@freemo This is implemented in Twitter and it's actually a really nice feature. You could "hide" replies to your own posts. It would then have a little notification to readers saying "some replies have been hidden by the thread poster" and you could click in to see those hidden posts.

It provided what the OP you're quoting wants with reasonable balance for others. And, when you looked at which posts someone chose to hide, it was very revealing about who they are.

I wouldn't mind this feature making its way to Mastodon at all.

@LouisIngenthron as long as readers have the option to turn it off or ignore it i wouldnt have a problem with it..

like there should be a check box, off by default, in settings that says "hide posts the author suggests you to hide"

@freemo @LouisIngenthron I disagree. There should only be the ability to mute the person, the thread and perhaps posts in the thread from certain people for yourself. You can curate the timeline for yourself but leave other people to curate their own timelines. Personally, I have just gotten good at ignoring posts I'm not interested in or have nothing further to contribute to and that fills the gap for me. We can mute threads, but I have wondered if it would be useful to be able to mute branches of a thread. Maybe you are still interested in your thread but not one branch of it as people have veered off the original topic. That could be useful. I don't think it is useful to delete or mute posts for other people and it would be better if we veered away from this curation mindset. Especially if we value decentralisation. We already have enough tools here that encourage division and closing ourselves off from others.

@sim @freemo We're not talking about the timeline, though, we're talking about a thread.

Someone hiding replies from their thread presumably wouldn't prevent the post from appearing in your timeline if you followed the hidden replier and have replies turned on in your home feed.

I think the feature makes sense because most users treat threads they start as their own property. People can come in and join the conversation if they want, but the host should have the right to kick them out of the thread if they disrupt the party. The person kicked out is then free to start their own competing thread.