 bad reply guys are one of fedi/mastodon’s biggest problems. I’m realizing it’s not only a demographic issue but a structural one with the platform. if people cannot easily see one another’s replies, and if the original poster can’t easily QT replies, someone with a popular post has to field dozens of nearly identical replies. if these replies enforce white supremacy or patriarchy (spoiler: they often do), the structure of mastodon tends to center and amplify white supremacy &patriarchy 67 comments
the tough thing is you just don’t really see it until you write a post that really extends beyond your own followers and into the nether regions of the fediverse. so one person can be ready to implode from dealing with this pattern while hundreds of others really have no idea that it even exists! not good and def an impediment to attracting some of the thinkers and writers we’d love to have in this space @seachanger you’re highlighting, IMO, one of the key challenges/issues with federation. Similar ideas/concepts can be surfaced across the fediverse, but not connected and amplified (to demonstrate support) because they’re decentralized and dispersed. It’s great to have democratization, but if there’s no simple way to aggregate or connect, then it’s less beneficial in the long run. @kameka yeah and compounded by inability to text search. I think there are ways to solve these problems but as we see on every single major platform, leadership does not necessarily want the same things as the user base. In theory, we should be able to have more influence as users here but theory is not always praxis! @seachanger in season 1 of social media, it was possible to “build it, and they will come” because it was a novelty. Unfortunately, for the new social media companies and platforms being built now, we’re in season 3 of social media. What users want is paramount to what companies and platforms want to build (especially since there is healthy competition for the same users). The past few weeks have been a live use case of this, IMO: Threads decreased engagement, Bluesky this week… @seachanger everyone is baffled when i explain that private/dm replies from reply guys drove me off this platform for months @gren ugh I’m so sorry. I feel kind of terrible because for the first year I was here I just didn’t experience it in the same way that I have on other platforms. I’m so used to being bombarded on FB and twitter by White Men Who Explain Things to Me that mastodon actually was a blissful relief. Until my posts started getting more boosts and then suddenly I understood. They are like an infinite army of robot soldiers sprinting toward my defenses lol. Shoot one and more appear  @seachanger I have a reputation of writing disclaimers on the tail end of my posts asking folks to not reply with certain things. Sometimes it's done very tongue-and-cheek, but the main onus for it is I've gotten the same damn replies from folks before and they were just as unhelpful then as they would be on any new post. There's a lot of folks that want to help people, but much like a crowd rushing to help one person it can turn into a stampede. @seachanger serious question sorry do the "unlisted" and "followers only" buttons help at all? I just found out about unlisted I think "follower only replies" allowed or more control over that It's something a) I struggle with and try not to do even though I can be yappy and b) one of my favorite people on Mastodon or really in the whole world gets absolutely fed up with this shit @Robotron I think they actually don’t help. If deployed on the post they limit reach. If deployed on replies they may prevent others from seeing that their concern has already been addressed @seachanger I remember when I first came to masto in Sept there were huge massive discussions pro and anti QT but yes that would absolutely help Upvotes too although if it worked like reddit, right, no one would see an oft down voted stupid reply and then think "hey! No one's schooled this person on this cromulent fact" [adjusts fedora] @seachanger Are you sure the problem is that replies aren't visible? And not just that the kind of people who interact the way you've described tend not to look, read or care whether their point has been addressed (because it was never about that). @tokyo_0 i think it’s both. All social media platforms are filled with people who don’t respond thoughtfully, but the degree to which they impact the person with the post is mitigated in various ways across different platforms. the problem here is not just demographics or visibility but also user control over audience  @seachanger Yeah, I've seen a bit of this and the invisible, repeating reply guys are exhausting. Genuine question, though: How do you see QTs helping here? I've had some luck adding replies to my original post (something like a P.S.) to add clarifications/answer common questions. But most of my repeating replies aren't from people who follow me, so they wouldn't see the QT anyway. I'm guessing you're envisioning some kind of different situation, then? Always appreciate your thoughts. @seachanger And just to be super clear (for anyone out there who might want to start some Discourse) I'm not reflexively anti-QT. Just curious. @design_law One thing people did on Twitter is pull up annoying replies with a QT so that everyone can actually see it, and deal with it publicly. It takes a lot more work to do that here and this is what I saw people of color talking about last fall—they are being treated one way in the replies, but a lot of people just have no idea what’s even happening leaving the original poster feeling alone/vulnerable/bombarded @design_law but another person in tbr replies here did remark that even that had limited effectiveness for them personally so 🤷🏼♀️  @seachanger speaking as someone who had (has?) a moderately popular account and many viral tweets in The Other Place, these features absolutely do not mitigate having the same reply 1000 times over, because the issue is people just think their point is Special and Unique so will make it over and over nonetheless; it's simply a product of reach. @stavvers so to you it feels the same across platforms? I felt like twitter was kinda good at hiding “low quality” replies @seachanger from my perspective, it absolutely was not and once a tweet got Out There it would be the same replies over and over, maybe people replying to the top two bad replies and replying-all so there's now an argument in the mentions (arguably even more annoying). And then if it gets to big, it would be QT-ed, which led to even *more* of the same replies and same QT notifications. The only actually good feature twitter had in curbing that was being able to switch off replies. @seachanger that said, the QT feature was very cathartic from my end, meant I could pick a couple of bad replies at random and set my followers on them, but in my experience it was never, in any way, constructively helpful to stopping the reply thing because at the end of the day it's just jerks being jerks @seachanger tbh I feel like the problem you outline is broadly a human problem - experienced fedi users *know* that not all replies show up - especially abusive ones - and that's a product of how federation *works*, so the big problem isn't threading or quoting to increase reach, but