@Gargron@mastodon.social @taylor@social.axfive.net @mattblaze@federate.social In every other social media context I'm aware of, a "mention" (noun) is something that you can view when someone "mentions" (verb) you. It's incoming traffic, not outgoing. And, in the official Mastodon UI (4.5.0) the wording I see is "privately mention ". But, that's not what's happening. If I privately mention my mom in a conversation with my sister, my mom is not party to the conversation. In fact, the fact that I'm doing it privately is probably because I don't want my mom to hear what I'm saying. It's true that the visibility dropdown does explain what's happening, that it's visible to "everyone mentioned in the post". I also get from an engineering standpoint how that's a logical type of message to have, that only people tagged in the conversation are able to participate and nobody else. But, that doesn't feel like a "private" conversation to me.