@rayslava @evan
You read it like that because you're a developer, you know about things like ACL's, permission inheritance, et cetera, et cetera.

But I wouldn't expect that from an average end-user.

@rayslava @evan

It doesn't seem misleading

Did you try to look at it from end-user's perspective?

I'm writing a reply to someone's followers-only post. The form shows me "Visible for followers only". How isn't it misleading for me?
When I do that as a post from the same form, my followers see that.

Why should I expect anything else when writing a reply with such option enabled?

@rayslava @evan

Promoting the idea to follow Alice?

No, that'd be just a side effect of trying not to confuse people with broken threads.

BTW, one more option I see is don't show Bob's replies to Alice's thread to Bob's followers at all. That'd be acceptable too, but also misleading for Bob though.

@evan
Yes, that's exactly my point.

I try not to use such posts even if I want to because it would confuse people and I don't want them to see separate meaningless replies.

@rayslava @evan

If Alice explicitly limited the visibility why could the reply need a broader range? Bob's subscribers won't see the original post anyway.

They shouldn't see the OP. They should see the thread from the interaction. Otherwise it makes no sense that since they interacted their subscribers would only see separate replies without any knowing to what it was or wasn't.
If they don't want anyone to see that, let them use DM to not confuse other people.

This would better be better applied to quotes

No, he shouldn't because Alice set the OP visibility like that.

And before you say "then why comments", I've already said that it confuses people around them. Force them to use DM or show to subscribers of both.

That's one part of fediverse's main problems: lack of obviousness.