Here's a hidden cost of boosting content: What you boost gets seen by and commented on by people who don't know the person who had their content boosted. Listening to people talk about "reply guys" that's not a good thing in every case.
Obviously everyone replying should consider their audience and whether they understand the impact on the person who "owns" the thread.
But shouldn't there be some limitation available, like "Don't allow those who don't follow me to comment" or "Don't allow my boosted content to reach anyone I don't follow"? Some might appreciate those limitations, particularly in combination with the "Approve all followers" limit that instances offer.
For better or worse, in a distributed social platform that sort of feature can't really exist reliably.
Part of being distributed means giving up control. It means there is no single system that can police such a feature. Instead the information goes left and right, and everybody who receives it can do what they want with it.
It's part of the trade-off we make when we use an instance-oriented platform like Fediverse.
Some things are just simply not possible no matter how good or bad an idea they are.
It doesn't matter how good an idea this is, fact is that in a distributed platform where nobody has control over where content goes, there is no way to control content like this.
It's not about whether everyone can get the feature or not. It's simply about the realities of distributed social media.
If you have all of the content sitting in a centralized system, then sure, you can control access to it. But part of being distributed is giving up that control. That's part of the trade-off.
@volkris Off topic though. Different problem.
@volkris With all due respect, I don't think you can say "If everybody can't get a feature, nobody can build that feature" in the Fediverse. If it's a good idea that appeals to a developer, they can build it. I wasn't arguing for consistency, I was arguing for someone to talk about and maybe build a tool or two.