@cmdr ░ nova ⸸ :~$ 🏳️‍⚧️ @Claire, The Ultimate Worrier @Null Pointer Exception However, alt-texts and the content warning field aren't a Fediverse thing. They're a Mastodon thing.

Yes, that's actually a big difference. And I can say this because, for one, I've been in the Fediverse since before there was Mastodon, and besides, I'm on something that not only isn't Mastodon, it's very much not Mastodon.

Outside of Mastodon and the usual Mastodon satellites like Pixelfed, alt-texts are only catching up very slowly. Even then, most people don't do more than the required minimum while some Mastodon users go out of their way and write very detailed descriptions.

Especially on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, a software family that started as early as 2010, alt-texts are largely seen as just another Mastodon fad in the same vein as cutting long posts up into threads. And the communities on these four are quite opposed to Mastodon fads and, in fact, to everything Mastodon-related.

You will never see anyone on any of these ostracise or sanction or even block someone who doesn't add alt-texts to images.

The difference in behaviour when it comes to content warnings is even more extreme.

On Mastodon, it's part of the culture and an only partially written rule to add content warnings to the content warning field whenever you post sensitive content. It's "only partially written" because not all servers have made it a steadfast rule, and because it is not being enforced beyond the boundaries of servers. Still, the Mastodon community is trying hard to force that rule upon the whole Fediverse.

What next to nobody on Mastodon knows: The CW field was not invented by Gargron, and especially, it was not invented from scratch.

The CW field is actually a repurposed summary field from StatusNet from 2008. It was added to Mastodon by a user in 2017. And Mastodon started as an alternative frontend for the StatusNet successor GNU social on which that field still is a summary field.

On Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte (as well as all dedicated blogging server applications in the Fediverse like WriteFreely, Plume, Ghost and WordPress), the summary field still is a summary field. And that makes a whole lot of sense to have if you have an eight-digit "character limit" (Friendica, Hubzilla: over 16.7 million; (streams), Forte: over 24 million).

Both technologically and culturally, these four have a different way of handling content warnings, namely by having them automatically generated for you as a reader and only for you, i.e. without forcing the same CW upon everyone else.

Let's say you don't want to read about US politics. On Mastodon, you "shout into the ether", asking everyone to add "USpol" as a CW. And then you have to deal with those who want the CW field to be limited to what it's actually for, namely porn and gore.

On these four, you open your NSFW. You add "uspol" to the filter list. Done. From then on, all posts that have "uspol" (case-insensitive and even as a substring) anywhere in them will be hidden by a button that reads, "uspol". But they'll only be hidden for you individually.

Friendica has had this technology since its inception in 2010, five and a half years before Mastodon's launch. Hubzilla has inherited it from Friendica, and Hubzilla predates Mastodon by ten months (and at its core by almost four years). (streams) has inherited it from Hubzilla, Forte has inherited it from (streams).

On all four, it's part of their culture. And it's considered good manners to add something to your posts and comments that has these content warnings generated.

Ironically, Mastodon itself has introduced this very principle with version 4.0 in October, 2022, just before the first huge Twitter migration wave. But Mastodon's entire culture, which it tries so hard to force upon the whole Fediverse (also because Mastodon users cannot see whether a post is from Mastodon or Akkoma or Misskey or Friendica or Hubzilla, so they tend to assume it's all Mastodon), is based on version 3.x as of mid-2022.

CC: @love

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