Real talk:

It is utterly exhausting to look at my notifications every morning (which is a difficult slog as it is with this many followers) and see response after response saying "just mute/block those folks" again and again.

I'm gonna make this as clear as I can:

On Twitter,

this. was. not. a. thing. I. had. to. do.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I had to block people because, get this, Twitter had a quality filter which caught most insufferable people

The general (and relentlessly repeated) advice here, that I am the one who needs to take control over my experience here to have a good time, is honestly really really irritating.

I'm gonna lay this out on the line right now: if I have to put this kind of work in to exist here peacefully, it's more likely that I'll just bow out and stop trying altogether.

My needs and experience here are likely VERY different from yours. At this point, they're often too different to reconcile.

@TechConnectify I am always surprised at the amount of feedback you get on this topic that amounts mostly to “how is your personal experience not mine?”

@jacob_hst RIGHT??????????????

And one last point:

If, as the culture appears here to be, it is up to the individual user to curate their experience:

Just fuckin' unfollow me! Mute me! Curate YOUR feed! You can make your life better without making mine worse.

@TechConnectify It also discounts what an unfun experience Mastodon has become. So much scolding, so many replyguys.

The solution to this is NOT endless DIY blocking. It's a waste of time and doesn't actually solve anything. There are just too many replyguys.

Many of my friends have already decamped to Bluesky because it's more fun (so they say). I haven't yet ... but it's on my mind.

@TechConnectify I think there's an interesting distinction here...or...something else is happening.

I found twitter did a terrible job of "catching the insufferable people"...

Like I routinely had people in my feed saying running over cyclists was justified--I made very extensive use of block, and after I started doing that my Twitter feed became significantly more...erm...sufferable.

But maybe my definition of "insufferable" is different.

In any case, Mastodon absolutely needs better tools for users with large followings. Here, the times at which I have any notifications in the morning are usually a surprise.

@danbrotherston I have no doubt my experience on Twitter wasn't universal: I didn't take on much if any advocacy role, and my identity as "YouTube guy" generally isn't marginalized (though, golly, it feels like it is here!).

But really the key difference is probably just my following size. Most tweets would get dozens of replies - the filter was going to be more aggressive for me than the average Twitter user, I'm sure.

@danbrotherston Which also explains why I have such a huge (and awkward) disconnect when trying to convey my problems, here.

I am understandably difficult to empathize with. Who care about big youtuber problems? This isn't their space.

But even if somebody is nice enough to care, they probably just don't experience the things I'm experiencing. So their advice, though well-meaning, is pretty useless and annoying to hear ad nauseum.

@TechConnectify I wish someone would make a Mastodon fork (or just a client?) with more algorithmic stuff (timeline sorting, recommended content, reply filtering...). As an option.

I get that some people are ideologically opposed to it, but I don't care; I don't like algorithms when they're built to make money off of my data, I like them when they improve the UX, like they can in that case.

@outadoc @TechConnectify Additionally, the "anti-algorithm" people don't seem to realize 'chronological sorting' is an algorithm too, with its own impacts. It rewards the fastest, most online users by putting them at the top.

@kevinmirsky @outadoc and also means nobody's gonna see that their point was made a dozen times before.

Sorting replies by popularity had some good effects, too!

(one last one last point)

Another thing I want y'all to know - the reason I've been boosting my replies to annoying folks lately?

It's to try and give a signal to those folks *and others* that I find that behavior unacceptable.

That is something this platform desperately needs - like it or not, some of the features of other platforms allow the crowd to signal what's good and bad. That is its own form of moderation. Like giving digital side-eye.

Its absence here isn't all good.

@outadoc Or maybe just a content script/extension. The default web client for mastodon is pretty poor UX imo.

Not sure what the problem is here? He has a lot of hateful replies or many replies to other replies telling him to block this or just lots of spammy replies?

Must be hella bad as this sounds a bit unhinged.

Anyway I raised an feature request (something you can't do on Twitter) for disable replies, follower only replies but who knows if it will ever get implemented.

@nf3xn @outadoc Did you have to use the word "unhinged"?

