Alcun Atirutan BBS

And now I'll be a real Fedi booster.

Remember to donate to your instances! It costs money to host this stuff.

And in preparation for whatever the heck I might be unleashing, it's time to practice what I preach.

@TechConnectify Classy! Relatedly, I'm curious: do you have a relationship beyond the sign up process with the mas.to moderation team?

@noracodes not currently, but see. Here's the real thorniness of my problem:

I would say probably all of the annoying interactions I have had here don't quite cross the line into requiring moderation. It's a death by a thousand cuts thing, not individuals being truly hostile.

That's why what I'm advocating for is a filter, not better moderation tools. Filters are a proactive form of moderation, not reactive.

@andOlga Okay, so I don't have any deep understanding of the technicalities, but Twitter did some sort of sentiment analysis on posts.

If they were above a certain threshold, A) they wouldn't show up in notifications and B) they'd be hidden under a banner of "show replies which might contain offensive content"

Both of those things were very important. The accuracy of the filter wasn't perfect, but way more often than not what was hidden I didn't want to see.

Additionally,

@andOlga the mere fact that the filter gave me the CHOICE to see what it thought might be crossing the line was a huge part of it.

I'd usually click through - but I knew what I was about to see and it never really bothered me.

Here? I have to see everything unless I want to ignore notifications entirely (and don't get me started on how annoying notifications are when you got 100+ replies overnight...)

That's not healthy, and my only recourse currently is to be extremely careful here.

@TechConnectify This to me is the sign of someone who basically likes a platform, and wants it to be fixed - rather than just rage-quitting. I believe the problems you are facing CAN be addressed, although it is pretty obvious that right now it is properly annoying to someone who has MANY followers and posts regularly. This also gives me hope that you will stay on here and not give up in frustration.

I would like to say thank you for having patience. And thanks for all your content!

@scottearle Honestly that was a big motivation for me posting this.

I am dead serious about my concerns and aspirations for this platform, and I'm not sure people understand this. I'm putting my money where my mouth is.

@andOlga I'm gonna push back on this:

I don't think this is algorithmic in the slightest. This isn't limiting what users get to see in their feed - it's limiting what people who post things might see in their notifications.

And fundamentally, I do not believe people have a right to put their words in front of anyone else.

@andOlga Would I support an algorithm tinkering with the feed? Probably not. At least, not unless that algorithm itself was opt-in and auditable/reasonably open source.

What I want is not that. I would honestly call it a necessity for platforms with any scale - there is literally no way I can even USE my notifications right now. That might be fixed with simple stacking (which would minimize a lot of this irritation, too) but it's not enough.

People do not have a right to be a dick.

@andOlga Well, Twitter figured it out and I'm begging you to understand that I need something like this to exist here peacefully.

I have little patience for this rigid ideological stance that any automation here is forbidden.

@TechConnectify I don't see a lot of crap on this service because:

1. I'm on the Hometown fork which is awesome, and
2. I have a diligent mod team at my instance, which is necessary.

I'm a big fan of moderation, and anything that gives us more tools to limit the things we choose to limit. Nobody has a right to my attention, and I shouldn't have a right to anyone else's.

(And yeah, support your instance if you can! Huzzah!)

@vkc Serious question: when you say you have a diligent mod team, are the proactive or just really good at reactive moderation?

Because a key wrinkle I keep coming across is that I am looking for *proactive* moderation when I ask for filtering features. Very little of what irritates me is crossing the line to where I would get a mod involved - it's just a LOT of little irritating things that add up quickly, and I fear not many understand this.

@andOlga Gotcha.

Honestly, the folks on this platform need to get over this quickly or large accounts will leave.

As an example of a possibility: somebody ran a reply to me through a language model (specifics unknown) and it gave that reply a score. I'm not saying we need LLMs getting involved, but something like (which gave a score and hid things behind a CW that were above it) that could be, I'd think, rather easily bolted on - even if it was on the client side.

@andOlga I do not have the technical expertise to do this, nor am I interested in doing so.

And there are reasons I wish it happened on the platform rather than the client - I earnestly want there to be some kind of signal to others about what's good and bad behavior. That's completely and utterly missing here because the replies are just a giant bucket that nobody's gonna go through (but I will see each drop added).

But I'm confident is has to happen one way or another.

@TechConnectify I'd describe my team as quite proactive. Which, I observe is different from many other instances.

My mods do a great job of handling reports, don't get me wrong, but I feel they do a pretty good job of working ahead of time to block entire instances based on observed behavior, as well as instances which do not themselves moderate well.

I do feel Mastodon as a platform needs more proactive stuff though, for users and mods. Hoo boy do I have opinions there.

@vkc Thanks for the explanation.

I think the intent behind this style of moderation is good, but the extent to which it can be proactive is always going to be limited. New instances pop up, people create accounts on bigger instances to harass folks - so I'm skeptical that this can really scale.

I know many folks hate the thought, but I believe some form of automated proactive moderation will be necessary in short order. And that's really what I'm asking for in a filtering function.

@andOlga (shouts about how I think that variation is eventually going to come back to bite us and then ducks)

I agree it would be very difficult to make work across the platform, but I'm dead serious about the signals thing. Heck, quote tweets could function as that signal - they were a double-edged sword, sure, but I mean... so is pretty much every decision we can make to improve things here.

