I've been thinking the privacy settings here aren't actually privacy settings (because they're full of holes) but rather *exposure* settings.
I think exposure controls (i.e how many people *will likely* see things) are great, but maybe the features should be renamed to reflect that they control exposure, not privacy (i.e. how many people *can possibly* see things)?
meta, privacy/exposure Afficher plus
@abgd @novadeviator thought I'd get back to you on this. So private(direct) posts are only sent to their recipients server and aren't visible on the main atom feed for a user. There is also an atom feed on the private post but that is only visible to the sender if they are logged in.