good approach Kyle and some interesting ideas. I also agree that its illogical and a little frustrating that it is sending the message privately by default.

A product design perspective for you to think about: Instagram is heavily encouraging its users to use direct messaging rather than just “@-ing” a comment in order to get momentum behind its new-ish direct messaging feature which currently feels a little bit pointless, because it doesn’t tie into that many ways that a lot of users currently naturally have learnt to use the app. You’ve probably also noticed the addition of disappearing images in DMs? Instagram’s longer term plans is to steal users away from Snapchat, and getting people used to sending private messages to each other using the app is a very important goal.