Anyway, here's a simple thing that would make my life a lot easier:

If notifications were stacked, I could see "oh, this post has 150 replies" without SEEING EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

I think what gets lost on a lot of folks is that with this many followers, any time I say anything remotely controversial (which is often a surprise!) there is a lot of stuff I don't need or even WANT to see.

@nf3xn @outadoc Right now, everything is signal which means that everything is noise.

I'm sure my perspective isn't the average one - smaller accounts probably like how raw and bare metal the experience is here.

I'm trying my hardest to say (as tactfully as I can) that this does not work at scale - and if this platform is to truly be an alternative to corporate services, that needs to be figured out and fast.

@TechConnectify I figured that was what you were doing, some instances do have that feature but the Masto project doesn't want it because of its history of abuse on other platforms.

I'm not sure that's a good reason anymore given people pile on either way.

@gudenau I'm glad you figured that out.

A whole lotta "just ignore them!" folks don't seem to understand that they're asking me to ignore a wasp nest as the wasps keep stinging me.

The nest needs to be dealt with.

@AlgorithmWolf @nf3xn @outadoc I know, which is equally exhausting because I still cannot understand what people want this place to even be.

"why aren't more people on Mastodon"

what an interesting question you goobers

@TechConnectify @outadoc sorry I meant sympathically, like desperate, at your wits end, exasperated, etc. no offense intended, and I even tried to untag so you wouldn't get bothered by it but that doesn't work either so just made it even worse lol my bad.

@nf3xn @outadoc cool, thanks for explaining. I thought that might be what you meant but, y'know, lots of folks I run across say this sort of stuff in earnest.

@TechConnectify this.is.not.a.
Twitter.replacement. This place is not made by a single not-so benevolent dictator, it is what you make of it.

@f4grx Great! But it's not my cup of tea.

If you actually cared about this place, you'd engage with that.

Or are you one of this "I want more people here but also I don't want it to be popular" folks?

@AlgorithmWolf @TechConnectify Bluesky seems to be trying to make federation not an issue for its users, while here federation is a core part of the fediverse’s identity, for obvious reasons of course, but things can get messy when you have your gripes with it as Alec has seen. And that’s not counting the different sides of fedi he might’ve ran into that’d make it a bloody mess.

@Flaky @AlgorithmWolf Yeah, that time the Lemmy post kept creeping into my notifications and my replies to it kept appearing on Lemmy sure. was. fun.

@TechConnectify I understand now what you're saying about Twitter. I would have thought that platform would be far worse, but you're saying they're giving you some filtering that Mastodon isn't giving you. And I can understand how that would suck. I hope you're giving that feedback to the people that can change that in this platform.

I actually have voiced this to folks at the top - but I'm not quite sure they understood the urgency and importance of my needs.

I'm sincerely not trying to voice those needs selfishly - I would like to see this idea succeed. But it needs major tweaks for folks like me to exist here, and without (for lack of a better word) cheerleaders encouraging folks to come here... people probably won't.

@SymTrkl Honestly, should it be baffling?

We are different people who did different things on Twitter. I know Twitter was much more of a headache (or even legit life-threatening) for people not-like-me.

I don't hold it up as a gold standard or anything - I'm just trying to get folks to understand that there were things there that might be worth looking at.

@SymTrkl Also, FWIW, I joined Twitter pretty late and the quality filter was turned on by default.

I've noticed a lot of folks who have no idea what I mean by it or find it utterly impossible that my experience on Twitter might have been more peaceful than here.

I joined in 2018. From what I've heard, if you were there prior to 2016-17 the quality filter was opt-in. So you might not have experienced it.

But depending on how you used Twitter, it may still not have mattered.

@TechConnectify Fellow engineer here, who had also ruffled feathers unintentionally for similar reasons. Our confidence can be our undoing.

It's funny, I remember these exact types of issues with Live Journal. Without an algorithm driving engagement, people would get very protective about their space. Why are you being an ass to me on my page? This is my space! Vs don't ever read the comments! It's a cess pool!

I wonder too if the lack of ability to comment when you boost adds to this. Rather than boost with a "I like my dim lights, what the heck is he talking about?" They respond directly to you rather than shouting about you to the void.

