Bonnie Stewart

curious about the content warnings here. i want to process that.

the first warnings i've seen are health-related. does anyone else feel...salacious...clicking into content warning headings to make sense of a thread?

trying to gauge whether warnings function as a politeness or a privacy screen, & how the difference shapes social behaviour. genuinely curious about ppl's feelings about the feature :)

May 3, 2022 at 5:22pmWeb
Show threadDinoracha ​May 3, 2022
@bonstewart My take on it is that some health topics can cause discomfort or might remind people of what they’re going through, so a CW can avoid that unless the reader actively wants to check it out.
Show threadGeorge StationMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart In the brief time I've been "back," I'm taking the intent of content warnings (CW) as is, meaning as stated by the admins of each server and volunteer helper accounts. That's just me getting the feel of things. Are you digging deeper here, to how CW are actually used by custom/mores?
Show threadBonnie StewartMay 3, 2022

@harmonygritz yeh, to an extent. i suspect they exist at the intersection of some conflicting norms/mores - not just *what* should be CWd but why & how.

it's the different feel that interests me. on Twitter, generally clicking to *see* involved uncovering some pretty ugly/egregious stuff, hence i am conditioned not to necessarily click. to see it as ambulance-chasing or prurient.

Show threadGavin LoganMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart I think some people use them not so much as content warnings but to allow people a choice as to what kinds of things they read about. I think this is pretty interesting because it means you can follow someone and choose to read just where your interests coincide.
Show threadKyle MackieMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart curious myself. See: https://scholar.social/@alstev/108235591986829274
Dr. Abbie 🌠 (@[email protected])

Hi all (especially those #newHere), please remember to put content warnings on posts! Each server runs things a little differently, but the integrated CWs are one of my favorite things on here. It's so nice to be able to scroll without slipping into a spiral 😊 #feditips #fedtips #mastotips #boostsAppreciated

Scholar Social
Show threadDownes 🍁May 3, 2022
@bonstewart I don't see them at all as a privacy screen. Content warnings are intended for the benefit of the reader, to ensure they won't accidentally be exposed to content that may harm them in some way. Different people interpret that differently (eg. I saw a warning about 'eye contact' earlier today, while another person said 'US politics' should be behind a cw) but the intent is always to aid the viewer, not create some privilege for the sender.
Show threadBonnie StewartMay 3, 2022

@Downes yep, that's legible to me, parallel to the pedagogical practice.

as a threaded choral practice, though, i wonder if it works the same way? it may be just that Twitter's 'click to see' functionality has different impact & has trained me to be hesitant to click. i'm not sure.

Show threadRyan P. Randall May 3, 2022

@bonstewart For whatever it's worth, scholar.social has long had the expectation (not quite the "requirement") that most messages on the public feed will include a CW.

So having seen them for years, they've in general come to feel about as emotionally fraught as an email's subject line or a "read more" button on Tumblr.

Show threadRyan P. Randall May 3, 2022

@bonstewart That said, sometimes the CW on a particular message does make me feel like I'd be learning more about (or seeing more of) the author than I'd like them to disclose.

So maybe instead of (or in addition to) "politeness" or "privacy screen", they're more fundamentally a mechanism for reasonably-informed consent?

Thanks for giving me a reason to think through this, by the way. It's a generative question!

Show threadDonna LanclosMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart I am obvs new to all of this. One thing I've seen is folks asking for CWs as a way of keeping timelines manageable. So CWing for "long" or for a thread to allow for filters or scrolling through.
Show threadDonna LanclosMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart along with the other CWs for more "conventional" stuff like health, politics, etc. It's an interesting set of practices to witness and figure out.
Show threadDonna LanclosMay 3, 2022
@bonstewart I've also been venturing into the federated TL to see practices from other instances, where the culture of CWs varies obvs.
Show threadClint Lalonde (he/him)May 3, 2022
@bonstewart I seem to see many more CW coming from people I follow on scholar.social than from other instances and I think the rules around using CW is probably more specific in that instance than it is on other instances. I tend to use CW's if I post something I think could be potentially triggering to others, but the only tool I have to judge whether something is triggering is my own internal barometer. But I also see CW's used to flag all types of content that is not necessarily triggering.
Show threadClint Lalonde (he/him)May 3, 2022
@bonstewart By that I mean things such as long posts, or posts that others may find trivial (ie) cat pictures for want of a better example because I am all for the pet photos - except when those pets are dressed in clothes. Those should have a CW. But I digress.
Show threadmikeMay 3, 2022
@@bonstewart @@dajbelshaw @@katebowles @@django

Be aware that Mastodon's 'CW' uses an ActivityStreams field called "summary" which was originally intended for article/post summaries. A lot of content management software uses the "summary" field for actual summaries (going back a number of decades to previously existing messaging and content serialisation protocols) and aren't aware of Mastodon's re-interpretation of this field for its own use. So it will never really work as an actual content warning; and if you think of it instead as a "summary" its usage even in Mastodon will make a lot more sense.