Matt BlazeMay 4, 2023

Spam (like the torrent of cryptoscamspam lots of people got this morning) has been very rare for me here (and dealt with quickly), but I've noticed that almost all of the spam I've gotten has been via Mastodon's DM feature.

I really wish there was a way to turn DMs off or at least restrict them to people I follow. Control over incoming DMs was a thing Twitter did better than here.

Show threadnuztalgia  May 4, 2023
@mattblaze Preferences > Notifications > Block direct messages from people you don't follow.
Show threadMatt BlazeMay 4, 2023
@nuz Nope. Doesn't work.
Show threadnuztalgia  May 4, 2023
@mattblaze seems to work perfectly for me! you might want to open a bug report on the official mastodon github repo and include the steps you took (so they can reproduce your problem), the behavior you observed, and your expected/desired behavior. ​
Show threadMatt BlazeMay 4, 2023

@nuz No it doesn't. People aren't prevented from sending you DMs if you don't follow them.

What the setting does is prevent you from seeing it. But it allows people to labor under the false impression that they've sent you a message.

Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mattblaze @nuz Who cares if the sender *thinks* they sent the message. If you don't see it, it may as well not exist. Shadow-bans are a useful tool for bad faith actors.
Show threadMatt Blaze
@snarky @nuz In general, I don’t want people to send me messages that they think I’ll see that I won’t actually see. Most people who send me DMs aren’t bad faith actors. They’re random individuals trying to reach me via a mechanism that I don’t want to use. I want to alert people who mistakenly use it that I won’t see their messages so they can use something else. But Mastodon doesn’t let me.
May 5, 2023 at 12:32amWeb
Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mattblaze @nuz Then petition the folks who maintain the system to add that capability, don't complain that what's there (and has been there for YEARS) doesn't work for you. It's frustrating to see people pop in here, dismiss the history of why things are the way they are, and insist that things bet the way THEY want them.
Show threadChristian HuitemaMay 5, 2023
@snarky @mattblaze @nuz Telling people that Matt only accepts direct messages from people whom he follows seems less of a privacy intrusion that letting Johny Bitcoiner discover that he has been individually blocked -- which *is* pretty easy today.
Show threadPJ "Vote Green" CoffeyMay 5, 2023

@snarky

The history? You're saying this is a design choice? What design process occurred where mentioning someone's @ actually brings that person to the conversation?

You know how a lot of problems could be solved? A pop up that says "Warning: you appear to be using direct Mentions. Anyone who you mention will be notified. Tick to remove this box." That's not a guard rail but it's better than the current "system".

@mattblaze @nuz

Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@Homebrewandhacking @mattblaze @nuz Yes, it is a design choice. As mentioned by others in this thread, the decision was made to not tell people their DMs were blocked as a type of shadow-ban. This increases the friction of those who use DMs to harass and threaten, as they don't know for sure that their bad faith attempts actually failed. Note that I'm *not* saying that Matt's use case is invalid. I'm saying that the current functionality was built as it was for a reason.
Show threadPJ "Vote Green" CoffeyMay 6, 2023

@snarky

Certainly after 12 hours have passed the thread does get more detailed. Thanks for your help.

@mattblaze @nuz

Show threadSilveMay 22, 2023

@snarky @Homebrewandhacking @mattblaze @nuz

Few things regarding federation in Mastodon are conscious design choices. The way Mastodon handles instance silence/limits, mutes, and DM mutes are byproducts of the ActivityPub standard not being built with harassment in mind. The current implementation of client-side muting rather than rejection of messages is a mistake of ignorance that leads to more harassment, not a purposeful decision.

Show threadMichael Downey 🧢May 5, 2023

@Homebrewandhacking

It's literally there.

@snarky @nuz

Show threadsnarkyMay 6, 2023
@Homebrewandhacking @mattblaze @nuz If you think something would work "better" than what's currently implemented, then you can propose the change and if enough people agree it gets done. That's the beauty of the fediverse and open source software. Make a convincing argument that's not "this doesn't work HOW I WANT IT TO" and someone will pick it up and make it happen.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦May 5, 2023
@snarky this you?
Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mawhrin This is my newer account, yes. I've been around Mastodon since 2018, IIRC.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦May 5, 2023
@snarky were you such annoying nimby arse on the previous one?
Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mawhrin Nope, and I'm not being a "NIMBY arse" here, either. I'm not saying Matt's feature request isn't valid, I'm just saying that the current feature was designed like it was for a reason. Also, be kind or be blocked.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦May 5, 2023

@snarky i am kind, i'm just not polite – so fucking block me; i don't care.

(and if you think that there's a deeper thought behind the slapdash design that rochko affixed on top of ap, you're deluded.)

Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mawhrin You do you, boo.
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦May 5, 2023
@snarky you're one of those reply humans that just must have last word, eh?
Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@mawhrin Apparently you are as well. This could run infinitely.
Show threadNorman WilsonMay 5, 2023
@snarky @mattblaze @nuz If you find Matt's writings frustrating, perhaps you should use the existing Mastodon features to avoid seeing them.
Show threadnuztalgia  May 5, 2023

@oclsc i think you might have missed the fact that i only jumped into this thread to try to help matt resolve his stated problem. but i can see how my early messages could have gotten lost in his barrage of straw man fallacies, so no biggie.

i'm not "frustrated by matt's writings" - at least not in the way i'm guessing you mean. rather, i'm disappointed that someone i formerly respected was so eager to silence and mischaracterize the marginalized folks who were only trying to say: "hey, the current system is designed to protect us. it might not work well for you, and here's how to go about changing that, but it definitely isn't 'broken'."

reread the thread and check his accusations against what was actually said to him - you'll see that most of his posts are DARVO, ad hominem, and straw man fallacies all the way down. it's extremely disappointing to see this from a "professor of computer science and law" with a large following on here.

more importantly, though - his actions are a clear display of white privilege, and a prime example of the type of behavior that makes BIPOC folks feel unsafe on mastodon.

the only thing that's "frustrating" to me is that other white people can't seem to see that kind of behavior for what it actually is.

@snarky @mattblaze

Show threadsnarkyMay 5, 2023
@oclsc @mattblaze @nuz Thanks for the helpful suggestion.
Show threadMichael Downey 🧢May 5, 2023

@snarky

That's literally all this dude does on here.

@nuz

Show threadSimon FrankauMay 6, 2023
@mattblaze https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/11882 looks like the issue in question. To test the theory that random people can fix issues and make Mastodon better for others, I think I'll have a go at this one. Should be good for a laugh as I've never contributed to Mastodon before, or even written Ruby before. :D
"Block direct messages from people you don't follow" is a mute, not a block · Issue #11882 · mastodon/mastodon

A friend and I just did some testing of the "Block direct messages from people you don't follow" feature. There are multiple problems we discovered which could be resolved as part of a single fix. ...

GitHub