I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.

Stefan Bohacek

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14762

We won't get rid of the racism and the mansplaining on the fediverse overnight, but giving people control over their replies would significantly improve everyone's experience, and make this place a lot more inviting.

#mastodon #fediverse #SocialMedia

U.S. Elaine

@stefan
Bluesky has this.

Stefan Bohacek

@USelaine To be fair, Mastodon/fediverse lacks the kind of funding Bluesky has, and every feature has to work across a variety of platforms.

So I appreciate the challenges, but also, personally, I would've prioritized this over quote posts.

Well, we'll get there, I am sure!

Dec [{(:no_ai:)}]

@stefan @USelaine
Bluesky still doesn't have post edits.

Stefan Bohacek

@dec23k I genuinely can't imagine not being able to edit posts. It's not great just for fixing typos, but also giving updates (important news, fundraising efforts) that might get missed.

I wonder if Bluesky has this on their roadmap.

@USelaine

informapirata

@stefan@stefanbohacek.online I'm the administrator of four Italian instances based on four different systems, and I don't see racism and mansplaining as urgent matters: the reports I received about racist posts came from junk instances I hadn't yet included in my block list, or from newly created users created for the purpose of trolling or harassing. I quickly banned the unmoderated instances or the harassing users, and the attacks on those victims have stopped.

Regarding mansplaining, I've never received any reports, although I've had to intervene on some sexist posts (and in those cases, I didn't even need to use the moderation tools; simply explaining that certain messages were offensive was enough to get the author to edit or delete them).

In short, do you really think we need more than just moderation to solve this problem, considering that in cases of targeted and repeated harassment, it's always possible to use the feature that allows you to make your posts visible only to your followers?

Finally, I find the possibility of allowing replies only to certain users:

unbearable, because it would distort Mastodon's core feature, the idea of "interaction by default."
it would stimulate those toxic profiles who want to post without cross-examination, a phenomenon that on X/Twitter has reached unbearable heights of arrogance on the part of certain second-tier tweetstars.
it would be harmful, because it is not an Activitypub standard and would further confuse the situation (exactly as happened with Mastodon's absurd way of handling quotes).
furthermore, since it is not an Activitypub standard, it would be supported by none of the other social software in the Fediverse, from Friendica to Misskey, from Pleroma to Pixelfed: these software would continue to publish replies to victims of harassment, who would continue to find a wall of harassment written under their posts, visible from all other platforms and without even the possibility of reporting them (exactly as is happening in the case of post with quote)

Stefan Bohacek

@informapirata Yes, of course, any reply control system would have to work across all fediverse platforms, hence this being a challenging feature to implement.

But yes, I do think people should have more control over their experience online. I think the trade-offs are worth it. Accounts that abuse this feature can be reported and suspended, I don't think that should be a problem.

If I was getting harassed on here regularly with few tools to protect myself, beyond reporting a post and waiting for someone to come to my rescue, I'd likely also leave for a platform where I will feel safer and more empowered.

Stefan Bohacek

@informapirata "and I don't see racism and mansplaining as urgent matters"

Well, it's easy to miss this if you and your communities are not directly affected. One particularly insidious attack vector has been making a followers-only post and tagging your victim. This way nobody else would see the abuse outside of the attackers and the victim. The post visibility, from what I understand, also makes it harder to report such attacks.

And there is quite a bit more, I highly recommend reading this:

https://privacy.thenexus.today/start-making-the-fediverse-less-toxic/

informapirata

@stefan@stefanbohacek.online said in I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.:
> The post visibility, from what I understand, also makes it harder to report such attacks.

I can assure you that on Mastodon, if a user flags a direct message, I'm perfectly capable of seeing it, regardless of its visibility level. Unfortunately, not on Friendica. I don't know about Lemmy and NodeBB yet.

