Just an occasional reminder that disabling replies is the #1 requested feature from Mastodon.

@amberage I think these features mean slightly different things to different people, and my impression is that it is possible to provide at least some control to marginalized people who are most often victims of targeted harassment.

If this truly was impossible, I don't think there's much of a point in sticking around the fediverse if we can't ensure everyone feels safe and welcome.

And I'm sure moderation tools can be improved, but these can only be used after the damage has already been done. There have to be better ways for people to defend themselves before an attack, or before moderators can step in.

@stefan

... suppressing discussion has never been a good approach...

@stefan I have quite a bunch of ideas for moderation that could prevent harassment in the first place, tbh, but chances of Masto devs ever implementing anything like it are about minus 9000%

What can be implemented re: reply controls is, basically, selective muting. A post could indicate "only people XY may reply" (i.e.: followers), fellow vanilla Mastodon servers would respect that, other ActivityPub software may or may not respect that, and bad actors certainly wouldn't. So while it may hide unwanted replies from cooperating parties, it would only ever do so on a good faith basis.

Twitter could do reply controls because Twitter is one company. All user accounts, all posts, all are owned by Twitter. It rules absolutely, for better or worse. That isn't possible with ActivityPub, where each post, each like, each follow, is just servers sending "hey, I did this thing" announcements into the ether and other servers deciding how to respond.

@manankanchu Would you consider a blog that has comments disabled a "suppression of discussion"?

Bottom line: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115940412454524948

> "But what if I have a strong urge to reply to a stranger?"
> Find a more productive way to spend your time.

@amberage What you described is pretty much how I'd imagine this to work. Obviously you can't prevent people from publishing whatever they want on their website, blog, or social media, but there have to be ways to limit their reach.

Also, have you seen Mastodon's updated roadmap?

> Moderation tools
> Looking at ways to make moderation easier, e.g. shared block lists.

https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap

That sounds promising, I think!

@manankanchu assuming perfectly spherical commenters where there's no power disparity, nobody can shout down or intimidate anyone else, etc, etc. Free Speech only works under ideal conditions, in the real world it does not. Your own country quite rightly has laws suppressing hate speech, for instance.

And besides, abuse isn't discussion.
And besides, nobody owes anyone the right to reply.
And besides, the real point of free speech is *the right to say what you like about the government*, not the right to say what you like to some person and they are obliged to hear you out and platform you!

@amberage

That's the basic misunderstanding that people have about decentralised networks:

They don't get it that once a message leaves your instance, you lost all control about it.

All this "Don't quote, don't reply, quiet public, followers only, opting out of indexing and search machines etc." is merely a recommendation, but cannot be enforced.

I always say: Only post what would do no harm to you if plastered on a public bathroom's wall or taken to the police.

@Edent @julian @stefan

@mina That is a solid advice, sure. But even completely innocent posts can attract mansplaining, tone policing, and outright racism and sexism, and worse.

I don't typically deal with this stuff myself, but on at least two occasions, after posting some pro-trans articles and messages, I'd have bunch of anti-trans losers show up in my replies.

Easy to block, but I just can't imagine dealing with that daily. Or on a bigger scale. I would probably leave for Bluesky myself.

@amberage @Edent @julian

@stefan If you limit who.can reply there should be a setting to also completely block my ability to see posts I cannot reply to. No point in showing me peoples shitty drive-by takes.

@stefan How would that even work, reply are not controlled by the poster's server right?

Really takes the whole social thing out of social.

@shironeko I'd recommend going through the linked conversations about potential approaches, but in my mind, I'd imagine each server would reject replies that don't match the reply settings.

Yes, there will be servers, either running outdated fediverse software, or designed to ignore the settings, and the replies might be visible there, but their reach will be limited.

Obviously you can't stop people from talking about you in their dark corner far away, just like screenshots easily work around quote permissions. Or someone writing a blog post about you.

Still, what we have now is pretty subpar and I've seen too many people leaving the fediverse because they feel unsafe and unwelcome. And they tell their friends who will never come here.

This has to change.

@stefan

More and more, it seems that Mastodon is just Telegram, if Telegram were designed by idiots. "Microblogging" is a silly conceit held by a minority of silly users. For the majority of users, Mastodon and all others are simply a modern version of IRC chat. The moment you respond to a post- it is chat (or even worse- a web forum).. the moment it becomes interactive, it becomes chat. Nothing more. Micro-blogging is conceptual nonsense. Any linking to an outside URL/website nullifies any conceit of "Micro-blogging".. it once again becomes mere IRC chat pointing to "click and look at my off-fedi website.." The fedi has existed for long enough now. The devs need to sit down and have a reality check. Sluff off any of the old idealism from 2010 that no longer fits or has lost relevance due to the shifting usage patterns of the majority. Fail at this and the Fedi, in it's own time will go the way of ICQ, AIM, IRC, and all the others that came before but were merely instances of the same old thing as before.

@stefan This would also be useful for those accounts that are run by a bot scraping an RSS feed. I'm not too fond of them, but they seem to have a use for some people.

@stefan

wrong comparison, I guess...

I'd consider a blog being similar to a newspaper and comments being like readers letters... unsuitable for discussion between blogger and different readers to each other...

bloggers writing crap are simply ignored, tooters writing crap are spread through federal and local timelines to hundreds of thousands like on Twitter.

Such crappy tooters will block replies requiring hundreds of thousand to take action by blocking/reporting... happy times for mods

@stefan
But what if I don't want a github account?

@stefan

I reckon, exactly this lack of control and incompetent moderation across the network is, what drove e.g. so many Black people from the US away from the Fediverse into the arms of the next monolithic platform.

@amberage @Edent @julian

@stefan right so the feature is actually "ignore replies to this post"

@stefan I'll take limiting who can reply over denying replies outright, just feels a bit like you want a shortform blog with comments turned off in that case. Could work with some stuff but then it's basically an RSS feed so maybe not much use for a read-only experience on something that encourages read-write like Mastodon.

@renchap @stefan I am grateful for everyone pouring their thoughts and energy into making AP/Mastodon the best it can be in a complex world with complex social and societal environments where every change has multiple and sometimes opposing effects. I am looking forward to experiencing the continued evolution of Mastodon!