It’s unfortunate that, in an effort to avoid the supposed mistakes of Twitter, Mastodon has descended into a navel-gazing debate about.. avoiding the mistakes of Twitter.
Arguing over QT’s and search feels like it’s missing the forest for the trees: toxic behaviors and communities originate from a complex mix of norms, moderation (or lack thereof) and product affordances.
It’s never going to boil down to just a set of product features.
@fredbenenson To me it showcases that a *lot* of people don't understand either the power dynamics of the Fediverse or the tech. 1. it's not Mastodon, even if Mastodon has the most mindshare right now. 2. users can move instances or use alternative interfaces.
Between those two, a whole lot of features only becomes a choice for the former two as long as they don't inconvenience any group of users too much.
This ties into your point in that learning to compromise and establish workable
1/2
@fredbenenson .. norms for both how to address toxic behaviours, and for how features that may or may not enable or amplify them is the only way to work.
Because for most of these feared features, there's no *technical* way to stop the "bad guys" from getting those features and weaponizing them.
Our *only* means of addressing it is a culture of finding countermeasures to abuse (be they social or tech, or both).
Fred
Vidar Hokstad / Galaxy Bound