John Minnihan
seldoSeen several "put content warnings on politics" posts and I don't know how to tell white people that 90% of all life is politics. You're asking people to hide the stuff you find unpalatable and that's not a reasonable thing to expect other people to do for you.
This is why I continue to think the federated and local timelines are an anti-feature. I do not want randos who don't follow me in the first place seeing my content and then complaining about it.
If you want my content, follow me. If you don't want it, don't follow me. Being randomly exposed to content that we dislike was the thing people complained about The Algorithm.
TinyExplosions š¾@seldo that works fine if folk know you already -I think there needs to be *some* discoverability (though The Algorithm probably isnāt the way). Firehose seems useful, albeit flawed if random folk are flinging abuse. Guess Iām lucky Iām a nobody so no one sees my toots!
Don Hawkins - W7DAH@TinyExplosions @seldo saw that one š
Fluks@TinyExplosions @seldo you could post "unlisted" https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/#unlisted afaik that means it'll not pop up in timelines of people that don't follow you unless it's boosted by someone they follow. But content warnings are still a nice thing anyway imho.
RenamedPM@TinyExplosions @seldo For my own case, I find that my primary means of discovery is seeing people engage in replies to others (or me, but mostly others), in ways I want to see more of. That prompts me to look at their profile, and possibly follow if I like what I see.
That applies to both Twitter and here... the signal-to-noise ratio for algorithmically-surfaced or server / federated feeds isn't great in terms of "will this point out people I want to follow."
@renamedpm @seldo I do think that is the *main* way people surface new/interesting people to follow, but itās also quite insular, and tends to leave you with a fairly tight echo chamber, which Iād personally like to avoid, but I donāt think thereās a nailed on ārightā way to overcome this stuff
@TinyExplosions @seldo It shouldn't lead to an echo chamber unless your initial few people you choose to follow are all very similar and don't have any diversity among those who engage in their threads.
Otherwise, IMO that methodology should (and in my experience does) trend *away* from echo-chamber-ness, unless you deliberately cultivate one. All it takes is one interesting reply to lead to an interesting account with lots more interesting discussion, etc. etc.
@TinyExplosions @seldo I do also agree with you that there's no one "right" way to do discovery. I just wanted to raise it as a counterpoint to "this is what we need the instance / federated / algorithmic feeds for, and not looking at them isn't an option."
@renamedpm @seldo I quite like the federated idea. Itās kinda nice to have an instance with a defined premise (for example mastodon.radio) that I can jump over too, look at a federated feed and just see stuff on a specific topic. Itās a pleasant way to browse, and fits my mental model well I think (though Iām still not quite there with having loads of accounts on all the instances!)
@TinyExplosions @seldo Mmm, I like the idea that communities can organise around common ideals or interests, too. It's a neat way of doing that, without making it insular in the way that e.g. a Discord server is. You can be part of a "home" community, but still easily interact with everybody else.
@renamedpm @seldo not sure I agree with that. Might be a ālargeā echo chamber, but still can lack diversity. For example youād probably find that your list of people you followed all leaned a certain way politically (and similar to you), and so likely have similar views on the big issue topics (such as diversity, human rights, etc etc). Itās only natural for us to seek that out, and probably no matter who you put in front of someoneās eyeballs, the same result happens
@TinyExplosions @seldo Not in my experience. I've ended up w/ a pretty diverse list of people I follow, w/ all kinds of political leanings. Take a look at who I follow on Twitter if you're curious; that's a *long* way from being an EC.
Why do you think an EC is inevitable? I can't see how that could happen unless you only select similar people to follow. Choosing to follow interesting views you disagree w/ or lean differently to is just as easy as picking ones which align w/ your own views.
@renamedpm I guess itās mostly human nature -one tends to only like things that reinforce their natural proclivities, and not generally want to āpolluteā their timelines with stuff that runs counter to that (itās why lists in Twitter were great for seeing what certain areas where doing without explicitly following people). On reflection though, maybe Iām just describing my own failings, not how others work -the joys of generalisation!
@TinyExplosions Maybe we just tick differently? I don't see "following friends" as the goal - I follow plenty of people I suspect I'd find it quite difficult to be friends with!
My primary goal when selecting follows is to surface views that make me think, make me question my own beliefs, etc. I like to be challenged, to learn things, to have to justify my own position (or change my mind if shown to be wrong), and see things from angles I may not have considered before.
@renamedpm itās always seemed a bit like restricting oneself to only friends, and friends of friends for a viewpoint, but maybe with the whole six degrees of separation stuff you do end up with a very broad base that way. This is exactly why I wouldnāt be suited to be someone having to set direction on this stuff for an org!
obi š@seldo Settings, profile, Lock account (requires you to manually approve followers). When posting, followers only. Problem solved.
