Evakatrina
EvaOne of the distinctly Twitter-related posting habits I have built up that does not make any sense to carry over into Mastodon is my tendency to avoid explicitly naming controversial topics or people in order to avoid replies from trolls who search for posts that mention them. There is no search function here. It's not like Glenn Greenwald is going to jump out at me from behind a bush.
@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently
@infosec_jcp 🆓🐦🐈🃏 done differently (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image How to #Search #mastadon 1. Click the '#'. 2. Type something in search box.
Matt Blaze@evacide Indeed, but I wonder how effective the lack of search will be for that at scale. Eventually, the snitch-taggers will catch up.
Christian Huitema@mattblaze @evacide Guys in a garage or in a basement can easily rig up their own search tool using Mastodon's public API -- see https://github.com/huitema/socspider for a proof of concept. I think that's one of the many privacy holes in the current implementation of Mastodon. Hopefully it will get fixed, see issue https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/22924
Jonah Stein@mattblaze @evacide If Mastodon continues to scale, this whole discussion will be the subject of a nostalgic podcast. never mind the snitch taggers, Google, Microsoft and others will fill the void within the next year.
Regardless, there must be better ways to coral trolls than hiding. Now is the time to find a solution. Which is to say, we need to embrace a reliable federated identity management solution which is compatible with the values we (and EFF) are embracing here.
John Brown@evacide to be fair, Glenn Greenwald is just the type of person to jump out at somebody from behind a bush 🫣
Adara Astin
Peter Butler@AdaraAstin @jbrown59 @evacide Was it in Fisherman’s Wharf in SF? Back in the 1990s, I lived near there and saw Bushman many times.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/sf-bushman-returns-fishermans-wharf-17405017.php
@peterbutler @jbrown59 @evacide It was on Vancouver Island, actually.
But I'm delighted to learn about the Bushman of Fisherman's Wharf. How marvelous!
Allyson Williams ✅@evacide That would be terrifying.
RRBI would not bet on that. Thanks for giving me the idea. Now I will have nightmares about Greenwald and Tulsi pouncing on me from behind garden plants.
daniel@evacide God help you if say his name three times, however
Nour Agha 
@evacide Probably only a few things more toxic than being hit by the Gary Greenwald QT. His entire discourse is a chain of QTs.
Sam Gross@evacide I mean, he might, but not on the internet.
Robert Thau@evacide Well... there's no local search function integrated with the app. But Google does index public posts from most instances, which are searchable in the usual manner -- e.g., "site:mastodon.lol" to pick out posts from your instance.
I'm not aware of any easy way to do a fediverse-wide search right now, but it wouldn't be particularly expensive for bad guys to construct one for private use, given prior skill with appropriate tools and willingness to put in a bit of elbow grease.
yetzt@evacide it's legit nightmare fuel though.
carodjah!✨at the disco✨@evacide you say that, but the moment you’re not looking, he strikes with an army of incredibly poorly reasoned argument, and more fluff pieces for sexual abusers in Kansas.
Michael Cervieri
poswald@evacide similarly, a lot of people invent new pseudonyms for Elon Musk but if you just name him people who aren’t interested can easily filter it out.
robin@nottrobin @evacide it’s not a mastodon culture … it’s a Twitter refugee culture. People have developed a habit of not talking about things by name because of brigades of trolls searching for keywords and attacking.
@poswald
Yeah that's interesting. Although I never knew of this as a thing on Twitter, I certainly don't want to minimise the experience of people who got attacked.
Although the *main* example of people self-censoring is "the bird site", which seems an odd one from a trying-to-avoid-abuse perspective.
@evacide
@nottrobin @evacide this is related to the idea of “subtweeting” although there are other factors for sure. Plain old mockery is one (it’s kinda fun), and the idea of “don’t give my enemy the dignity of naming them.”
Biden would give entire speeches talking about Trump politics without ever saying Trump. Coke will talk about being the best soda but will never ever say the name of a competitor in an ad.
@poswald
Yeah this is more how I interpreted Eva. I like the pattern of subtweeting, although it can be very frustrating when I don't get the underlying point it's responding to.
No it's specifically the direct censorship that frustrates me. If you're gonna talk about the thing, just call it the thing. It's like asterisks in swear words. What's the point?
@evacide
FeralRobots@nottrobin @poswald @evacide
For "birdsite" in particular I think it's just a learned disrespect. A lot of Twitter users called it "bird site" over there, already.
For other things, yeah, mostly dodging trolls. Over here I mostly just call Elon 'Elon' instead of 'Eloi', which is what I call him on Twitter.
But honestly that's *mostly* just disrespect there, too. Unless I'm replying, in which case I don't want to snitch in the trolls & sealions.
@FeralRobots
I guess it's kinda disrespectful. For me it gives real He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named vibes, which seems rather empowering.
@poswald @evacide
I guess it's kinda disrespectful. For me it gives real He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named vibes, which seems rather empowering.
@poswald @evacide
@FeralRobots
I mean, I can see that calling Trump "the orange one" or "Mr. Small hands" or calling Boris "the convict" is an insult. Although I've read articles where they simply repeated "the convict" 20 times and never said "Boris". The first time was an insult, the 20th felt like cowardice. Either way, "bird site" doesn't really have that same energy.
