I think we're in a bit of a fortunate point in time where audience
it's not used widely, so there are limited unintentional side effects to using it.
To expand on what I said earlier, while technically there is nothing stopping a context in NodeBB from being a part of multiple audiences, our UI is largely built around them only being a part of one.
To give additional context (ha!), private groups on NodeBB do not have their own space to talk (e.g. Facebook groups), they are literally a grouping of users. If you wanted to have a private space to discuss within group members, you'd create a category and limit it's access to that group. At least for me, it makes it much easier to think of when there are fewer moving parts.
So to that end, if we were to support private group discussions, the audience would just be the category (with access restrictions) those objects and contexts are posted to, exactly how 1b12 expects.
@julian On this topic, I whole heartedly vote that everyone be the change they want to see in the (de facto) spec.
`audience` for the Collection(s) of actors to whom the object is expressly available is the only thing that has ever made sense. `to/cc/etc` as the set(s) of actors to whom the object was specifically delivered is also the only thing that ever made sense.
@jenniferplusplus @julian how do you decide on notifications? to/cc/bcc or tag -> Mention?
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io @jenniferplusplus@hachyderm.io typically two ways:
The latter is implementation-specific and is not available on Mastodon due to the lack of context.
@julian yeah, I don't think anyone uses to/cc/bcc as a mechanism for notifications — I think everyone's settled on tag->Mention as being the “way”
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io if coming from outside ActivityPub, the whole concept of addressing is foreign. It's only really used in the context of email... so trying to bolt on newer concepts like visibility and private collections may be challenging.
@julian @thisismissem It genuinely never occurs to me to use tags as a means of controlling notifications. In fact, the very idea that the sender has more control over notifications than the recipient is mind boggling.