Discussion
I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.
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.
@uc Hmm, I'm not sure I understand how this would work, mind elaborating?
for someone who has not been approved before, or for all replies if desired, a reply goes into a moderation queue for the OP to read and approve or dismiss. Much the same as with some blogging software.
@uc Ahh, interesting idea!
@stefan we already have reply controls. Every object has a `replies` collection that is managed by the author's server. If a) remote servers only use that collection for showing replies and b) the local server lets the user curate the collection, it just works.
@evan @stefan “If a) remote servers only use that collection for showing replies and b) the local server lets the user curate the collection, it just works.”
You’re not listening to the users, who prefer the ability to block replies altogether rather than to simply ignore them as you propose here.
For example, elsewhere in this thread @elena writes “Thing is, as a woman on the internet, I prefer to see what people are saying to me... so I can block accounts or entire servers if needed.”
@evan @stefan @elena Yeah, true enough, but then you are no longer talking about “reply controls” in the same sense which others are using the term when asking for this feature.
When they find out that replies are not controlled (after installing your software from a landing page emblazoned with “now supports reply controls”) they will get mad at you.
@evan Sorry, not sure I'm following. Are you saying AP already supports this, but fediverse platforms (other than maybe goToSocial) haven't implemented it?
Yes, AP has the mechanisms to support it, and I think the specific vocabulary is largely agreed on (there's a FEP, not sure where it is in the process).
It's frustrating that the perception of AP, and current reality of most AP-based software, is so shaped by Mastodon's specific implementation. On the one hand Mastodon's adoption was key to the success of AP, but on the other hand Mastodon's specific choices (also including not adopting C2S) have been less than helpful. Oh well, it is what it is, and hopefully thanks are changing (both with Mastodon and with the broader fediverse)
@thenexusofprivacy @evan Ah, yes, this does sound familiar, thank you both for reminding me!
@stefan this seems to steer completely in the opposite direction of W3C recommendations like Webmentions, where replies and reactions are basically HTTP POSTs on a Webmention URL that can be made by anyone on the Internet (not even necessarily on Mastodon).
@fabio Right, anyone can write a reply or send a reaction, but surely I am not obligated to display them on my own blog, should I ever decide to enable webmentions?
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online Just thinking out loud here without overly much afterthought and still stuffed on xmas/holiday food but: wouldn't it be more in the spirit of things in the Fediverse to be able to control who can READ your posts? I'm talking about plonking your followers in to groups (of your liking..."friends", "roleplayers", "metalheads", "idiots" etc). Much like Google+ did and also to a degree what Facebook does (or allows you to do...I don't think many people are aware of it) and, by all means, Friendica does. Then you can select who you post what to.
But if there was kind of granular control over who could read your posts, it would also be assumed everyone who can read it can reply to it.
Absolutely not easier to do, I'd say about as impossible to do even, but if we're dreaming...but it would be more fair and it would, IMHO, make sense.
If we only control who can reply to otherwise public posts we could end up getting people broadcasting (as opposed to discussing), no?
As I say, I haven't formulated this in a while in my head even as I've kept out of Fediverse/ActivityPub functionality discussions these last few years, but it kind of make more sense in my head.
Anyways, just a thought as I did a drive-by reading of that github pitch.
@mathias I love Google+'s concept of Circles and definitely hope we'll see that implemented in the fediverse!
Here's what I said, though, about having to choose between wider audience and safety: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115840476056722953
RE: "If we only control who can reply to otherwise public posts we could end up getting people broadcasting (as opposed to discussing), no?"
You can always ignore people who use social media this way, or report them if they're spreading misinformation.
I don't have comments enabled on my blog. I don't owe anyone an audience, and I don't want to do comment moderation for free.
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online
I hear you. But still, you are kind of enforcing the point I'm trying to make (but which I have yet to formulate in an elegant/clear way).
I think, for me, "social media" is more than just "media", which I would consider a blog, or even a news web site, to be. Like you I don't have comments enabled on any of my (too many) sites, where I can broadcast to my hearts content.
On Social Media though I think we are losing the "social" part if we normalize broadcasting but do not allow comments. Actually I think it is worse, and this is an area where Fediverse (which I love for the most part) too often try to instill the feeling of safety, but without actually being, or creating, any more actual safety (i.e. "blocking" mostly is "move out of sight, for me").
Anyways, interesting topics, and I would say we (in the Fediverse) has lots of areas for improvement challenges.
@mathias I think the lines between social media, websites, blogs, etc, can get pretty blurry. What if you don't have comments enabled on your blog, but then you add the ActivityPub plugin? Shouldn't replies be then disabled as well?
If you don't like seeing accounts that only broadcast, or broadcast to a specific audience that you are not part of, you can ignore them.
If they spread misinformation, you can report them and block them.
Really don't see much of an issue to let people enjoy the (social) web the way they want.
@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.
@Nonya_Bidniss Yeah, it's the type of people that are the reason we need tools like this being the loudest opponents, go figure.
@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.
@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.
@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.
Going back to this again:
"no technical means in software to prevent someone else’s computer server from hosting a URL pointing to your public post"
Right, anyone can publish a link to my post, but then, based on the reply settings, my server can reject those and not show them under my posts, and I won't get @ mentioned?
Seems like that should solve the problem for people who are now leaving for platforms that provide tools like this, in some cases even back to X/Twitter.
@stefan one cannot solve social problems with technology...
@funbaker Right. But we should still give people, particularly marginalized people, tools for protecting themselves.
Disabling replies is the top requested feature, I think we can trust that it's needed.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc
@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).
@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/
GoToSocial has already implemented this. As I understand it, Mastodon worked with GoToSocial to tweak the protocol-level specification, and the Mastodon implementation can build on mechanisms that were put in place for Quote Boosts. Not sure just where it is on on the Mastodon roadmap though.
@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.
Re: I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.
@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:
@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.
@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/
Re: I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.
@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
Fair enough.
People here are looking for different kinds of engagement.
As with the Quote function, the key is the ability to control the kind of engagement experienced.
@AlsoPaisleyCat Yeah, personally, I can wait for reply controls, I don't typically deal with harassment or unwanted replies. But I know many do, and then they leave, and tell their friends not to come. We're losing and missing out on diversity because of this.
@stefan @AlsoPaisleyCat exactly! There are so many people not on here because of this who I would really love to be here. While not a silver bullet reply controls would be significant help.
@stefan
The fact they implemented a feature (QT) they originally made their USP to NOT support before resolving this is beyond disappointing.
We were promised Search and QT would solve discoverability, and still safety and accessibility are low priority (not ignored!)
@doug Yeah, I agree. Quote boosts are definitely nice, but I don't know if this alone will bring more people as the team was maybe hoping.
People first need to feel safe here to come here, or stay.
Some people, and bots, may take issue with this initiative.
@KrajciTom It's always a trade-off!
@stefan @KrajciTom Actually, it's not about some people taking issue; it's about the economic feasibility of implementing such an initiative on a large scale. Most experts agree that infrastructure projects should be subject to cost-benefit analyses, not petty dissent. Such endeavors require nuanced decision-making, not emotional reactions.
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@stefan
What I would love to see in addition is an Approve Reply function, to completely eliminate the echo chamber and allow a wider diversity of appropriate replies. Only allowing @-mentions and @-followers severely limits the chance for good, broad conversation.