Just an occasional reminder that disabling replies is the #1 requested feature from Mastodon.
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@nini I hear you, but I have seen far too many people leave because of issues that would've been solved if they had more control over their replies.
And then they tell their friends and those will never give the fediverse a fair chance.
I think people are willing to put up with a lot. Bluesky doesn't let you edit your messages. There is a higher character limit. Translation features are just a link to Google Translate.
But people feel safe there.
I don't even care about the fediverse "growing". I just want people who are already here to feel safe and welcome.
@stefan My objection isn't towards implementing it's a big issue for those who want it and people have their reasons for having the option to control who can interact with their toots besides harassment like just not wanting a reply to a recent toot they made or limiting it to their mutuals. I just feel like it could work in tandem with stronger moderation as read-only toots make me feel despondent, like people don't feel safe but it is just one tool after all.
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Just an occasional reminder that disabling replies is the #1 requested feature from Mastodon.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc
(EDIT: Direct link, in case the above doesn't work for you: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/8565)
Limiting who can reply is also worth giving a thumbs-up to, currently at #10.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14762
#mastodon #fediverse #ReplyControls #SocialMedia #TrustAndSafety
I would love that.
Also, Mastodon is (somewhat) behind the times on this one. GoToSocial already has similar settings, and one might even argue that they're more powerful than simply turning replies on or off from the compose box, depending on what "powerful" is supposed to mean. I actually don't really care, though; there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to have this, and the "toggle switch" at the same time; it's not like they're mutually exclusive (or should be).
I'd rather have both.
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@stefan My objection isn't towards implementing it's a big issue for those who want it and people have their reasons for having the option to control who can interact with their toots besides harassment like just not wanting a reply to a recent toot they made or limiting it to their mutuals. I just feel like it could work in tandem with stronger moderation as read-only toots make me feel despondent, like people don't feel safe but it is just one tool after all.
@nini Oh absolutely, I think we need both tools for "self-defense", and better tools for moderators as well.
Have you seen the latest Mastodon roadmap by any chance?
https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap
> Moderation tools
> Looking at ways to make moderation easier, e.g. shared block lists.Sounds promising!
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@mina Yes, exactly.
But even with the best moderation in the world, having to wait for someone to come to your rescue while the abuse piles on, I can imagine that being off-putting enough.
Have you come across this explanation of the "Sucker-punch Problem"? It's illustrating a bit different point, but I think also explains really well why people having tools to defend themselves is important.
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I would love that.
Also, Mastodon is (somewhat) behind the times on this one. GoToSocial already has similar settings, and one might even argue that they're more powerful than simply turning replies on or off from the compose box, depending on what "powerful" is supposed to mean. I actually don't really care, though; there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to have this, and the "toggle switch" at the same time; it's not like they're mutually exclusive (or should be).
I'd rather have both.
@the Yeah, it's been a bit frustrating seeing Mastodon, being the far more popular platform, lag behind GTS in this.
It's unfortunate GTS hasn't gained more traction, maybe we'd be in a different position and not have so many people flee to Bluesky, or even back to Twitter/X.
Hopefully not too late to get things right.
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@mina Absolutely! The metaphor is so visceral, I think people wo don't deal with abuse daily can really understand the issue better.
My go-to response now when people appear confused why anyone would want better self-defense tools.
(But yes, as the story mainly highlights, good moderation is a must as well.)
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@shironeko Ignoring them still keeps them visible to others though.
I mean look, not much more here to add, we're discussing the top most upvoted feature request. I think we can trust that people need this.
@stefan ignoring is what you are describing yeah? again, replies are distributed by the replier's server, you have no control over it. -
@stefan ignoring is what you are describing yeah? again, replies are distributed by the replier's server, you have no control over it.
@shironeko I see what you mean. I guess you can put it that way. So all the servers that respect reply controls will "ignore" the reply and not display it, making it basically invisible to the original poster and pretty much all their followers.
Outdated servers and servers set up to purposefully ignore reply controls can be blocked.
Seems like a pretty good solution.
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@shironeko I see what you mean. I guess you can put it that way. So all the servers that respect reply controls will "ignore" the reply and not display it, making it basically invisible to the original poster and pretty much all their followers.
Outdated servers and servers set up to purposefully ignore reply controls can be blocked.