@poswald @evacide
I mean, I can see that calling Trump "the orange one" or "Mr. Small hands" or calling Boris "the convict" is an insult. Although I've read articles where they simply repeated "the convict" 20 times and never said "Boris". The first time was an insult, the 20th felt like cowardice. Either way, "bird site" doesn't really have that same energy.
@poswald @evacide
@nottrobin @poswald @evacide
I've always seen it as less an insult & more an expression of contempt. But that's just my read, I never did it there & rarely do it here so I'm interpreting the actions of others.
FWIW, though, I don't think expressions of contempt are necessarily undeserved. I didn't choose to do it; I mostly don't dis others for *choosing* to.
@FeralRobots
Yeah it's not the best of battles. It's just a personal bugbear. I don't wanna call anyone specific out, I just cringe a little inside when I see it, that's all.
@poswald @evacide
Yeah it's not the best of battles. It's just a personal bugbear. I don't wanna call anyone specific out, I just cringe a little inside when I see it, that's all.
@poswald @evacide
Heather@Heather There are also downsides to the lack of search. On Twitter I have used search to find experts on specific topics, people with experiences very different from mine, people in specific regions that I want to understand, and breaking news.
@evacide I can understand that. It is certainly more difficult to find relevant hashtags than to just search terms, but I still appreciate not having people censor words so creatively that filters don't work. And also being able to write certain words that would have invited an instant swarm other places.
xndr✨@evacide I'm curious -- have you found Mastodon a generally safer space for controversial/divergent opinions? Less likely to incentivize confrontational posting? Or just... harder to end up finding views one disagrees with?
@skyrien I don't think I'm in a position to draw useful conclusions about this at this time. There is a big difference between posting to 185k people and posting to 24k people that has little to do with the structures and incentives of the respective platforms.
Phil RobertsonEven search functionality aside, the fundamental point is that remaining on #twitter and allocating one's screen time helps to stand up the platform. Even if one could argue that the reach and experience of Twitter are/were better, there is something to be said for not endorsing a bad product and its unethical owner.
https://robertsonp.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-the-twitter-quitter
@evacide hmm, I'll will have to continue experimenting. Have been exploring various instances and can tell my degree of comfort / safety in each is highly dependent on the nature of each instance, their community, and unwritten norms they abide by. Would be cool to see some census/surveys across instances of the communities
If I Were the King@evacide
Can we have search without also having ambushes?
Can we have search without also having ambushes?
Erwin@evacide there is no search function - yet.
Maybe there will never be a native search function, but someone might decide there’s a market for a paid search of all fediverse posts. Maybe even funded by advertising. I’d bet there’s someone at Google looking into it.
Maybe there will never be a native search function, but someone might decide there’s a market for a paid search of all fediverse posts. Maybe even funded by advertising. I’d bet there’s someone at Google looking into it.
Kirk Flashner@evacide this is exactly why we cannot have nice things. Also, the imagined visual of Greenwald jumping out from behind a bush made laugh
No responsible user can elect #twitter as the venue of choice anymore. Better on #mastodon or elsewhere.
https://robertsonp.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-the-twitter-quitter
Becka Berhanu@evacide I’ve heard that there are people already trying to build clients and services with platform wide text search using mastodon’s public api implementation. It appears it’s only a matter of time unfortunately.
dax@evacide he might tho, that seems exactly the sort of thing glenn greenwald would do. even *I* avoid any and all bushes, for fear of glenn greenwald spilling forth. I'm also starting to look suspiciously at the smoke tree in my front yard for appearing suspiciously bushlike in shape and general demeanor
Rubicon@evacide You know, Eva, you did just mention Glenn Greenwald. Can you tell us how that felt?
cūrāveram 🇺🇦 ☸︎ 🇦🇲 🕎🇬🇷in a comedic fashion shouts "boo" and points to the top left of the Mastodon webpage, then taps the screen over the Federated menu option.
wise thinking though to value the calmer waters.
@evacide Many marginalized people reached the point they were posting like they were in Soviet Russia: "talk about the thing but never mention the thing". Me, too.
It's taking a while to decompress and feel safe to talk about things here.
Coby@evacide the horror of the thought
@evacide That's because the #fediverse is still small enough that there are very few trolls. I can promise you, if it gets popular enough, a bad actor is going to build an indexer that archives all public posts from servers listed on instances.social and makes the contents available for anybody to search assuming this isn't already happening. Not including search won't stop bad actors while preventing good but less technical actors from finding interesting information.
newsorpigalGlenn Greenwald is a great journalist and a very brave man.
Violet Madder@newsorpigal @evacide But then he started hanging out with Alex Jones and I dunno wtf he's thinking
I'm not an American and I neither know nor care who Alex Jones is. Glenn Greenwald did the entire world a huge service by exposing NSA spying. That's what I care about.
@newsorpigal @evacide Alex Jones is a vile troll, a radio host who got famous spouting despicable lies. I truly do not comprehend why Greenwald would actually stoop to associating with him at all, it's very disturbing.
hwestiii@evacide @DamienWise Perhaps Mastadon is destined to be just a step on the road to social media utopia. Perhaps it should be classified as a not-too-social network, for people want just the nice parts.