Put simple, "moderation from the crowd" is a design goal I wish could be implemented in some way.

@TechConnectify@mas.to @andOlga@girlcock.club Judging by this post, I do not believe you have a nearly approximate understanding of how this "platform" works at a technical level.

We each run our own backend. Instances are NOT clients. They're whole servers with completely fucking different software. I am literally not even talking to you from Mastodon right now, I don't use a single line of code from it.

You cannot physically force ANY instance other than your own to implement absolutely anything, implementations are 100% voluntary and that IS what makes the fediverse great. The undeniable and unchangable fact that it is diverse.

You can have something for yourself, and people may use it too if they like it, but you cannot make others have it by force, so if that's what you're trying to accomplish here, I am sorry to inform you, but as someone who knows the protocol quite well at this point, it is technically incompatible with the very nature of this network.

@cody @andOlga Did I say instances are clients?

Seriously, what is up

@cody @andOlga You keep saying "I'm sincerely trying to help" and then you are reading between the lines, coming up with your own mental model of how I'm navigating this space, and coming out with some awful gosh darn irritating replies which are obviously passive-aggressive.

Now - please. I might have to take that advice people keep giving me.

@TechConnectify@mas.to @cody@catboy.baby @andOlga@girlcock.club

no, but you did say you wanted this feature implemented on the "platform" rather than on the client

the problem with that is that fediverse is not a platform, it's thousands of platforms

each individual instance is it's own platform with it's own users with it's own culture with it's own rules

@pharmafemboy @andOlga @cody yep, and yet we all mostly experience this place as the connection between all those instances which is why I happily call it a platform.

And it's a messy as fuck one where I'm constantly running into weird shit because somebody tagged me on some other corner of the fediverse.

Please excuse me for not using perfectly precise language.

(edited to make the end sentence less harsh)

@TechConnectify@mas.to @pharmafemboy@fedi.catboy.agency @andOlga@girlcock.club Ok but your use of the word platform here basically implies (in my mind at least) you think of it as a single one, and it is not. And that's a VERY important distinction to make. I was only trying to convey that, I am sorry if I sound excessively aggressive...

PS: If I really irritate you that much do mute me, I'm sorry you feel that way. I ain't bullshitting when I tell you I'm trying to help, I just don't think what you propose is useful to the broader fediverse (not big creators), and it does piss me off when you say you want to force the entire network to do a thing, because that is disrespectful.

@cody @pharmafemboy @andOlga I don't know why you use the word force. Or how you think I want to change how this place looks or behaves for other people.

At this point, I believe you are assuming the worst in everything that I say here. I'm not asking for this place to improve just for myself. There's a lot of folks having the same issues that I'm having.

@cody @pharmafemboy @andOlga and I don't think you should assume that tools that would make the platform easier for me are going to make it harder for others. Or worse in any other way.

The reason why I want to see changes to "the platform" is because I believe everybody deserves a better experience. They shouldn't have to shop around for an instance or fork or client that respects their right to a peaceful existence.

This "place" will keep that attitude up at its peril.

@TechConnectify@mas.to @pharmafemboy@fedi.catboy.agency @andOlga@girlcock.club Because not everyone wants the same thing, and what is better for you may be A LOT worse for someone else, and the other way around... That's why we switch instances so much and change clients and so on before we settle somewhere, because we're not immediately comfortable in the first place we land at, but other people 100% are and do NOT want it to change... And it's selfish to want it to change... Even if you feel it as generous... Imagine if it was the other way around... Imagine your platform has filtering, and I arrive there and say "I believe everyone has the right to reply and be heared" and strip the filtering functionality from you...

@cody @pharmafemboy @andOlga oh my gosh. I'm not saying I want to force the filter onto anybody! I want it to be /available/ to everybody.

It can be toggleable. It could be an option. But it shouldn't be something I need to find some weird fork in the fediverse to have.

I don't think that's controversial, and again. You keep assuming the worst of everything I say. Please don't.

@TechConnectify@mas.to @cody@catboy.baby @pharmafemboy@fedi.catboy.agency @andOlga@girlcock.club I'm gonna throw my two cents in here and just say that everyone has their own priorities of what they want out of something, and the best thing that could happen to this thread is everyone understanding that everyone is different and wants different things from social media and just because they want something doesn't mean they want to force it on anyone else

real piss on the poor reading comprehension here guys
(rip my notifications for interjecting in a thread while sleep deprived. whatever)

@TechConnectify@mas.to actually gonna throw one more thing in here too, omitting other mentions because it isn't directly related but my honest opinion about fedi is it kinda fucking sucks. even beyond the hell that is the activitypub protocol it's a whole different beast than any other network out there. to be clear, this isn't necessarily bad, however everyone looking at fedi through a lens of "twitter clone" and "perfect because decentralized" are missing the point and will probably explode at the mere mention of the word nuance. to be clear, I've been liking my time here so far (though I've never used twitter and block quite liberally) however as I said before, everyone has different priorities and their own personal pros and cons lists for everything. fedi is not for everyone, and it kinda sucks seeing a lot of people defend it unconditionally while ignoring the very real problems with it, and rather focusing on the problems with other services.

@soapthatglows You're echoing my thoughts exactly.

There is an inherent and irreconcilable contradiction in this platform being anything anyone wants it to be and also for everyone. It's kind of impossible, and definitely exhausting, to navigate.