@aliasless what i'm trying to say is that it's a lil fucky because a lot of mastodon-adjacent projects (twitter clones) collapse the concept of "addressing" entirely into the concept of "mentions" (and subsequently "tagging in someone" or "untagging someone")

they're separate things in reality. it's possible to respond to someone but not include them in the audience for your response. maybe it's not aimed at them, it's for your followers instead. or maybe you want to be courteous and cc them

@aliasless on a human level it's like the difference between "btw i responded to your thing, if you care" vs "hey i responded to your thing and i want your direct attention" vs "i responded to this person's thing but i'm not going to bother them about it"