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Responded to Ask but the post is not visible to me

The short version is, I responded to an Ask I received, but then the post didn't show up on my timeline or profile. I was getting notification (numbers) on the post, but nothing was showing on the notifications page about it.


Oddly enough, I went to my own profile page while logged out and was able to see the post just fine.


Turns out, this likely was because the Asker set their page to private. I think the steps are as follows:

  1. Asker (set to public) sent an Ask
  2. Asker set themselves to private before I could respond. The lock symbol was visible on the Ask
  3. I responded to the Ask while they were still set to private
  4. Post was not visible to me on any page or in notifications
  5. Asker set themselves back to public
  6. Post immediately became visible to me on my page and timeline

I guess the expected functionality would be that asks (and response posts) should always be visible, even if the asker sets themselves to private at any point.

Thanks!!

I've seen this happen in the wild, again! Or at least, something that has apparently the same causes. It wasn't an ask sent to me, but one that a friend had linked to, where the asker's page had recently been set private.

New buggy interactions of note:

  • Response posts to asks are visible when linked directly, as long as the page responding isn't locked from you.
  • Response posts to asks from a private page are only visible on page listings or on feeds to a logged-in user if they are following that private page, and the responder's posts would be visible to you.
  • Response posts to asks from a private page, on a public page, are visible on page listings or on feeds if you are logged out (tested on Firefox's "Private Window" feature)
  • Boosts of response posts act like the above situations; they are visible if directly linked regardless (as long as the responder's posts should be visible to you) but
This is very clearly inconsistent behavior. I expect the same things you do: that asks should always be visible to the user being asked in their inbox, regardless of the privacy settings of the asker, and that the responses should follow the display rules of the posts by the responder, regardless of whether the asker's page is private or public.

I hope this gets seen to fairly soon, but as it's been 6 months since your post, I'd guess this is a fairly low priority. It doesn't affect many people, but it is kind of annoying for anyone trying to ask things who is also private, and it can get annoying for those of us who like to answer asks with art meant to be seen by many people (as is the case with said friend).

I also ran into this issue - I think it's the same situation where a private page sent me an ask and I could respond it it, and then the resulting aak post was invisible to me (I was not following the private page on my page that got the ask)
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