So instead of (sort of) snickering behind your back they are taking potshots in your personal space. And it stings more because their confrontation is pointed at you rather than the void.

At least that is my take. Mastodon doesn't give the haters the option to do anything except blast back in your face.

@sewblue I agree completely.

I understand the aversion to quote-toots given the harassment angle, but they were also very valuable in shaping culture, discourse, and expectations.

They were an opportunity to learn *from the crowd* whereas here, every piece of feedback is direct.

And in my position, some people delight in taking pot-shots. It sucks.

I know for a fact that's happening all the time in my YT comments, but the system design there makes it so I'm unaware of it. I want that here.

@TechConnectify I wouldn't call Twitter's filter "quality".. they blocked people based on follower count. You never would've seen my response on twitter.

@mrkite That was not my experience at all.

@TechConnectify

For clarity's sale it might help if you told us who's responsibility you feel it is to be "taking control of your experience"?

@JustinH The people building the product.

And I'm sorry, but I'm not so ideologically committed to this project to become one of those people.

So - either some folks who understand the needs to large-follower accounts need to speak up and steer the ship, or I'll consider this ship a lost cause.

@immibis It was very different! It would be "so and so and 10 others replied to your tweet" and until I clicked on that, I didn't see them.

That alone was a big help, but more importantly - when people were being dicks, various filters would detect that and hide the notification. If they were bad enough, those replies would be under "show replies which might have offensive content." And if they were /really/ bad, they'd just be hidden.

@immibis I think most of the people here never had a large enough following on Twitter to experience those tools in action.

So when I say I need them, people don't understand my problem. Or maybe they think I desire to silence small accounts.

That's not it at all. I just don't need to see all the rude people being rude to me - and every platform out there eventually develops tools to make this so.

@immibis Oh, and since replies had some sorting, too - even once I clicked through to see what people were saying, I could see other people giving affirmation to positive replies with likes (or co-signing with their own reply) AND the jerkwads of the day were way down and buried.

Plus, that system encouraged people to push back on jerky behavior. For some reason, that largely doesn't happen here

@TechConnectify These (mostly volunteer) people specifically? https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/graphs/contributors

Not trying to sealion you, but I hesitate to think of Mastodon (the software) as a "product" since nothing is for sale?

Like, from my perspective, since nobody owns or controls Mastodon (again, referring to the software, not any instances), we are *all* responsible for "building the product", to whatever degree we choose to exercise that responsibility (or not).

@JustinH I know you're not trying to sealion me, but gosh does it feel like it.

You want this to be a place people want to be? Then you need it to be attractive to all people.

And I have had actual conversation now with folks in this project which makes me feel as though my concerns will never be taken seriously. Honestly, I think that's because the general attitude is "this is everybody's responsibility" - but I'm here to tell you that attitude means nothing gets done.

@JustinH And also? The whole "just use this other client/fork/instance" thing is utterly confusing to navigate for average folks.

There's a lot of expertise shared by the most prolific people here that isn't actually common - but the shared experience suggests it is.

@TechConnectify That's an interesting point but unfortunately not easy to replicate in a federated system mostly run by volunteers.

The twitter "quality filter", at least AFAICT from the little documentation there is about it, hid all the replies from you except from people you followed or with blue checkmarks. Those checkmarks (at that time) were given out only to select people and in a manual process involving an identity check by a twitter employee.

@dentaku for the record, this is not at all what I'm talking about. I saw replies all the time from many small accounts, so it was nothing like you are implying.

The filter was able to detect mean-spirited language, for lack of a better term. Then, I wouldn't get notified that that reply was left. If it was bad enough, it was hidden under "view replies that may have offensive content" and stuff like death threats would often get entirely shadow banned.

I don't think that's bad.

@TechConnectify Which is something that twitter could do, because they were a for-profit-company backed by venture capital.

It also means: on twitter you would have never seen these replies.

So in order to get a comparable functionality on mastodon we would have to implement something that is more automated. I have seen several proposals that *could* work (Bayesian filters for example), but as I said in the beginning: it's not an easy thing to do.

