@isagalaev @jwz
Holy shit it is so nice to hear people say this aloud. I've been quietly over here in my corner thinking about launching my own entire rant to this point wondering if I was the only person who got this.

I find Mastodon's complete failure to grasp/implement this principle both maddening and incredibly ironic. This has been, until quite recently, the number one problem with Twitter (and similar systems like G+), and what caused it to be such an utter shit show. Mastodon's failure to allow users to own their comments and provide them with moderator tools reconstitutes exactly the toxic dynamics of Twitter. Mastodon has tried to compensate for this with a model that has the people running instances functioning as moderators, which is a "solution" of such terrible long-term consequences as to be indistinguishable from active sabotage of the Fediverse.

@adrienne @siderea @jwz "i personally think that "deleting other people's posts" might be a bridge too far — this is exactly the problem I was talking about. Too many people adopted this… reverential approach to something someone else wrote, which just shouldn't exist.

As jwz mentioned in the article a person coming to *your* comments effectively uses your platform, of which you should stay in control. If they want to be in control they should write their own post, mentioning yours. (cont…)

@isagalaev @siderea @jwz Yes, i agree, but someone replying to your post kind of IS "writing their own post, mentioning yours". It still lives on their server! It's just that "mentioning" creates a relationship (reply-to). Being able to sever this relationship at will would allow people to maintain their own content which they did, after all, post on their own fucking server -- but removes it from association with your content.

(FYI, i'm on the mod team of a fairly popular Fediverse server which is extremely full of queer & marginalized people; i'm not stupid, i'm not inexperienced, and i am certainly not "reverential" about shit other people write.)

@adrienne

> but someone replying to your post kind of IS "writing their own post, mentioning yours".

That's the problem: it is, but it shouldn't be.

This isn't just a technological problem, it's a cultural one.

The Blogosphere has a very different culture than Twitter does. It has very clear boundaries that Twitter and many other "social media" platforms don't share. On the Blogosphere, whether or not you have jurisdiction over something you write depends on where you write it. If you didn't want to give somebody else authority to delete it you shouldn't have written it as a comment on their blog. You have your own blog where you have the authority and nobody else can delete what you write.

Mastodon is implemented like Twitter, where there is no distinction between different people's spaces, such that it makes sense to conceptualize a comment a user leaves on another's post as "theirs". After all, all of the comments each of us writes appear on our comments tab.

@isagalaev @jwz

@jdp23

Point of order, "although blogs resstrict who can make top-level posts": no, blogs do not restrict who can make top-level posts. Anyone can make a top level post. *On their own blog.* Which anyone can go out and get, for free, on a variety of different platforms.

Some platforms, most notably LiveJournal, enforced all users having their own blogs (journals). Unless a poster allowed anonymous commenting, you couldn't comment at all on somebody else's posts except by signing up with LJ, which came with a side of your own blog to use or not as you saw fit.

Not to pick on you in particular, but it's been really fascinating how this entire discussion has really exposed a kind of digital provincialism, where people who are only really familiar with some specific platforms, perhaps Twitter, really have no idea what the dynamics, affordances and social norms are in other parts of the internet.

@jwz @isagalaev
@dalias

@siderea @jdp23 @jwz @isagalaev @dalias do you envision it that if i comment on your post and you delete it, i still have a instance of my comment as part of my own time line? so my followers could see it, but yours wouldn’t

Or is the only instance of my comment part of your timeline so deleting it would erase all copies of the comment?

I don't have a strong opinion, just curious how folks are thinking about what their ideal scenario would be for this hypothetical, but good, change in behavior

@rdp

> do you envision it that if i comment on your post and you delete it, i still have a instance of my comment as part of my own time line? so my followers could see it, but yours wouldn’t

Where do you think your replies appear, right now?

Have you been perhaps confused by how when you make a reply to someone else's comment it appears in your timeline *to you*, when you're logged in? (I have no idea why Mastodon does this; it's misleading.)

For instance, this comment of yours, that I'm responding to right now, does not appear in your timeline *to anyone except you*, and is not pushed to your followers.

People who go to your profile page and click on the "With Replies" tab there can see it, regardless of whether or not they follow you.

Your followers do not know that you are participating in this conversation at all, unless you boost it to them.

Your replies to comments already do not appear in your timeline as far as anyone else can see.

@jdp23 @jwz @isagalaev @dalias

@rdp

Now, if you know all that, and you're just really really concerned that any comment you make has a permanent record under your "With Replies" tab, and that *you* see it in your timeline, I have no problem with that. Might be a pain to implement if we go with the metadata model that @jwz proposes, but I don't have an objection to that.

But what we're proposing is that if you leave a comment in reply on someone else's OP and they find your comment objectionable or undesirable for any reason whatsoever, they get to remove it from that context. Which is the only context it has so is pretty much coterminous with deletion, the same way if an editor removes a passage from a book that they then publish but saves a draft of the removed material on their local machine we generally refer to that as a deleted passage.

@jdp23 @isagalaev @dalias

@dalias

> Arguably the main context it's seen in is the home feeds of all your followers.

No it's not. Do you think that all of your comments are being pushed to your followers? That is not presently how Mastodon works.

This comment of yours I am replying to right now, your followers have not seen it, not unless you've boosted it to them. Your followers have no idea this conversation is happening.

@rdp @jwz @jdp23 @isagalaev

@siderea @rdp @jwz @jdp23 @isagalaev They don't see it, but they see my reply (this post). And if they expand this post, they're instantly able to see and interact with your post I'm replying to.

I'm saying that "unlink reply" should probably be two-way and not provide a low-friction path for my followers to interact with you through my reply if you considered my reply unwelcome.

@dalias

> They don't see it, but they see my reply (this post).

Nope. Not unless you boost it.

Don't take my word on this, go check.

@rdp @jwz @jdp23 @isagalaev