re: Linux termonology explination
@TechConnectify @tetra Complaining about something windows does wrong is like catnip to people who don't like windows. :D Sure fire way to get them to ask "Why use windows?"
@requiem https://www.ftelnet.ca/download/ This still requires a proxy server be installed somewhere, but they have options for using third party proxy servers.
@requiem I think something like that would only work with the server that the client was hosted from due to a lot of the mechanisms that have been put into web browsers about privacy and the like. Those other mechanisms probably have a relay server.
@TechConnectify I don't know of any system that does that unfortunately. Everything sucks.
@TechConnectify @massa elk.zone's front end has a "wellbeing" section of its settings, it doesn't have sentiment filtering there yet but they might be open to it given that they're looking at that sort of thing for its users.
@TechConnectify @mcdanlj Stacked notifications, such as all replies for a single post go into one notification entry with a counter that you can click into, makes a lot of sense, I hope they implement that.
@TechConnectify @massa https://wedistribute.org/2019/04/your-guide-to-alternative-frontends-for-mastodon-and-pleroma/ Unfortunately none of the front ends currently do this, but it may be worth asking some of their devs if they would implement sentiment analysis to their front ends. This is a list of a few available front ends. I think it would be a good idea for one of the front ends to implement something like this for the people who need it.
re: Masto/fedi meta
@TechConnectify @colinstu https://wedistribute.org/2023/07/filtering-and-muting-on-mastodon/ I just did a quick search and found that Mastodon does have some fairly rudimentary filtering that could be used to classify messages, but it's somewhat limited and can't be implemented just by pointing at a message and saying "Less like this, please." A proper influencer front end would need that feature.
@TechConnectify @cody @pharmafemboy @andOlga Well, I think this is a fairly specific problem rather than something that everyone will experience. If you have 10k+ followers, there will be a need for filtering. Thus, we need to develop something specifically for that small group, ideally in the form of a front end client for them.
@TechConnectify @johnny @nanobot248 It originally didn't happen unilaterally at first with Twitter. That sort of mass-poster-mass-reply platform was done by a third party at twitter, and they only internalized it when they started banning third party clients.
@TechConnectify @nanobot248 I think that changing how the entire system works because that way it would work better for a smaller group of people (influencers with thousands of followers) would be more annoying for other users than giving those influencers a third party front end that allowed them to activate a spam filtering algorithm. After all, open protocols are there so you can replace parts of the system.
@requiem Sounds a bit like thermal de-polymerization. They did a demonstrator plant awhile back in pennsylvania but I never heard if it was ultimately successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies This link only has news up to 11 years ago.
re: Critical thoughts about Mastodon
@Labrus @TechConnectify @ashten This is why it's a personal thing that the largest content creators install and train themselves, rather than a site-wide thing.
re: Critical thoughts about Mastodon
@TechConnectify @ashten Probably the best way would be to have a stochastic filtering front end, where you click on a post and say "this is a jerk being a jerk" and it teaches the filter to look for similar things. It can then flag things as a "this might be a jerk, can you check it?" which can reinforce the training, or reverse it by telling the filter it's not a jerk. Do that with enough messages, and it will eventually be have confident in its decisions and can just banish them without you seeing them. Just like an email spam filter.
@TechConnectify @sarajw I really want the chronological to be the default, but I wouldn't mind if people made front ends that rearranged it. I mean, that's the whole point of it being open source, so people can alter it. Of course, most youtube creators wouldn't do that themselves, so someone needs to make it for them, either as an instance designed for high volume replies, or a front end client for those same people. Like Tweetdeck, before Twitter killed it.
@TechConnectify @siracusa I think that the automatic filtering should be something that the users or instances could install for themselves, rather than something done network wide. Just like with email, you can use a package that checks your inbox and moves things to a spam folder, make something that checks your fediverse/mastodon/pleroma/etc notifications and tosses any that fail some criteria you setup in the package. Mastodon needs someone to make a SpamAssassin equivalent for the big personalities on the services.
@TechConnectify @noracodes Mastodon is one of the software packages you can use to interact with the network. One you don't have to use to interact with the network however, since there are many others. As for the instances, they're their own thing, they just happen to be running that software package.
@TechConnectify @mos_8502 That would be an interesting feature, if you could have it lower or raise a reply's profile based on keywords, similar to how Newsblur does for certain tags. Might be a market for someone to make a front end interface that could do that sort of semantic filtering. The nice thing about most of the fediverse software is that it's just an API and anyone can make their own client, vs Twitter where the maker of the servers started blocking all third party apps.
re: Critical thoughts about Mastodon
@TechConnectify @can I kind of treat fediverse as a blog with an RSS feed, and the comment section is just like the whole notifications that some old blogs could do to find places that had linked back to the post from their blogs. It's been skinned to look like Tweetdeck or twitter, but it's really just rss microblogs with a few extra features.
@TechConnectify @ahnlak Aha, I went back in the wayback machine, it was around 2009, and it was called Propits, the website was something like madpropits dot com.