Add a possibility to post status message for a single user if a person doesn't share with you

[cmrd-senya]

We use aspects to control who we send statuses to. If I have a contact I share with, and who doesn't share with me, I can't start private conversation. So, the only way to contact the person privately is to create an aspect for him/her and to make post there and to mention the person. Why not making additional button at the person's page, that works similar to current "Mention" button, but posts a status privately, so that only one person see it. It is like to make an implicit aspect for a single user in one-click.

[lu-x]

Wouldn't it be better to add an option "Allow all people (including non contacts) to send me private messages" on the settings page? Posting individual status messages doesn't make much sense to me to be honest, but would rather confuse users.

[cmrd-senya]

Well, and what if a person doesn't allow to send private messages to non-contacts? You still can communicate privately to them the way I described, but have to do all this ridiculous stuff like creating a special aspect.

[ghost]

The best way to do would be, actually to allow anyone to send PM to anyone by default and deny sending PM to only those who are ignored by user.

[cmrd-senya]

If A shares with B, but B doesn't share with A, the federation implementation allows to send a message from A to B, but not the opposite direction.

[jaywink]

Related #4992.

I agree the mention and conversation model + implementation is very limiting to actually talking to people. If I'm not following someone and I want to send them a message - I don't, because it's too difficult :) Social media is supposed to engage talking, not discourage.

Ideally, user options should govern whether they accept mentions / conversations from other people. The check for this would be made on the home pod - no permission, no notification.

In this case, the federation model and UI should support (already does to some limit as said by Senya) mentioning non-contacts. Ideally, this would create participations between the two people, otherwise it is worthless, because the author would not get the follow-up, even if the mention did go to the target as a mention. For conversations, it would be a simple check of 1) is this person a contact, and if not 2) do I accept conversations from others.