Okay fine. Here's your user story.
As a Fediverse user, I would like to limit replies to a post or retroactively remove replies to a post for use cases like the following:
An Open Source project with a large number of followers makes an announcement about a new release of their software. The replies start being filled with abuse and slander against people involved in their projects. Similar, the post gets replies of people wanting to spam their own stuff also unrelated to the original thread.
A person with a stalker has their stalker invading their mentions with a revolving list of sock puppets to continue their stalking, abuse, slander, and harassment leaving the victims no way to keep this person from continuing their abuse.
Similar, but a group of people whip up a dogpile lynch mob against a person and any time they make a post, the mentions are flooded with abuse.
"Solutions" like "Well just mute your replies" means that the original poster can no longer participate in the replies of their thread with people they want to engage with.
"Well you can't stop people from talking about you!" I understand. At best you could appeal to their moderators but that is its own thing. However, you should be able to limit them from polluting your mentions with their abuse, harassment, or spam. There's a categorical difference between someone making posts about "jesstheunstill is an awful person in these reprehensible ways" on their own account, and the same person replying to every post I make using an endless number of sock puppets posting the same message, both continuing the abuse, as well as making everyone who visits the mentions of my post be aware of said abuse.
There are undoubtedly more use cases than that, but they're all tied together by a common thread:
The problem is not only limited to the original poster having to see the unwanted content in their replies, but also: they have no way to limit them from putting their abuse in front of the eyes of everyone else who wants to read their mentions, and trying to use replies as a weapon.
@cy@fedicy.us.to @dragonfrog@mastodon.sdf.org
Jess👾