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Top-level
 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. 56 comments
  @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.) @kissane @marshray @powerllama I was about to reply along that line, I think the apocablock (love that term) has its points and issues. As Erin notes it’s more visible there because BS has more “virality” to it, which leads to a lot more “the avalanche has already started, It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” moments. Apocablock doesn’t “delete” your posts. It removes you from my “living room”. @Wraithe @kissane @powerllama This is an example of person re-posting me to their followers. Then, after a pile-on of insults against me, she blocks me. Whose “living room” is that?  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.  @WhiteCatTamer @kissane @alter_kaker huh??? What's wrong with people enjoying roleplaying?? I don't really ever do it myself but I know people who enjoy it, I don't get the danger? Or do you mean something different then I think? I know some fandom people who like roleplaying as their fav characters for ships etc basically just fanfiction/fun with other fans (me not really, I prefer just writing fanfic 😂), what's the danger? I'm confused ... 😕 Or is there some other meaning? @kissane @alter_kaker yes I miss that granularity of post lists. I miss Livejournal. It was great being able to decide who could reply or even see my posts. I liked the group accounts as well.  @dangoodin @jbaggs I wish I had a pub date but it’s not in our control so we’re waiting for that. It’s in early peer review this week, though!  @kissane I like a lot of the things they're doing on Bluesky; well have to see how it evolves.  @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. @evan @fraying @kissane I just really hope it doesn't fracture the network further because some servers don't agree how to use it or implement it amongst one another and defederate even more... It's definitely needed but I do hope everyone agrees with it first so that problem doesn't become worse. I love this place for the positive vibe but it really sucks that I can be following eg some cool fanartist from Asia but suddenly lose each other because stranger in Australia has beef with stranger @evan @fraying @kissane in Brazil (the server admins) without either of us even knowing. (Hypothetically, fandom is big and fun here but 99,99% of the amazing fanartists and cool cosplayers I follow worldwide are still on twitter. But you get the point, I hate that at any point you can just be cut off from anyone or whole groups beyond any control.) I get why some consider it an anti-feature, it feels like the individual user isn't in control (same as with being unable to gate replies IG...)  @kissane I’ve always liked the example @Popehat used, basically “you can say about me whatever you want, but you don’t have a right to come into my living room and make me listen to it.” Now, he was talking about his blog, but I think this applies to people’s timelines. No comments allowed. You can talk about it in your own space , but maybe I just want it to stand on its own. @kissane Black folk have been arguing the "my house" view of social media for literal decades. They ain't gonna get it. @kissane you know what would be a bargain ? Social media that was so functionally broken it gave you all your time back. @kissane Right? There are so many different kinds of public conversation... Are we standing on a soap box in front of a crowd or making a joke with a friend on a sidewalk in front of a deli? Public speech can be ephemeral and contained and whispered and respected and allowed to decay from memory.  @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 @kissane I know this is only very tangentially related to your point, but at the last #CommunityOverCode the presenter showing https://answer.apache.org ended with "no, I will not take questions now, ask them on Apache Answer" and stuck to it - it was delightful to see the bewildered confusion in the audience :D |
Gregory's Server
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.