ok so, i think my ideal implimentation would be this: your instance acts as a post office.

your client addresses things, under the hood, to 'everywhere you havent blacklisted, and also where the instance has blacklisted' unless you specify it only to go to specific addressees (followers, mutuals, @)

this also would make it easyish to impliment local-timeline-only posts, or cluster similar-minded instances into 'herds'

@nire this is similar to my understanding of the current model, I feel like I've missed something

@aeonofdiscord fundamentally so, unless you're assuming my addressing here means people you @ and then thats true... for unlisted posts

@nire okay, I think I understand

@aeonofdiscord like the problem right now is that federated posts go... everywhere but blocked/silenced servers, and unlisted posts are basically that except they dont federate (nominally...) and are shared mostly via boosts

@nire okay, I'm confused again. I thought unlisted posts did federate (to followers) but had a do-not-display-in-public-timelines flag

@aeonofdiscord yes but who knows which not-mastodon instances support that

@aeonofdiscord which is why im using weird wording here

@nire yeah it's very hard to describe this stuff accurately

@aeonofdiscord almost like the terms chosen for it were chosen in true open source manner

@nire so the problem you're trying to solve is like

I send a toot from chillparty.social, and mark it unlisted

one of my followers on greyarea.xyz boosts it

one of their followers on badguy.zone (which is a GNU Social instance) boosts it again

and now it starts appearing in public timelines despite the flag

@aeonofdiscord worse -- you dont know its in the public TL, but it is in the ones most likely to cause harm