@mray But now you know why I'm asking. There is lots of energy around encryption but it's a very tricky thing to be done right. My point was simply that we start with some simple UX improvements and not wait for the encryption (given we already have private messages)
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@scottjenson Hey Scott! I'm so glad you're tackling this issue. I have lots of trouble with DMs on Mastodon. I think you're addressing, these, but here goes:
The biggest one is how easily they're confused with regular messages. I routinely mess this up, and make private messages public, or vice versa.
The next is how hard it is to visualize threads - especially in the existing notification section. I often lose my place in complex discussions
@benpate Could not agree with you more! Do you have any ideas on how to improve threads? Any products that do it well for example? Branching threads are a bit like merging PRs, the dependency tree can get crazy complex!
@scottjenson @benpate is there a reason private messages need to support threading? Most DMs on other platforms are flattened to a single thread for simplicity.
If threading is still necessary, iOS’s design for replies to specific messages in iMessage feels easy to follow for me
Hey Jesse ~ great point. It would probably depend on how people use it. And private/direct messages are probably different from comment threads on public posts.
For public messages (like this one) it feels like people have the expectation of real threads.
For private messages, I agree with you & have been considering iMessage's method: showing everything chronologically, with 1) a note if something is a direct reply and 2) the ability to "zoom" in on replies.
Yeah, it’s a sticky problem, and better designers than I have struggled with it. I did a tour of different solutions, but didn’t come away with any slam dunk answers.
It probably depends on the use cases you anticipate most. 😟
I settled on something close to Reddit, showing nested replies + a “focus” widget that follows a single thread “up” to the original post.
I can share some screenshots/drawings if you think it would help to visualize.
@scottjenson I think making UX improvements to DMs is a great idea.
One of the biggest privacy problems with Mastodon DMs now is that people accidentally make them public.
Separating the private mention UI from the public posting UI will probably avoid a huge percentage of those user errors.
It'd be a big win for privacy.
@evan @scottjenson
phanpy does a great job
@virtuous_sloth @scottjenson actually, it doesn't separate the composition of private mentions from other types of posts. It's an option on the drop down. If you forget to change the option, your PM goes out with the default visibility -- often public!
@evan @scottjenson
But if you forget to set it to PM, there are no stripes, which should be a jarring visual clue.
I suppose adding a second compose button would make you choose sooner, but ultimately you have to always click on the right buttons in the right order.
They could change the default when you are viewing your PM list. That would make sense.
This is what I meant that there are lots of things to look at here. As Evan points out, let's make PMs actually something distinct and clearly not a message. Too many people either think something is a PM and it isn't or it is, and it shows up in your feed which makes people panic!
So many simple things to clean up here.
@evan the already improved UX looks good, to me.
When drafting a reply to a public toot, the word 'Public' is prominent (first screenshot).
When drafting a mention, the separation is clear (second shot).
Without being blasé about privacy: if a person accidentally publishes in either of those contexts, it's human error.
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@scottjenson encryption that still works if one of the parties changes fediverse servers seems like it maybe technically challenging
I also would note that a lot of my interactions on the Fediverse are not very “microblogging” focused. Ie this response isn’t a blog post.
I largely use DMs here for private but non sensitive content (like “hey your url is broken” or “you have a typo on that post”
@Rycaut Exactly. My hypothese is that most PMs are scoping outisde of the public discourse and are not in need to encryption. This doesn't mean it's not a good long term goal! Just saying lots of usage does not require it
@scottjenson Thanks for asking! I'm a big fan of Encrypting All The Things, but my impression here is that the dangers of PMs on Mastodon have more to do with the potentially confusing UX, so I think addressing the UX issues would help the most in the short term.
Ultimately, I want users to be able to assume "private" means encrypted, so I'm very glad that's part of the plan. Yes, people can use Signal, but there's still a need to privately transmit one's Signal username at a minimum. Also, private threads can stem from public threads, so it's natural to have some facility for privacy here. Finally, I'm a huge Signal fan, but its centralization means a single point of failure, and makes it a huge target for authoritarian state actors, and I worry about it going down or being compromised.
