So I’ve seen a number of people complaining that other users are replying to their public posts on a social website with that functionality. Respectfully what the hell are these people smoking?

If it’s a public post for anyone to see and respond to what did they expect to happen when they put it out there? I’m not talking about harassment, rude comments, or block/ban evasion. Just randomly commenting on a random post.

How did they come to the conclusion it was a private space and others would know they shouldn’t comment? If they just want a private conversation or hate reading comments why post things for everyone to see and comment on?

Clearly this issue is one of different expectations or different social norms. No idea when it became a reasonable expectation on their end but it seems to be common in some circles. And deeply held enough that some find the act of getting replies from strangers as offensive. Again nothing like dms just a normal comment on a public post.

For something constructive the platform could have the features to provide the experience they want. One in which people can’t comment or where they don’t have to see comments. I personally disable comments on YouTube videos I post but I don’t really expect people to avoid commenting if they were on. Here something like disabling comments or ignoring comments could be useful to these people. Maybe only allowing or seeing comments from a whitelist. Maybe only showing posts to people on a whitelist.

Whatever the desired interaction it will probably need to be enforced in code rather than a vague social code most people aren’t aware of.

No one reply to this post. It’s super private. /s