pull a private message out of its sequence and turn it public? In general, I try to avoid private messages unless it's for very specific technical issues, or things that just should not be public. I just found myself in a thread that was private but I wanted it to be public. However, maybe the guy is right to keep it private for his own sake.
I'll get the hang of this one day, lol.
@smxi A good rule to follow may be: “You can make your reply more private than the post you're replying to, if you think you should, but never more public.”
@josemanuel ok, now to learn how to spot post is private. That's a simple clean rule though, thanks. Always a learning curve on these systems, but #mastodon is pretty well done overall imo.
@smxi As far as I know, Mastodon's web UI (and, I assume, all others) use the same privacy level of the post you're replying to by default, so you shouldn't need to worry about that.
@josemanuel but how do I know the post/message is private? I realize this is a dumb question, but this has hit me a few times now and it took me a while to realize it wasn't public. The only indication was the alert that popped up when I tried using a hashtag. That's actually the only reason I realized it was private. Generally private chats are only useful when talking to people I know or collaborate with, so I want to avoid this in future. Am I being blind or dense, lol? probably so.
@smxi Well, every post has these metadata info at its bottom with the timestamp and the number of reposts and favs. Also there's an icon with the privacy level. You can check that.
Another good indicator is that the RT button is disabled if the post is followers-only or a DM.
Finally, a DM has a slightly different background color.
All the above is true for Mastodon's web UI. It may not be the same for apps, of course.
But, as I said, the UI will usually adjust the privacy setting automatically when you reply. You shouldn't need to worry about it.