I would like to see more visual distinction between public and private posts, like different coloring, so fewer people confuse them.
@scottjenson I must request encryption, because even though I don't need it right now. ...
A - you never know when you might need it
B- if I did, I might feel really uncomfortable telling you the reason, so I'm gonna assume that I'm piping up for some of those folks.
@morst No one is saying encryption is off the table. Just that I wanted to start with low hanging fruit (bucause the improvements are so much easier. Others are working on the encryption (it's a VERY hard problem)
@scottjenson My take is encryption is important, but not important enough that you shouldn't make UX improvements before having it
I particularly would like to see the list of mentions decoupled from the list of recipients, though I wonder if that might cause problems with replies from some software... but still
@jfred You're not the only person asking for this. It's a resonable suggestion (but I can't comment on the implementation complexity)
@scottjenson I know @soatok is working on E2E DMs for the fediverse.
But I already kinda use the existing DM feature but it is very clunky depending on the client you use. Having some sort of prominent tab that has it's own set of notification so I don't miss it in the flood of "normal" notifications would already go a long way.
@scottjenson I think any service with an implication of privacy should be encrypted, but that encryption needs to be done right. And the UI needs to convey the level of encryption clearly so people don't make incorrect assumptions about the security of their communications.
So I'm okay with the UX coming first, if it's designed with future encrypted messaging in mind.
I get DMs are not the focus of the app, so probably not a big priority, but they are still useful and important to many users.
@aaron Completely agree and why I'm asking. We can do both: improve the backend (adding encrypting) AND improve the UX. This is especially true as the frontend improvements are far easier to implement so people can benefit from this WHILE working on the backend.
Signal makes it easy to create a revocable "message me" link. I have one in my profile. If anyone wants to send me an encrypted message they can click on it and send one pretty easily.
I think reply controls and UX improvements should come first, maybe with, as others suggested, a note that the message is not encrypted (yet)
@gbargoud makes sense, thank you
As an aside, I'm surprised there isn't an instance at a link like staff.joinmastodon.org with an official account for each member of the core mastodon team.
I had to check your profile to see that you were someone asking for feedback who could do something about it rather than someone who was asking out of curiosity
@scottjenson imo that’s totally fine. Just need to make it known straight up that the messages are not encrypted, which is more or less just an alert that hard blocks interaction until acknowledgement…
@scottjenson I am kind of surprised that no one has mentioned that "oh the admins of the servers shouldnt see my DMs!" Creates a moderation nightmare and a harassment loophole that really shouldnt be considered worth the hassle. I am on team "just use signal" because if you need to have a really private conversation with someone who didnt give you their private contact information, no you dont.
@Montaagge There is a lot of traffic on this thread and that point has been made by the way. It's a reasonable request. I just appreciate that it's not a simple ask and I'm hoping we can tackle some UX improvements WHILE the background work is going on.
@scottjenson one huge problem with private mentions is that they actually aren't equivalent to DMs... because if you try to talk about another person and link to their profile, you effectively "mention" them and they can see the message. I don't know of any other DM that works this way and the UX is extremely confusing to users and just wrong IMO.
I think private mentions should be scrapped entirely and reworked as a different AP object type than Note so that they are treated differently.
@scottjenson Adding a vote for encryption first. For the simple reason that “personal message" is associated with a modicum of privacy. And the current Mastodon implementation does not provide much privacy at all for personal messages. As welcome as UX changes are, they would not change the underlying architectural issue, and might even increase the _appearance_ of those messages providing any actual meaningful privacy.
Let me know if you find that explanation needs more details. 😉
@jochenwolters That's a very clear explanation thank you. I don't think many apprecaite just how hard it is to add encryption properly and it's like going to take a while. As we already have PMs in the product and improving them would be very helpful, it seems like we shouldn't wait.
