Direct Messages to and from Mastodon / ActivityPub
I just received a direct message on a public thread from a Mastodon user. I assume that I can just reply back, but because I keep forgetting whether it is !@ or @!, I accidentally made it public.
When I did figure out that it was @! instead of !@, I noticed that my Mastodon connections are not listed as possible recipients in the drop down list.
And direct messages within a Mastodon thread pose some interesting issues. Simply pressing the reply button makes a public reply to a private message, for example.
Also, the way Hubzilla handles direct messages doesn't seem very user-friendly. Yes, @! is a handy shortcut, but there really should be a form just for sending direct messages in addition to the multi-user form we have now. That way people will know for sure that they are sending a direct message and to whom. That way a typo wouldn't make the whole post public.
