 Bluesky has reply-gating (you can set who can reply to a post, like people you follow or a given list or no one) and is now testing out post-publication reply locking. I just want to yell for a second about how humane and consent-forward these features are, especially after seeing some people here losing their minds when someone asked for gating recently because they felt (alas, not a paraphrase) entitled to always be able to respond. 103 comments
Believing you are morally entitled to reply directly to someone because they speak in public is…definitely a position, I guess, but I think being able to specify how you want to be interacted with is deeply humane. (And being able to do it after a thread starts to go sour is so important.) Someone will ask why blocking doesn’t make this unnecessary and the short answer is that prevention is better than picking off unwanted interactions one by one, and having to process each one as you do it. Someone else will say that if you don’t want everyone to be able to say whatever they want in your thread whenever they want to say it, you shouldn’t post in public because that’s the bargain. But like…I don’t want the old bargain. The old bargain is kind of shit! We have a million ways to contain and shelter even “public” conversations offline, let’s have that in the good online places, too.   @powerllama @kissane Bluesky’s blocking features enable garbage behavior as well. People will post incorrect degrading stuff about you, then block you, removing your ability to respond. I don’t like other people having the power to delete my posts. It’s an incredibly toxic place: @marshray @powerllama The Bsky apocablock is really double-edged, but blocking always removes your ability to respond to posts about you—even here, people talk shit from behind blocks and that’s sort of how it has to be for blocks to exist. (I wouldn’t dispute that there’s plenty of toxic behavior over there. There’s a lot here, too, but it’s often less visible.) Anyway the big fedi research project I’ve been on for six months is nearly ready for publication and there’s so much I’m excited about in it. Having Mastodon be so central to the fediverse by the numbers means we could really use attention to these safety/humane conversation/good experience features here. I hope that happens.  @kissane at this point I'm hearing that for some people federation has become an anti-feature. I've been thinking about ways to separate different kinds of interaction into different services with a unified identity, for example a private chat, a public blog, a Fedi service... @alter_kaker Yeah, having some posts not federate at all kinda works as a private room inside the big galaxy, which seems like a start. My preference is always for the ability to create and dissolve private or more-private spaces on the fly, so I’m always hoping for that as an end-state. @kissane right. But at the same time, different types of interaction need different affordances (thank you for teaching me this word! ), so how can we make it possible to share a unified identity across all those? @kissane I guess I'm mixing two different issues here, and you might not want to be talking about both at once @alter_kaker I think it’s mostly that I’m extremely sleepy so I’m going to tap out until tomorrow! @alter_kaker I am “I never stop thinking about what Livejournal got right” years old but I think being able to finely and flexibly control groups and lists who can see posts helps a lot—in the LJ model anyone who could see a post could converse freely in the comments (unlike in Mastodon’s followers-only mode) turned those spaces into little pop-up committees with their own social norms. But there’s a lot to think about, for sure.  @kissane @alter_kaker That is exactly what I was thinking about when thinking about reading and writing access on this subject earlier. Wasn’t sure if it was both too mainstream and too old to cite, though… And having seen LJ snark communities in action…yes, it can absolutely be abused. Bur so can group chats; to stop a group of people from being dicks ever you have to get rid of the people, first. The other danger of drawing from LJ is pulling in roleplaying accounts.   @kissane it was never the bargain! It’s some completely made up, self-serving bs. Nobody made a “bargain” with every other bozo on the planet just by signing up for an app.  @kissane The fact that people say this is all the proof I need that the specs are being written by engineers when they should be written by humanists / communitarians. @kissane also “don’t speak if you don’t wanna be spoken to by everyone, everywhere” is abuser logic. @fraying Yeah. I don’t think everyone who holds that stance is abusive, but it does rhyme. @kissane yeah not subtooting anyone in particular, just pointing out how problematic the thinking is. As I see it, everyone being able to reply creates an enormous power imbalance between the poster and the rest of the world. The power of a mob is just too great. Setting a reply gate helps level that power imbalance - and it’s especially needed after a post reaches escape velocity.  The people who work on the ActivityPub specs are humans and we use the Fediverse. We're not space creatures or robots. We care about other humans and we love our kids and dogs. There are currently two specs being worked on for reply control. You'll probably see some more work on this coming out soon. Did we think of everything when we created ActivityPub? No. Did we make it extensible so future people could improve it? Yes we did. @fraying @kissane this one works by setting a flag. https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/5624/fep-5624.md @fraying @kissane this one works by maintaining a canonical list of replies on the sender's server, so they can edit it. https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/7458/fep-7458.md @evan @kissane Evan, I wasn’t talking about you. I understand why you might have thought I was, but trust me, you’ve proven yourself to be kind, smart, and considerate on this platform. If anything, I’m talking about mastodon’s implementation in particular, but also Bluesky’s. I’m also complaining because I’m exactly the kind of communitarian who gets shouted at by fedi folks every time I talk about how this very good place could be improved, as Erin is here.  @kissane "the short answer is that prevention is better than picking off unwanted interactions one by one, and having to process each one as you do it" Funny how this is also the short answer to everyone who loses their shit at the thought of sharing and/or automating blocklists. @kissane weren’t you, when acknowledging several people in a thread a few days ago, including that you had asked their permission to link to the post you were citing? I saw someone doing it and was briefly baffled by it. No judgment, it just was beyond whatever social compact I thought we had on places like this. @jason Yeah, until quote-posting is actually implemented, I ask for permission as a courtesy because the norms are unclear/disputed.  @kissane reply-gating is one of the most efficient anti-abuse tools available; i wish the ridiculous visibility controls of mastodon were replaced by something actually useful like this… (and i really would like to know the reasoning behind the “followers only” option that changes the audience from reply to reply because it's always message-specific) I think I need to cogitate on this for a moment, because my first thought was "advertising. It's a one-way channel." But there is a lot more nuance possible. I just need to think it through. @kissane It's frustrating - that, blocklists for instance admins and quote posting would make a huge difference in making people want to stay. Too many left because these keep being opposed by those who want to force their opinions on others.  @kissane But what I'm seeing is @Gargron express excitement that Threads is nearing federation and not showing much (any?) interest in adding basic safety features like this one you mentioned. It's disappointing. @ohmu @Gargron I remain hopeful about both fedi and atproto, myself. I’ve thrown in my lot with fedi because it has some special powers, but I hope Bluesky’s work will show that these features are doable and very welcome in federated systems. The Bluesky team has been sprinting on anti-harassment features for a few months and it’s incredible how far they’ve got. @kissane I really wanted to believe it when fedi was described as a project built to be safe from abuse and give people tools. But I still cant own my own instance and I still cant use tools to feel safe. Safety is not even an option because they dont want it to be. The call is coming from inside the house. The letdown is dramatic and deep. No fork is going to save this. @SarraceniaWilds @kissane why can you not own your own instance? I thought anyone who wanted to and had the money for domain reg could do so. What is it I'm missing? 🚨🚨DO NOT REPLY WITH MANSPLAINING ABOUT SELF HOSTING🚨🚨 i will block you for ANYTHING i do not give a single shit anymore  I honestly would use it most for more happy-news posts because if there is one thing miserable reply-guys hate most it is a woman who appears to be enjoying anything. @kissane Sorry, I am a little confused. I thought we can set who can reply on Mastodon? @raindrops_and_roses @kissane No, you can set post visibility, but anyone who can see a post can reply to it (in masto, at the moment). This should absolutely change. @raindrops_and_roses No worries! We can set who can see a post, and only people who see it can reply. But you can’t make a public post and set it so that no one can reply or only people you follow can reply or only people you mention, things like that.  @kissane I suppose I should dig through the github issues and/or discord but is reply limiting (ala what bluesky has) something that's been ruled out (for whatever reason) or just not enough devs / time that it hasn't gotten prioritized? I get that lots of folks absurdly think the feature is unnecessary or "unfair" but I'd assumed the implementers of fedi platforms were largely fine with it. Just .... resources etc. @kissane I guess it's there in the "exploring" list. https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap @r343l Yeah, it is extremely difficult to for me to understand how Mastodon the team thinks about and prioritizes this stuff @kissane Yeah I don't really understand. of course it's like 3-4 actual full time equivalent paid devs I thought so like how many things can they do? and so many admin and operational issues came out of all the spikes in users that understandably are going to be big priorities and presumably reply limiting is not trivial.  @kissane Since you usually remain completely invisible in Bluesky because hardly anyone likes it and certainly doesn't share it, that's not my primary wish. I've hardly experienced any bullying, know-it-alls or nasty comments here. But I read that every day on Bluesky. That's one reason why I only read official news there and not comments.  @kissane I hope I don’t get booed to hell, but Bsky is quickly becoming my favorite social network. The developers are moving quickly, listening to feedback, and tweaking their approach based on user behavior. In my opinion, it is the only social network that looked at the Twitter problems and decided to find ways to fix them rather than just rebuild Twitter "but federated." @kissane These features indeed seem useful for promoting consent and humane communication. It's a great example of how to maintain healthy dialogue on social media platforms.  @kissane The problem with reply gating is that it encourages bullying or even unfair comments that can’t be challenged. It’s different from blocking because at least with blocking you can’t see the comments. So personally, I find reply gating problematic. It encourages poor behaviour such as personal attacks and also allows people to live in enclosed niches where directed hatred can fester. @kissane On a semi-related note, what's your take on social media companies basically omitting a 'dislike' button on posts? YouTube removed theirs awhile ago to the benefit of corporations more than anything. Is it healthy for the users of a platform to be presented this ideal wonderland where any 'negative' thought is discouraged? @kissane Agree. |
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@kissane As someone who spends most of her time lurking, that "right to reply" mentality is so foreign to me I can't even imagine it. Many of the forums I browse I don't even have accounts on!