Yeah, like I said, it would require a lot of restructuring and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. The subtle difference between “display only to followers” with the option to include/exclude it from your own personal timeline as well and the “followers only scope” is not self-evident to you, and you’re a smart guy. What about some normie who shows up and has no idea what the fediverse is? It might be too much. Choice paralysis, subtle distinctions that usually don’t make a lick of difference to a real person.
And consider the goal of the OP: people should be able to be in a hellthread without subjecting everybody who follows them to said hellthread, and without the user having to really think about it. I’ll rub my chin on this more.