Ombra šµš»@seldo Well if you choose the Mastodon.social instance, that it your local community.
This is why it's good to choose an instance that lines up with those you wish to be exposed.
Or you can even create your own instance (self hosted or managed) so that you control who is in the local instance community.
@Ombra okay but me and the other guy chose the same instance; who gets to complain, me or him?
@seldo
In regards to seeing your posts on his local timeline?
The whole concept of the local timeline is to see random posts from random people on your instance, so if you delve in there then expect to see all sorts.
Especially on the general purpose Mastodon.social instance.
As long as the posts don't go against the instance rules then it's fine.
Mastodon.social has no rules on CW for instance, so both of yee can complain but it's up to each person to decide what they ultimately want to do.
@seldo
Also if you are posting publicly then you are opting in to be on the federated and local timelines.
You can always change your post privacy to unlisted to remove yourself from those timelines.
Jocelynephiliac 
@seldo as opposed to the randos who see your content because someone RTd it, and complain about it?
@twipped then at least it's a) somebody whose curation of other posts they have chosen to trust and b) they can take it up with the person who RTd and not me š
Alice Schwarze@seldo The local timeline seems to be a nice feature for small communities (e.g., if I host a server for me and a group of <20 friends or <100 colleagues). For large servers like mastodon.social, I agree, it just doesn't work at all
Jeri Dansky@seldo I'm on sfba.social, and after being here 2 1/2 weeks I find I rarely look at it. (And I can't imagine complaining about a stranger's post.)
The main time I'll want to look at local is if/when we have an earthquake (or any other major local-to-the-Bay-Area event). So I'm glad it's there, just for those times.
If you're on a general-purpose instance, I imagine the local timeline is much less useful.
Jeff Haluska@seldo People should just add filters.
Sam Sneddon š³ļøāā§ļø@seldo this is the thing that massively grates: it is disproportionately cis-het-white people who are asking for CWs for almost everything, and disproportionately POC calling it out
Harris Lapiroff@seldo Also, as if people new to this space donāt have a right to be part of deciding what the culture is! This isnāt a neighborhood being gentrified.
Rod Hilton@seldo Totally agree with this. Very tired of the content warning scolders. Even the "it's really more of a content wrapper!" stuff. Nah.
"People are less likely to boost without a CW!" Fine. Good.
There are no rules for CW adoption, and if there are the instance should spell them out. Otherwise you're talking about norms and norms change as participants do.
Don't like it? Don't follow.
northerncodemky@seldo Yeah I donāt know how I feel about it - I put one on a Brexit related one earlier. It wasnāt gory, I donāt think itās triggering (although obviously itās an irritant). Iād sort of get it with e.g Jan 6 stuff which was terrifying.
Meryl O'Rourke Hi!@seldo I was doing it because I've been told it's Mastodon culture and not to come in here and blap things out insensitively because that's Twitter culture š¤·š»āāļø
@MerylORourke Mastodon until now has been like 10 people so I'm not sure we should be warping an entire community around the preferences of the early adopters.
@seldo I guess it's an ongoing debate. I saw similar raging on twitter sometimes. I often put CW sos not to trigger members of the community who are being attacked, not to protect sensitive middleclassstraightwhitecismen .
Drokar the Fluffy@seldo I canāt seem to find the option to disable all CW blocks. Maybe itās just not in the iOS app. Makes for a awful user experience.
In MetaText on iOS you can auto expand all the CW's via a settings change.
Same for the Mastodon progressive web app.
With the official Mastodon iOS app you have to launch the "account settings" from settings in order to update the setting to "Always expand posts marked with content warnings".
@Ombra Iām using the official iOS app. I have that setting checked (along with āalways display imagesā) and it doesnāt work.
@drokarhefluffy I just tested it out on the app and web app, you're correct, the iOS app isn't honoring the preference.
This is a bug in the app.
I had a look and can see it was raised on Github 15 days ago:
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon-ios/issues/511
For now you can open Mastodon in Safari and save to homepage, this is the web app, but acts like a regular iOS app (PWA).
You might even prefer this PWA over the iOS app.
I would recommend checking out MetaText as well.
Hopefully the bug is resolved soon.
[BUG] Always expand posts marked with content warnings not working Ā· Issue #511 Ā· mastodon/mastodon-ios
Is there an existing issue for this? I have searched the existing issues Current Behavior In Settings I set both Media Display: Always show media and Always expand posts marked with content warning...
Peripety@seldo Tumblr is not a place I really want the tech community to wind up, at the moment, but on other sites I miss the Xkit feature where the *reader* can blacklist keywords but still easily expand the post to read.
I can need a break from things related to areas where I am marginalized, but that doesn't mean I want those things hidden by default for *everybody*.
