I think it's more like "What if you could have email, but your posts only go to the people you want them to?" I think that's pretty easy with Gmail, for the mos

I think it's more like "What if you could have email, but your posts only go to the people you want them to?" I think that's pretty easy with Gmail, for the most part, but with Mastodon it's harder because it inverts that control—anyone can follow you (or send a follow request), and it's harder to police every follower individually. This is combined with the fact that most accounts are available anonymously on the web, but it's not really necessary (many are not, for instance, and even the ones that are aren't really convenient to access that way—for bad-faith actors, it's more convenient to sign up for an account on mastodon.social or some other "well known" server and then find posts that way by browsing timelines).