As for the rest, I'm sure I'm probably underestimating the problem of racism; my concerns are Italian-speaking, and in the Italian fediverse, racist people are immediately identified and isolated. In fact, most of the reports I've received for racism were for English-language content, and this is indicative, because English-language content makes up the minority of the reports I receive.

However, I still don't understand why limiting the ability to reply constitutes a real limitation on harassment, when there's already the option (standardized in Activitypub) to limit the visibility of posts to followers only.

Paradoxically, the inability to reply to a public post (because I think we're talking about public posts) actually increases the risk of that post being copied, linked, and screenshotted for ridicule on different, more toxic platforms outside the control of the fediverse communities (X, Thruth, 4chan, etc.).

Stefan Bohacek

@informapirata

"when there's already the option (standardized in Activitypub) to limit the visibility of posts to followers only."

I don't think it's really fair that, if you're a marginalized person, you have to choose between being able to reach a wider audience, and staying safe.

As a straight white dude, I never have to worry about that. It's always safe for me to post publicly. I think everyone should enjoy that privilege. (Among many.)

Stefan Bohacek

@informapirata "the inability to reply to a public post actually increases the risk of that post being copied, linked, and screenshotted"

There will never be a perfect solution, it's true. But we can at least put up safeguards and empower people to protect themselves.

The bottom line is, the ability to disable replies is the top-voted issue on Mastodon's repo. Clearly people really want this.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc

Scott Feeney

@stefan 100%. I'm not sure how on their radar it is, either. I see no evidence in that issue thread of it being prioritized at all.

Also, low-hanging fruit: Blocking someone should hide their reply under your post.

So much simpler to implement, the code was literally already written back in **2022** but isn't being shipped.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/18468

lobingera

@stefan Is anyone on this thread actually working on this?

afaiu, it's a protocol change and these are hard to manage across implementations (masto + general fediverse).

Stefan Bohacek

@lobingera From what I understand, goToSocial has been working on this, with the Mastodon team waiting for them to publish a formal proposal so that this feature can be more widely adopted by other fediverse platforms.

It looks like that hasn't happened yet, probably because the feature is still being actively developed, based on what I see here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/federation/interaction_policy/

Stefan Bohacek

@graue I've seen it come up in a few conversations, but it seems like things are a bit stuck waiting for goToSocial to write an FEP, from what I can tell?

https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115322515550602497

8124🟦

@stefan On a decentralized network, replies are just links to your post. They are hosted externally by the server hosting the account publishing the reply.

It’s not that this isn’t being implemented. It’s that there are *no technical means in software* to prevent someone else’s computer server from hosting a URL pointing to your public post (which is because it is their computer and not yours).

The endless requests for this inherently impossible feature are just old Twitter habits dying hard.

Stefan Bohacek

@8124 Well the problem here is unwanted @ mentions. Again, I am not typically a target of harassment, so I don't want to speak for those affected by this, but I'd imagine unwanted @ mentions are a much bigger problem than strangers linking to your posts without tagging you.

Which, I suppose, based on the nature of such posts, could be a whole another problem, and much like people sharing screenshots of your posts, a lot harder to address.

Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified: 🇺🇸

@stefan I've mentioned wanting this a couple of times and always it draws stiff criticism of the "you're doing it wrong" kind. But I should be able to preemptively shut up jerks when I know they're going to dogpile, or sometimes I want to post something personal like a remembrance of someone I've lost, without replies. Or sometimes I want to pin a post without it getting replies. I should have all that control to prevent randos from jumping in where they're not wanted.

Stefan Bohacek

@Nonya_Bidniss Yeah, it's the type of people that are the reason we need tools like this being the loudest opponents, go figure.

8124🟦

@stefan Replies to posts are implemented as links under-the-hood, though. Really, think about it, is there any other way it could work?

Our posts are hosted on different servers. They have to link to each other in a hidden metadata field, because otherwise how could threads be rendered? Each post would be standalone.

That is why reply controls are inherently impossible under a decentralized approach. There is no way to enforce that everyone runs the same software and configuration.