My read of the discourse today is that there are a lot of people who no longer want a follow model, but would like to switch to a full 'friend request yes/no' model for mastodon/fedi etc. Which is there but off by default, and has the same oddness as twitters 'private' mode, where you're still seen by everyone who followed beforehand.
It's the same desired public, but minus those people use case that we all want, and why publics are hard. https://epeus.blogspot.com/2008/04/digital-publics-conversations-and.html
@Jonathanglick the mapping between instance and public is also very fuzzy. It may be a better proxy, but it is making the instance admins the load-bearing community members again. That is how things work, yes - if you accept one follow request from an instance, that instance caches your posts into its public timeline from then onwards, but that is several abstractions removed from most people's mental model of who they are talking to.
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