@badrihippo @ted nope, I am not saying that the "@-example hello" should be considered a thread, just pointing out the current state of things

and no Mastodon does not always know when something is an @-message when you consider that messages from other software get processed by Mastodon. it is possible to make a message that @-mentions somebody without including their username at all in the post, for example. this is what I mean by edge cases. in the fediverse you can run into wild stuff