Seems like a pretty good solution.
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@renwillis Well, if you think of Mastodon as a "micro blog", and blogs can have their comments disabled, or approved individually, or only allowed for people with privileges, it does kind of make sense?
@stefan I can see that, but I think it's not ideal to just yell out into the void with no feedback. At the very least, people who mutually follow each other - probably healthy to engage with each other.
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@stefan I can see that, but I think it's not ideal to just yell out into the void with no feedback. At the very least, people who mutually follow each other - probably healthy to engage with each other.
@renwillis Absolutely! I think accounts that only broadcast without giving anyone a chance to engage would mostly just end up being ignored.
And I think most people would use this feature responsibly, only to protect themselves when a post escapes outside of the intended audience.
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@renwillis Absolutely! I think accounts that only broadcast without giving anyone a chance to engage would mostly just end up being ignored.
And I think most people would use this feature responsibly, only to protect themselves when a post escapes outside of the intended audience.
@stefan totes!! something I've been thinking about lately was, the one interesting thing Facebook did which I kind of like - they were one of the only social sites that had a forced mutual follow set up.
I wonder how different social would be if all follows had to be mutual?
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@the Yeah, it's been a bit frustrating seeing Mastodon, being the far more popular platform, lag behind GTS in this.
It's unfortunate GTS hasn't gained more traction, maybe we'd be in a different position and not have so many people flee to Bluesky, or even back to Twitter/X.
Hopefully not too late to get things right.
I love GTS. It's by far the easiest Fediverse software to self-host, at least on NixOS, at least out of all of them that I've actually tried self-hosting—which, tbf, is not all of them or even most of at this point, but still. I've never written anything in Go myself, or tried to, or learned much if anything about the language itself for that matter, and I'm already a fan just because of this. It can't possibly suck as a language when GTS is already as good as it is.
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@stefan totes!! something I've been thinking about lately was, the one interesting thing Facebook did which I kind of like - they were one of the only social sites that had a forced mutual follow set up.
I wonder how different social would be if all follows had to be mutual?
@renwillis Interesting idea!
Speaking of Big Tech social media, Google+'s Circles were also a pretty neat concept that I would love the fediverse to copy.
Being able to address smaller, specific portions of your audience would really help with context collapse.
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@stefan yeah you can even not store and distribute it, but the word "ignore" clearly communicates to the user the actual mechanism and what risk profile it have.
@shironeko Yeah, this was my bad, I understood it as the person ignoring/muting the attackers, but this makes sense, thank you for elaborating!
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I love GTS. It's by far the easiest Fediverse software to self-host, at least on NixOS, at least out of all of them that I've actually tried self-hosting—which, tbf, is not all of them or even most of at this point, but still. I've never written anything in Go myself, or tried to, or learned much if anything about the language itself for that matter, and I'm already a fan just because of this. It can't possibly suck as a language when GTS is already as good as it is.
@the Yeah, GTS is really nice. I've decided to stick with Mastodon, but I've definitely recommended it to people, and will continue to do so!
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@renwillis Interesting idea!
Speaking of Big Tech social media, Google+'s Circles were also a pretty neat concept that I would love the fediverse to copy.
Being able to address smaller, specific portions of your audience would really help with context collapse.
@stefan totally!!! Would love that!
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I love GTS. It's by far the easiest Fediverse software to self-host, at least on NixOS, at least out of all of them that I've actually tried self-hosting—which, tbf, is not all of them or even most of at this point, but still. I've never written anything in Go myself, or tried to, or learned much if anything about the language itself for that matter, and I'm already a fan just because of this. It can't possibly suck as a language when GTS is already as good as it is.
@the @stefan As someone who has never written a Go problem, I can at least tell you that I've heard a lot about what a great language it is. GoToSocial is an incredibly well-developed project. As someone who finds self-hosting things too difficult if it's not simple and easy enough to deploy, GoToSocial is simple enough for me to manage perfectly well on my system.
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@the @stefan As someone who has never written a Go problem, I can at least tell you that I've heard a lot about what a great language it is. GoToSocial is an incredibly well-developed project. As someone who finds self-hosting things too difficult if it's not simple and easy enough to deploy, GoToSocial is simple enough for me to manage perfectly well on my system.