@TechConnectify Idk I doubt mas.to is trying to be "attractive to all people" (and if they are, they are clearly failing lol). But when hosting is paid for by donations and the work of moderating is performed by volunteers, there is basically no incentive for a single instance to grow perpetually.

I'm not saying you're wrong to desire a less hands-on experience, just that expecting it (for free) is is a fool's errand.

(yadda yadda yadda on corporate media you are the product)

@JustinH to be clear, I am not expecting it for free. But until someone gives me the tiniest bit of confidence that they understand and sympathize with my concerns (which I will be honest, I am not hearing from you) thinking that I will contribute is a fool's errand.

@TechConnectify The "quality filter" was nothing of the sort. It was a simple flamewar detector based on the ratio of likes to comments. That downranks flamewars and makes them harder to find, depriving them of participants. Every large site has them, from reddit to hacker news to twitter to facebook.

How to make that work on something distributed like the fediverse, where servers would need to algorithmically cooperate on flamewar detection? no idea.

@TechConnectify @JustinH soooool.... Basically Linux all over again.

@Aurelianite @JustinH feels like it!

Most woodworkers are self-aware enough to know that the general public just goes to a furniture store and buys furniture. They don't proselytize becoming a woodworker and gathering up all the tools necessary to make your own furniture.

Here though? IKEA is the devil.

@TechConnectify @Aurelianite

But if a woodworker DID give away tools they built for free and taught others how to make their own wood stuff so that non-woodworkers had an option other than IKEA, it would be cool, right?

@JustinH @Aurelianite cool? Sure.

Practical? Unclear.

@TechConnectify @JustinH I mean heck. I run windows.
Just because I know I can't really deal with all the stuff Linux has to offer. But it also means I have to deal with the problems that windows delivers. Sure. I'll post "I'm experiencing computers" every once in a while, but I'll accept that I chose that poison.

To keep the analogy though... There are a lot of people complaining about windows and pretending there is absolutely no alternative. We both know the crowd.
That's kind of how I feel when people complain about xitter/Reddit/tiktok.

Both fedi and Linux need a lot of working on for general accessibility. Some paths towards that are better than others. Some people are scared of changes, because of being burned by xitter and windows.

Makes stuff a lot more difficult.

@TechConnectify @JustinH
Jokes aside, as much as I love blåhaj, I regret to inform you, ikea is indeed evil. Something something prison labor, something something owner having been a bit of a fash, then died, and his mission statement still on the website.

No no ethical consumption under capitalism, just thought I should mention it, because Ikea was mentioned.

Welp. It's from Sweden, so what did we expect.

@Aurelianite heh, I actually am aware already. Just used "big cheap furniture store everybody knows" as an example

@lain @feld@bikeshed.party I jumped through the hoops necessary to see this original post (I think?) and in case this makes it through, I don't want to go back to Twitter. I've all but abandoned that account.

I do think it's a mistake to assume all parts of it were bad, though. I genuinely want to maintain a public presence so folks can interact with me. And I like the spirit behind the fediverse, so much so that I'd like to cheer it on.

But it's very difficult right now.

@TechConnectify More devs and admins should read this, since this was something that very few of us understand. While changing moderation culture seems an insurmountable problem, but automated scoring/collapsing could be done on the server or phone app level.

If everyone can see the benefit of using an LLM for this, it could be fast and efficient, and even done using on-device acceleration.

@segv11 Hmm. I would boost it, but right now I don't have the energy for this thread to become active again.

Feel free to spread it around your circles, though, if you think it could help.

It's honestly surprising to me how few people here seem to know how this worked/behaved.

@TechConnectify I’m sorry your experience isn’t great. I can’t even imagine how it must be to have that many nerdy followers.

My tiny account mostly goes unnoticed, and it’s kind of great. I hesitate to suggest you do that because then I wouldn’t see your posts. But if you’re looking for social engagement with a small cultivated group, not mass business promotion, maybe get an alt? And stop monitoring notifications on the business account. Even though I’d be sad.

@sidb I have absolutely no interest in using social media as if it is a business thing.

