You can restrict who can see your posts with post visibilities. There are four kinds:
-"Public" is visible to everyone.
-"Unlisted" is visible to everyone but doesn't show up in searches or trends.
-"Followers-Only" is only visible to people who follow you. If you use this, switch on follow requests too so you can screen who gets to see your Followers-Only posts.
-"Mentions" is only visible to accounts mentioned in the post.
@FediTips@alienghic When i joined Mastodon everyone told me that i should use "unlisted" when i reply to a toot, so that it doesnt spam the federated/locat TL. but i feel like everyone else just uses "public". the fact that u cant even use "unlisted" on the official mastodon app makes me wonder if i should keep doing it or not 🤔 how do u guys handle this?
I would say carry on using unlisted in replies, it can't do any harm and it can help keep timelines/searches cleaner
The official Mastodon app has many missing features, would strongly recommend third party apps instead. (Some third party apps have unlisted by default for replies, by the way.)
The lack of "unlisted" on the official app is probably why you're seeing lots of people not using it, they don't even know it exists because the app is missing that setting.
@FediTips for what it's worth this doesn't seem to be true on akkoma - my home timeline is full of replies to posts i can't see. i suppose most of the people you're talking to are probably on mastodon, and this feels like a bug in akkoma rather than an intentional difference. But it is the case nonetheless.