Stephen Masters@seldo Feels a little bit like the early days of other sites. People policing what they thought was the correct way to do things. Personally, that one annoys me - it means I keep needing to actively click through to see if a post is interesting, rather than glancing and moving on past.
J Lam š©š»āš»š©š»āšØ@seldo as a non white, non dude, that posts politics myself. I would appreciate anything with racism, sexism, politics be tagged w CW for the percise reasons I am subjected to them without consent often enough in life.
I donāt see how being thoughtful about CW is bad here?
I donāt see how being thoughtful about CW is bad here?
Chris Coleman@seldo I don't believe in hiding things because seeing it might make people mildly uncomfortable, which is how the pre-November Mastodon people have been insisting CWs be used.
But I may use it when I'm probably going to *annoy* people with my bullshit, like if I'm just venting about Trump or his people.
nobloat@seldo I understand your point. Content warnings on here are not only for sensitive content but sometimes include even random things that you think many people would not be interested in. For example in a tech instance you might write a warning for non-techy subjects. It's just a polite way to let people know. Politics is important of course, but I understand people who don't want to look at political discussions until they choose to. It's especially useful for people outside the US
@nobloat all discussions are political, is my point.
@seldo On a deeper level, you are correct. But the desire to not consciously engage with politics at a given time is also a political decision. For example, you would not talk politics, in its mediated form, in real life unless the conversation calls for it. You would not go to a clerk at the shop and mention some opinions about political theory, even if the shop and the context and you and the clerk are all within politics as such.
@seldo btw I am not with this camp or the other. Just saying I understand that point of view. But the choice is ultimately yours, of course. As someone who doesn't live in the US, for example, I sometimes grow tired of US politics elevated to the status of universality. Twitter was first and foremost an American company. Politics in Mastodon means different things to different people, I guess
Sƶren@seldo @nobloat surely you can see how ālook at my cat making a funny poseā and āI bought a house!ā vs. āTrump announced his 2024 bidā and āMass shooting the day before Trans Remembrance Dayā areā¦ different levels of āpoliticalā?
And how the first two arenāt objectionable but the latter two make *some* people go āif I wanted to doomscroll, I might as well go back to Twitter; please provide a warning so I can *opt in* to this topicā?
@chucker @nobloat They are different levels of political. I think you would find people in wild disagreement about whether "I bought a house" isn't offensive and whether "Trump announces his run" is. It is not reasonable to expect everyone to account for the lowest common denominator of offensiveness.
@seldo @chucker Circling back to my original point, content warnings here are not only for what is offensive. Some suggest CW should stand for "content wrappers" instead, because that's what they are. Some people content-wrap their cat pictures. There's no hard rules about this. Of course, if you disagree you should continue using the platform in the way that you like. People made suggestions based on their preference, and to me that's understandable.
@nobloat heās free to do so, but if he wants to justify āI want to post political things without warningā with irrelevant arguments like āwhen you really think about it, isnāt everything political?ā and āMasto had like five people before I joined; who are they to tell me what to doā rather than to the very easy, appropriate, courteous thing which is to add a warning, then some people are going to mute him. His loss.
Keith (karmajunkie)@seldo not that you need any more justification butā¦
Scott M. Fulton III@seldo While I do respect your opinion, I'm also working to respect the wishes of many others who have asked me to do this as a matter of courtesy. It should not be for me to question the motives of others who ask me earnestly and politely to observe a policy instituted with their best interests at heart.
ZoĆ«, in bed š³ļøāā§ļøš³ļøāš@seldo thereās a difference between politics and something political.
Definitely, please, put politics behind CWs. Thanks.
Jaiden Riordan@seldo seen some fedi instances saying to put content warnings on posts with ābad vibesā
PJ "Vote Green" Coffey@seldo nah, it's cool. I'll just whack you on permanent mute which solves the problem for me, but not for all the other people you'll trigger stuff in.
Eric J. KorpelaThe term content warning is a bit outdated. The purpose has evolved. It's not only used to hide unpalatable things. It's generally used to indicate items your followers may not be interested in. For example, cat pictures. It serves as the equivalent of a subject on an email. It allows the uninterested to ignore posts they are not interested in. I don't have an ego that would allow me to assume my followers are interested in every subject I post on.
Its a courtesy, not a warning. It use reduces the length of the timeline and possibly server load (pictures especially.)
Am I?@seldo There are also such things as country specific CWs, if you are discussing the midterms , please use uspol, is you are discussing the statements of the new Italian PM, use itpol, if you are discussing why Denmark still doesn't have a new government, use dkpol.
Yes, almost everything is political, but the CW usually is about "government" politics. Remember, unlike the bird site, not everyone here are American.
Yes, almost everything is political, but the CW usually is about "government" politics. Remember, unlike the bird site, not everyone here are American.
David Reinertson@seldo That makes sense.