white users denying there's a problem to sweep it under the carpet. @seachanger I wonder if there are mastodon alternatives that allow someone to disable commenting on a post by post or account level basis. That can allow people to make clear if their posts are open for discussion or not. I wonder if #calckey might add support for this. @franktaber @seachanger I'd LOVE the option to limit replies to individual posts (e.g. no replies/ followers only/ people you follow), per Twitter @adhdmarie @franktaber @seachanger For what it's worth, there's been discussion among the mastodon discord development channel about the need for limited reply settings for posts in order to be compatible on a technical level for Threads federation, so hopefully we get follower-only, following-only, mutuals-only modes sometime soon. @seachanger is there a mechanism to hide (or even delete) individual reply comments? That would be great. Especially if a memo could be left behind (e.g. "addressed elsewhere"). QT would definitely be helpful, but I'm not 100% sold on the pros outweighing the cons yet (unless you can control the QT-ability of your own posts). Anyways, I'm #NewHere so my ignorance is genuine at least. 😜 @moondog548 not yet on the main mastodon platform. Maybe as newer competitors emerge in the fediverse we’ll see some shifts here in terms of user control over replies  @seachanger At the very least there should be a "fetch more replies" button and when you click "reply" there should be an alert encouraging you to "fetch more replies" first. Wouldn't solve all the reply problems, but might reduce redundancy.  @seachanger There’s quote tooting (?) on Mona, the iOS apps, and likely some other iOS apps (Ivory or Ice Cubes?). And your post can be targeted at a ltd audience, but that can be easily overridden with a click (even unintentionally)  @seachanger @bosak I hear you, it is really difficult to understand a complex social interaction you’ve never experienced. Still, we have to try and get better at that around here! @seachanger And even when one uses an app that shows threads and replies more similarly to the bird app structure, many others don’t so their experience isn’t the same in the Fediverse. @stephaniepixie yep. That’s why all the “just use this app or extra fix on this other website” don’t help. We need the changes at the core of the platform so they’re universally experienced @stephaniepixie yeah idk. I’ve seen this site change a lot in 6 months so I’m generally optimistic about it, but I’m also just starting to really grapple with some of the structural patterns that hold it back @stephaniepixie yeah agree with all above tho I use ivory and threads work ok, but are still kind of clumsy feeling. I’m committed to this space for the time being, as a user and an admin, but that commitment does come with hefty responsibility to organize improvements and be honest about structural problems  @fcktheworld587 right? It sails right by unless you have a popular post that critiques things lol There are big voids, and there are smaller voids. Scream your thoughts into either and expect equal effect, as the differences in their echoes are meaningless.  @zombiecube @seachanger @seachanger I think you need to be more liberal with the ban hammer. Don't be afraid to block instances that allow people like that on them. I personally never see any of the things you're saying. I can't remember the last time I saw a pro nazi post (once, there's never 2, it's once/report/block for me)  @denebeim I can't speak for @seachanger but often in my own experience, this isn't about Nazi stuff--an easy block--but about just annoying "certain people haven't had occasion to think much about this problem and center themselves in ways that much more subtly reproduce problems for other kinds of users" replies. Those, one can block out of annoyance--no one is owed our attention--but the platform-wide problem isn't then addressed at all. @inquiline @seachanger I'm not sure how to address that. Now I'm in a different category of attacked groups, but trans people tend to be geeky. Plus we're almost all progressive and 'woke', and know when to give up the floor. So, it's probably the people I follow, I mean I'm sure your mastodon experience is very different depending on who you follow. And the reach of your server. I suppose if you're on a big server there's local bad actors, but again, geek who runs who own server. @inquiline @denebeim and I do think if more people practice mute/block with notification to other users “muting you because…” as a final reply, it will stifle their reach. A lot of people are just barely realizing we can and should enforce personal boundaries with glee on the internet (thx patriarchy). This coupled with strategic technical tweaks could def help us address the impact over time  @seachanger And this is why I want to hit people (with a sturdy foam bat) who say you shouldn't block or mute people over here. You absolutely should, and early, because there are fields full of reply guys out there and cutting them off from you at the least and at the root if you're an admin is both easy and necessary.  I've thankfully only had to do this a few times. Being unpopular is so restful. @grrrr_shark if more of us had server rules discouraging reply contrarianism maybe these guys would be frightened into silence. But that’s a big lift and maybe too far for a lot of admins? Someone must be doing it  @seachanger Wondering aloud the effectiveness of a #UI #UX implementation disabling/greying out the reply button until you have read the parent thread to the bottom. Not unlike a terms of service, eula type workflow. No matter it's effectiveness, expecting a "Thanks, we hate it" response from users.  @seachanger if the problem is that those posts can't be seen, how can it also be a problem that those same posts are being amplified? @duckwhistle can’t be seen *by the full audience* amplified for *the user* having problems that are invisible to others is hard  @seachanger i have linked & shamed the worst of replies and it was effective (it's not a full solution, but just saying that it has been effective for me to link & shame) @seachanger i have trouble thinking it's folks who can't see the replies because typically when i get hit with reply guys they're usually on the same few instances, so would be able to see each other but my demographic of reply guys aren't the same as POC deal with looking at popular toots or just in general POC accounts with large followings on other instances is honestly painful i feel like more people should do that sometimes just see what things look like via mastodon.social @seachanger One way I handle this sometimes is replying and boosting my reply. Then sometimes my followers will also reply to that person. I'm not sure of all the affordances at play but I think it can increase odds both the reply-er and maybe other would-be reply-ers will get the message. (Ironically I'm going to do this now, but not bc I think you need more replies!) |
Gregory's Server
we’ve all seen some amazing conversations unfold here but what you don’t see until you make a post that elicits hordes of replies, is how infuriating it is to get bombarded with carbon copies of the same idea you’ve already refuted 8 times. we need clear threading and an upvote system and yeah, QTs