Thank you! I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think it could be used to solve a bunch of different problems, like importing stuff from other networks, and having everything ready to go before you join an instance.

There’s some UX questions that have to be figured out, the last thing I want is some super-cluttered design that asks for a million different options. Also, platforms would need to provide some necessary APIs (for registration and data import) to make it fully useable.

My main critique is just that, within the Mastodon side of the Fediverse, the design is highly misleading about what the feature does. It resembles a normal DM feature, but the message addressing is purely handled by mentions in the message body.

Basically, it’s an antipattern, causing people to accidentally mention other people in what’s assumed to be a Direct Message. It’s less about privacy, more about poor telegraphing of side-effects.

I used to feel that way, but there’s so much crap on that timeline, especially when you’re on a bigger instance. I used to use it for the exact same thing, discovery. A lot of it is just noise to me now, though.

Well, no, this was just responding to a critique on UX shortcomings, and highlighting how different efforts could solve various problems.

It sounds more like you’re talking about one of my previous blog posts, where I was talking about a super-flexible frontend that’s basically a pagebuilder. Make no mistake, I would love to see custom profile music and radios! And I agree that accessibility needs to be way better!