My YouTube channel is my brand because it is a one-man show and the brand represents me, the person named Alec.

So while I appreciate your advice, that's just not something I'm going to do. I don't think it's interesting and it sounds like you agree

@TechConnectify quality filter is algorithm.
Legit replies got caught up in the twitter Read More all the time. That is NOT a solution, couldn’t stand that “feature” on twitter and thankfully tweetdeck+tweetbot always showed all replies.
Keep it the heck away from masto (algorithms).
I feel bad for the issue you’re experiencing though. Maybe there are other solutions. Some people go the defederation route but I think that’s typically too heavy handed. Fedi is still tackling this.

@colinstu legitimate question for you: what exactly is the problem if some replies are behind the read more button?

Why do you believe that you should have a *right* to put your reply directly in front of the poster?

@TechConnectify serious question: what do you think about the YouTube‘s ability to „quality filter“ the comment sections in comparison to, say, fedi? Being a „creator“ myself, I definitely get a lot of obnoxious comments that don’t technically cross the moderation line.

Does it bother you more on mastodon, because you treat it is a more personal communication method? Or do you perhaps not engage with/read the YT comments at all?

@notthebee heading into the YouTube comments set to "most recent" is a legitimate nightmare for me. I do not do that, I let the algorithm sort them for me.

When viewing "top comments," it's generally a decent place.

And I guess if I can put it in words, it would be that I need some way for Mastodon to handle replies the way YouTube handles "top comments"

It's not perfect, but it's better than the raw firehose.

@notthebee but, I will grant you that I don't know the size of your audience on YouTube and mine is huge at this point. It's literally not possible for me to read every comment, so I don't spend much time in the comment section.

So to your point about this being a personal communication thing? Yes. That is a big difference, and I would like to use this tool for that peacefully.

@TechConnectify why should replies not have a right? Who decides what gets shown? How can this be tailored for each instance (or do people even want it at all?). Twitter routinely hid ordinary replies.

And as far as the problem: I have to click a button and then see stuff that I was missing and should’ve seen without a click. It’s completely arbitrary.
(Depends on the implementation but so far twitter’s was far from perfect. Maybe it can be better but I’m not holding my breath).

@colinstu I guess we have a philosophical difference here. I believe as the original poster, I need agency over my replies.

A filter on replies does not affect your feed or what you follow. If you want to be a busybody and read the replies to a post, and you're going to be bummed that some of them are hidden behind a filter, I don't know what to tell you other than maybe you just need to let go a little bit.

@colinstu I believe strongly that when I make a post, that is my space. It should have rules that make me comfortable.

What you are suggesting is that anyone having a party by law must have their doors unlocked so anyone from the street at any time can come in and loudly make their voice heard. It's completely disrespectful to the conversations going on, and to the person hosting the party (the OP in this metaphor).

Does this help you understand my position?

@TechConnectify I just like being informed. Having an algorithm making me do 🙉🙈 on my own behalf without any sort of settings or control is not my idea of being informed.
Certainly it’s less of an issue for me since I’m a tiny nobody on here and worse for those with huge audiences and even larger variances in opinion, so I can see why there’d be a desire to tone/tune it down. Just don’t make it one-size-fits-all.

@colinstu nobody says it has to be one size fits all. I don't know why everybody here thinks I'm forcing anyone to do anything when I point out features I would like to see

@TechConnectify @colinstu
This sounds like a misunderstanding of the platform. This is intended to be a kind of public social media, much like twitter. But what you're asking for sounds more like a private invite-only chat.

@Triply @colinstu not at all. In fact, to me, it feels like you have a misunderstanding.

For one, try to imagine life with 35,000 followers. Imagine what my notifications look like when every single reply gets pushed through. Now imagine when a good 5% of them are rather tactless and hurtful to read.

The needs of a user change as their following grows. That is just a fact of life.

@TechConnectify I guess a lot of this comes down to different pictures people have in mind. To you, a thread you start is like a private party you host. Others however might see the Fediverse more like a town square, where if you exclaim something, that's an invitation for anyone listening to also share their opinion on it, especially if it's different from yours, whilst those agreeing with a statement might often just silently but visibly nod (star / favorite a post).