Part of why I'm asking is that here are MANY ways to use PMs, many of which do not require encryption at all. Of course it would be very nice to have. But I just want to call out, even with encryption, you likely want to be very careful using Mastodon for organizing as your profile and public posts would likely leak a tremendous amount of personal info.
Again, this doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, just that microblogging makes it hard to proprely protect your identity.
@scottjenson Thanks for the thoughtful response, Scott. I sincerely appreciate that! And I agree with everything you write.
Here's a little IxD detail in Mona 6 that's I find very useful. I hardly use the official Mastodon clients. So if they lack such a reminder, adding it should be a fairly minor effort with a huge upside in terms of setting the accurate security expectations with users.
@jochenwolters Agreed! These are the type of fixes I'd like to consider IN ADDITION to continuing to work on backend encryption
@scottjenson Not critical, as I wouldn’t expect it because of the current implementation.
If a future iteration of PMs would change that, it might as well be a good idea to communicate it explicitly in the UI, e.g. at the beginning of a new conversation. Basically the opposite of what WhatsApp does (see screenshot).
Also, if encryption means it’ll harder for third party apps, services,… to adopt PMs, then I feel like it’s definitely not worth the effort.
@scottjenson Don't really need encryption just for the DM edge-case. I only need to know where/for who exactly my message will pop up automatically, though.
Suggesting "encryption" exists in mastodon, how can one make sure it is interoperable with ActivityPub AND nobody gets it wrong and falsely assumes encryption is omnipresent, when it is absolutely not.
@mray Encryption is being explored by a FEP
Is the FEP public? I’ll love to check it out!
@scottjenson Interesting, seeing how other protocols got burned by adding encryption as an afterthought (XMPP, MAIL) I think we are still very very far away from having something comprehensive, reliable and usable. Unless that's a reality I'd shy away from promoting it unnecessarily loud. 🤷♂️
Encryption rocks though. I hope that FEP has lots of traction.
@mray But now you know why I'm asking. There is lots of energy around encryption but it's a very tricky thing to be done right. My point was simply that we start with some simple UX improvements and not wait for the encryption (given we already have private messages)
@scottjenson also dealing with encrypted chat inside the browser is extra spicy. I'd love to see people seriously tackling that, but I remain reserved. 😬
@scottjenson I'm pessimistic up to the point where you have to have to assume it will fail completely. Just as XMPP and MAIL failed.
The only encryption implementation with success were the approaches where the UX can be controlled centrally.
For MAIL there is #autocrypt now, it is astonishing of good it is – but email is still not encypted today.
XMPP/Jabber has OMEMO, but stillt struggles with client adoption and it isn't omnipresent.
Where it worked: #DeltaChat and #Signal both using a central library that can make sure encryption reliably lands at peoples fingertips.
@mray I so appreciate your concerns. It's actually why (personally, I'll add) I'm concerned why encryption may take a while (the Mastodon team is very thorough and would not release a rushed version of this) This is why my original post really had nothing to do with "should we add encryption" but was rather "while we're waiting can we at least make some improvements?"
@scottjenson I don't see much wiggle-room for improvement if it is not clear how it works under the hood.
Ideally encryption feels almost imperceptible, and needs a mere indication on the side, but I guess the UX work won't be to GET THERE – but is to make the emerging pain points more bearable. 😂
I think the UX you would want to improve is connected more with the FEP itself than any UI concerns. Depending on what they come up with you'll be free to do what you want – or deal with strange constraints. (Key handling seems to be the arch enemy of UX in encryption if you ask me :P)
@mray Well first of all we have a shipping product (warts and all) and improving it is important to do even outside of encryption (I mean I hear your point but I'm saying we'll improve the UX independently as, honestly, it's got lots of issues that need fixing.)
But I agree with you empathically that proper key management is a horribly difficult thing to get right and almost always makes the UX very challenging to "be seemless"
