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Conversations are broken When you click on a post to see all of its replies, you only see replies known to your server. Whole conversation threads are invisible to you, unless you manually click through to the “original post.” Most Mastodon users are unaware of this issue. I think this immediately leads to two bad effects, with more likely downstream. First, I think this contributes to Mastodon'’s infamous frequency of “reply guys” (see below), which turns a lot of people off the platform. If you see someone’s post but can't see the 10 other people already replying to the post, you might unintentionally reply with the same advice, aggravating the poor poster who doesn'’t realize why this is happening. Second, because replies are shown if people on your instance follow the reply author, you're stuck in a filter-bubble whose boundaries you might not understand. You think that by following someone, you're exposing yourself to not just their content but also their audience and community, but you're actually only seeing the subset of their community interaction that already intersects with your home community. (Edit: A third bad effect occurred to me. For users experiencing harassment from other servers, this might result in a disorienting harassment bubble where your allies can't see what's happening to you.)