@colinstu

@das_g @colinstu honestly, a bigger problem is that this is a nuanced thing and everybody has problems with nuance these days.

Yes, I want it to be something like a public square environment. But I also wanted to be one where I have direction over the conversation.

I feel I am asking for very similar protections that are taken to heart here against things like dogpiling - but people largely don't imagine a swarm of irritating jerks to be akin to that. I do.

@das_g @colinstu I want it to be somewhere between completely open for anyone to yell at me and completely closed off.

In real life, this happens naturally. When there's a crowd of people around having a nice conversation and some asshole shows up to throw rocks at the host, that asshole faces repercussions because the crowd sees it and respects the host.

That just does not happen here at all.

@TechConnectify I think that doesn't happen because no one else sees the trolls, since we're not following them... That's the system working.

@shane please tell me you understand that the system "working" sucks ass for me.

@TechConnectify @das_g @colinstu

i mean you still get mobs of assholes ganging up on individuals. just that in real life you can't block.

and just in case anybody wants to say "just walk somewhere else" not always possible. ahem school. And as for others will see the jerk for what they are: teachers saw what was done to me and didn't give a shit. until I tried to lash out.

I mostly think it is less a computer science problem, and more a cultural/sociology problem. Though I do concede that technology can shape behavior. I would also argue that fedi is better than twitter at this, but then again, I don't really leave my corner

@Aurelianite @das_g @colinstu it is somewhere between a technological and social problem. At this point, I believe that fediverse software does not have any meaningful signals built into it for the broader crowd to shape expectations and steer conversations.

It is just a big bucket where replies go. And since they're shown in chronological order, they are not very well linked to each other and many people replying miss context or just don't see how unoriginal their thought is.

@TechConnectify I'm not sure the comparison with "real live" holds up so well.

Sure, most conversations *you and me* experienced offline so far have been civil. But human history has no shortage on pogroms, lynch mobs, public stonings, outright group-conducted massacres. And while that might seem like whataboutism, it goes to show that group dynamics online or offline can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the circumstances.

@colinstu

@das_g @colinstu oh, to be clear, I know things go sideways in real life too. In fact they can go much more sideways than they can online.

But I brought this up because fundamentally I believe there are no social systems built into this platform right now. Replies just go into a big bucket. We have deliberately made likes not really matter. So there is no way for anyone to signal any issues except by directly replying which is not tenable.

@TechConnectify But I completely agree that for online, the software, the platforms are part of these circumstances, and that we have to design them such that they lead the group dynamics to moderation, not to escalation, and such that everyone has the freedom to—without too much effort—ignore what isn't good for them.

@colinstu

@TechConnectify @shane Responding so I can try to understand better...

I think you're pointing out there's a scale issue with public replies that most people with a few hundred followers won't experience.

And the existing mechanisms aren't automatically excluding rude or pointlessly argumentative replies and pile-ons.

Because of federation/mastodon not enough people see the replies to help moderate interactions to improve social behaviour.

Am I close to following things ok?

@JimmyKip @shane You're following them pretty much exactly.

There is too much in my notifications for me to manage, a lot of it I would hope would be hidden behind a content filter because it stings to see (and that's going to have to be automatically because it's not like jerks recognize they're being jerks, and if they do they probably want to be) and nobody else sees that stuff so it's left with zero consequences.

@TechConnectify @shane You mean you're saying you can't come up with a regex filter that captures jerks replies, but not thoughtful interactions!? ;)

I think I agree with what you're saying in that case. What you're describing is not a problem for me as I mostly post to an echo chamber on my instance, and a good engagement is a handful of boosts / replies :)

Until you posted about these issues, I dont think I knew I wasn't seeing replies to your posts. Might chat to my admin.

@JimmyKip @shane to clarify, I'm not necessarily saying that those posts don't show up. My understanding is that this is improving.

But the replies are just a big giant bucket, and unless you want to look through the whole thing and scroll down to the very bottom, you're probably not seeing the stuff that's irritating me. Because all of that stuff ends up in my notifications unless I turn them off which defeats the whole point of this place