Martin FowlerAug 6, 2023

+1 to @jwz 's argument that replies to posts on mastodon should be treated similarly to comments on blogs

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/mastodons-mastodonts/

Mastodon's Mastodon'ts

There are a few fundamentally broken things about how Mastodon posts work that are terrible vectors for abuse, as well as being bad for basic usability. Maybe they are fixable, I don't know. To be clear: I am a fan of Mastodon. I have been enjoying my time there much more than I ever enjoyed Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. And I am 100% in the "I won't touch anything Jack Dorsey has ...

Show threadEvan ProdromouAug 6, 2023

@mfowler @jwz

"* top-level post comes with a package of metadata attached to it.
* Comments posted in reply to it are metadata.
* Preview thumbnail images are metadata.
* All of this metadata travels with the post.
* The posting instance is authoritative on what metadata is attached, and when it changes.
* Replying to a post means submitting that reply to the originating instance for consideration for inclusion in said metadata"

This is all how ActivityPub already works.

Show threadEvan ProdromouAug 6, 2023

@mfowler @jwz there are three things that Mastodon doesn't do.

1. It doesn't fetch the canonical collection of replies when showing a thread.
2. It does not send out notifications to recipients of the original post when replies are received.
3. It does not look up OpenGraph link metadata before distribution.

All of which is to say: your suggestions are very valid. Implementation doesn't require major changes to the protocol, and changes to the Mastodon codebase will show results quickly.

Show threadLPS

@evan
The collection of replies would be extremely welcome. I can't count how many times I see the same question asked in one thread.

@mfowler @jwz @ajswritesthings

Aug 6, 2023 at 5:35pmWeb
Show threadStefanAug 6, 2023
@lps @evan @mfowler @jwz @ajswritesthings small servers should not be buried in API requests but there seems to be a lot of devs who says you can only trust the canonical source for the data. I wish there was a way to allow trusted servers to act as caches or middle ware.