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
Show threadsortiusNov 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? 😂

Show threadMatthew 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.
Show threadsortiusNov 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 😩
Show threadMatthew 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.

Show threadsortiusNov 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 😆

Show threadVivekaNov 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.
Show threadMatthew 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.

Show threadVivekaDec 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
Show threadVivekaDec 2, 2022
@sortius @CurbsideShip116 I reckon it might not be possible to moderate aus.social the way we do if we onboarded new users at the rate of mastodon.au. So I’m glad there are multiple good Oz instances. @shlee has attenuated the influx by going intermittently invitation-only here. Again, I reckon this is the strength of federation with a spread of local norms.
Show thread Shlee fooled around &

@Viveka @sortius @CurbsideShip116 Yeah. I could have just stayed open and allowed everybody on my instance.

We could have ended up with 50 thousand people on my instance, and a few hundred on the others

Instead now, we have 3 large instances with 20,20,10 thousand people and we can have slightly different cultures.

This is the joy of Mastodon. It doesn't need to be everything for everybody.

I was invite only for a reason. I have expectations for a reason.

Dec 3, 2022 at 12:41amWeb