Mastodawn

Matthew McGranahan 🏳‍🌈Nov 23, 2022

Here is an example of being over the top with the #CW feature. The admins over at aus.social instance is requiring all toots relating to #auspol to have CW enabled.

If you don't want to see auspol content, scroll and/or block accounts that participate in auspol toots.

Those of you on the same instance as me #mastondonau, CW is not required for auspol, don't feel like you are required to use it. Server rules are available on the "about" page.

https://aus.social/@AusSocialMods/109390315623687378

Aus Social Mods (@[email protected])

Reminder to all the new folks who have joined us over the past week: please make sure if you are tooting links regarding, or have commentary on AusPol, elections, political parties and your views on them, electoral politics, or geo politics you are required to use the CW feature on those toots. We understand that for some people this is a new idea so we will not be going back in time to punish folks. Whether you use the browser or one of the many apps, that feature exists whenever the text box is up. It will not hide your toots from peoples feeds, it will simply act as a subject line to allow people to opt in. This is a request to make our lives as volunteers easier, but don’t mistake that for being optional, bad actors will be removed. Please refer to the Aus Social code of conduct before asking questions https://aus.social/about (but otherwise feel free to ask questions) Big thanks from the Aus Social mod team - H

Aus.Social

sortius Nov 23, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 there's also great filtering features that the aus.social users could be using, instead of bullying others to use CWs. The whole "CW whatever I don't want to see" attitude is so broken it's not funny, especially when it's codified as a server rule.

How does anyone know what someone else doesn't want to see? What if I don't want to see people's complaints about a lack of CW on something they don't want to see? Who wins that one? 😂

Matthew McGranahan 🏳‍🌈Nov 23, 2022

@sortius that needs a boost, cause I had yet to learn about the filtering functions, and I am sure a lot of people would love to know.

sortius Nov 23, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 it's part of Mastodon 4.0 that was released a week or so ago. I've been trying to impress that on the CW bullies, but few are receptive 😩

Matthew McGranahan 🏳‍🌈Nov 23, 2022

@sortius I mean, my take is that it is a more powerful feature than simply relying on others to use the CW feature.

Also, if social.aus admins pushed on the use of that feature instead, they would probably have to spend less time moderating if CW had been used on auspol posts or not.

sortius Nov 23, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 exactly. There's a large portion of aus.social that do use auspol and the like, so they're really fighting a losing battle.

All it's doing is giving them a bad rep on other instances, especially when their users decided to white knight for them.

As much as there are definitely things that need a CW (porn, graphic imagery, potentially triggering stories), the onus should be on the people who "don't want to see" <insert content>. Personally, I just move to the next toot 😆

Viveka Nov 23, 2022

@sortius @CurbsideShip116 Surely this is working as designed. People who want lots of CWs are drawn to aus.social and people who want fewer are drawn to mastodon.au.

Matthew McGranahan 🏳‍🌈Nov 23, 2022

@Viveka @sortius yea not a criticism of Mastodon. Those uses can always migrate.

I also note that aus.social has a lot less users than mastodon.au
Like 19K less.

Also, part of the point of my toot was for people to see that it is not required on mastodon.au
Not every user is understanding the decentralised structure and how that relates to rules.

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@sortius @CurbsideShip116 aus.social has relaxed our guidance on CWs now that the improved hashtag filtering is out. But we still encourage people to understand that:
1. the cultural practice of using CWs for more than just what’s considered “sensitive” to white, straight, male neurotypicals can be interesting and useful
2. they don’t make posts invisible - they make them more likely to be seen by people who are interested in them

sortius Dec 2, 2022

@Viveka @CurbsideShip116 there's no "cultural practice" for CWs, so I can't agree with that. Much of the CW demands for racism, medical stuff, and the like, aren't coming from the communities affected, it's coming from privileged people who "don't want to see" it.

As I keep repeating, CW overuse is damaging. Hell, CW use point blank creates anxiety in people who they're intended for. This isn't my opinion, this is backed by studies https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/trigger-warnings-fail-to-help.html

The Following News Release Contains Potentially Disturbing Content: Trigger Warnings Fail to Help and May Even Harm

New research confirms trigger warnings have little or no benefit.

Association for Psychological Science - APS

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 @sortius There is such a cultural practice; perhaps you think I’m asserting that the practice is uniform or well defined? I’m not.
I agree that calling CWs “trigger warnings” or perceiving them as such is not tremendously useful. I’d prefer Mastodon to more fully implement the ActivityPub spec, by making the Sensitive flag optional on Subject Lines. The current implementation of CWs forces users to couple them.

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 @sortius And while I could certainly be convinced that trigger warnings are actively harmful if shown evidence, that’s not what that study shows. It tested only whether they “cushion the blow” of reading traumatic material (and found that they do not) and referred to a hypothesis (still untested) that they could harm by fixing people on a traumatised identity.

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 @sortius This experiment didn’t test the benefit of *choosing not to read* the traumatic material after seeing the warning, which is their intended effect here. For those who advocate their wide use, it’s about consent.

And they are vastly more relevant on small instances formed around a topic or community of interest, where the Local feed is useful. On a big general instance, they’re largely useless.

@CurbsideShip116 @sortius
I see the risk of identity fixation, if that is indeed a thing that can be demonstrated.

sortius Dec 2, 2022

@Viveka @CurbsideShip116 which is harmful. Sorry, but you're trying to find a lack of evidence where evidence was observed.

I can say, as someone recovering from 16 years of DV, and still suffering PTSD, a constant barrage of CWs is harmful to me. It creates intense anxiety at times, and I've been close to blocking aus.social. The CW abuse is still rife on aus.social, and it's not being addressed at all (nor is the constant harassment from aus.social members)

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@sortius @CurbsideShip116
Right - that changes things for me, because I believe you.

Even before that, I was going to say: if aus.social users harass you to CW beyond what’s in the policies and norms of mastodon.au, please report them using the checkbox to forward the report to aus.social as well. The report will come to me and the other mods here, I’ll confer with the seniors, and we’ll put a lid on it.

sortius Dec 2, 2022

@Viveka @CurbsideShip116 Have, repeatedly, nothing happens

Viveka Dec 2, 2022

@CurbsideShip116 @sortius Thanks, I’ll dig up the old reports and confer.