Mastodawn

Found my way into a great #FediForum discussion on implementing the ability to create private groups, and it startled me how emphatically a few folks were puzzled why this would be desired. One person repeatedly characterized private groups as "hiding from the public square". It feels like issues of harassment (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) are talked about with such urgency (at least in my circles?) - I can't be the only hearing that? The public square isn't safe for everyone.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie Oh my god, this is such a huge disconnect that is so incredibly frustrating with how people design social software, and the material needs of the people who use it.

Being constantly exposed to the world is a *luxury* and building around design assumptions that everyone *can* and *should* be constantly connected to everyone everywhere is just... it's such a fucking techbro mindset.

Privacy is integral to living a life, and fedi seems to be built specifically to impede private spaces.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie People act different when they're being watched vs when they're not being watched, and we've built this whole space that normalizes and even extols the value of being on constant display to everyone, and have then declared that this is actually a normal and desirable condition for people and communities to exist in, perpetually.

Locksmith Mar 21, 2024

@katanova @hollie Constant exposition. Constantly selling oneself. No wonder why we are all exhausted.

Hollie Mar 21, 2024

@locksmithprime @katanova Yeah people dance when the algorithm tells them to, behavior shifts to match the new way of getting attention. It's interesting and annoying at a low level, but at a societal level becomes really disturbing.

Hollie Mar 20, 2024

@katanova Yeah I think as I'm learning more about this there is really a disconnect between the skillset and headspace of designing the social software, and that of using it. And I think I have naively assumed for a long time that it'd be obvious, but it isn't at all.

The being watched thing is a big deal - that was also mentioned by several folks, that the fediverse can seem challenging when you're new and can't tell where your posts are actually going. I feel that should be a discussion too.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie I feel like recognizing this is the central hurdle of integrating tech into the world in a way that makes our lives better instead of worse.

It's *incredibly* important for people in positions of power and authority to recognize that, as architects making decisions about how people live, they are mirroring dynamics of social failure if they fail to comprehend the actual material impacts of their decisions on other people *beyond* face value.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie Mastodon's admin interface centers around face-value metrics.

New users, user retention, how many other servers are federated with.

These metrics are often interpreted as a *replacement* for actual social analysis.

The Instance is Healthy because Engagement is High, and Retention is High.

When what those metrics most closely measure is level of addiction.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie I can say with a fair degree of certainty from my direct survey of our own instance, from just skimming the profiles of around 100 of our instance's members, that there are several members who are *deeply* isolated, who have an intense need for direct meaningful social connection, and those needs *can't* be met purely within mastodon.

This is not a space that is designed for what it's being used as by many people on mastodon: a placeholder for meaningful social connection.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@hollie Designing around this techbro "numbers go up means Good Job" mentality *deepens* divisions between individuals, and worsens isolation.

Ask Vantablack how many of their thousands of Followers (at the peak of their popularity) they were able to meaningfully engage with.

Ask any Rockstar how lonely it feels to be up on stage when the high of fame no longer hits like it used to.

Jon Mar 20, 2024

Yes, exactly. Most people who lead software teams think that they have good instincts about how others will want to use it but actually project how they think people should use it. Local-only posts in Mastodon are a great example. They make it very easy to avoid being watched, and it's easy to explain where they go -- just to others on your instance. Trans people running the Glitch fork implemented them in 2017 and other forks have them as well, but Eugen doesn't like them so has refused to support them in the official Mastodon release.

The "if you're not exposing yourself to everybody you're hiding" attitude also comes up in discussions of opt-in federation (as opposed to today's norms, where federation requests from nazis and terfs are accepted until you opt out). In one of the github comments in the discussion of whether Bridgy Fed's connection to Bluesky, a well-known fediverse influencer misdescribed somebody's suggestion that it should be opt-in as a "premise that the fediverse is a place to hide from others." And not-so-coincidentally, these discussions are often heavily gendered, so in practice it's often cis guys saying "if you're not exposing yourself to the cis male gaze you're hiding." Although of course they don't see it that way.

@hollie @katanova

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@jdp23 That premise that you're describing, of "you shouldn't need to hide" is an expression of desire concealed within an assertion of reality.

The expression of desire, underneath the obfuscation, is this: "I don't want you to be able to hide what you're doing from me. I want to be technically capable of seeing everything that you do"

There's a sort of authoritarian assumption on the part of the designer of what constitutes "reasonable privacy"
@hollie

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@jdp23 And in line with this, the software designers seem to have an assumption of entitlement to access to the discourse of a community.

That is to say, it's assumed that anyone doing anything as part of a community "behind closed doors" as it were, can only be doing so for nefarious reasons, and so it is the responsibility of the software designers to prevent misuse in such a way.

This is an integral aspect of techbro culture
@hollie

[cont]

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 20, 2024

@jdp23 This assumption of Techbro Culture is that individuals cannot be trusted to behave Properly, and so it is the responsibility of the Designers of the tools and spaces to ensure that they are not used Improperly.

It's patronizing to individuals, and disempowers people from being able to make their own meaningful decisions.

Techbros try to take on the role of parent when they don't actually know how to parent, or even recognize that's what they're doing.

Bernie Luckily Does It Mar 21, 2024

@katanova @jdp23 @hollie This. It's so annoying when I can't follow someone who's interesting because my admin has decided that the admin of their server is evil or something.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 21, 2024

@BernieDoesIt I'd say that's a normal community moderation function.

The larger issue is that the shape of mastodon administration makes top-down moderation the default, and it takes a considerable amount of effort to make community moderation a community-led process.

Bernie Luckily Does It Mar 21, 2024

@katanova @jdp23 @hollie I don't mind when they're filtered out by default, but when I can't follow someone I know from outside the fedi because they picked the wrong server it seems awfully paternalistic. It's not like I'm following Nazis.

Kat Valentine Allwell Mar 21, 2024

@BernieDoesIt One of the primary strengths of the federated model, is that it's decentralized.

If being in contact with them is such a high priority, why not coordinate with them? If you want to be in control of who you're able to connect to, why not host your own instance?

Being a member of an instance hosted by someone else has inherent tradeoffs. You give control over to the instance operator, and in return, you get to enjoy the services they provide.

How much do you pay stux?

Bernie Luckily Does It Mar 21, 2024

@katanova I actually have decided on setting up a personal server. It just hasn't been something I've made a priority.

Kerr Avonsen (she/her)Mar 20, 2024

@katanova @hollie @rotfarm @clew @dyani @j12i @codesmith

It's the same sort of techbro mindset that gave us Google Glass -- did you see that advert for it which had this guy use facial recognition to digitally track down this woman he'd just met, just so that he could give her a "suave" pick-up line? Totally sick, with absolutely no clue of how wrong it was. "Here, you too can get the girls by stalking them and invading their privacy. All the cool dudes do it."

Rotfarm Mar 21, 2024

@kerravonsen @katanova @hollie @clew @dyani @j12i @codesmith I didn't...but that's fucking gross.

dyani 🫠Mar 20, 2024

@hollie i think humans are wired for small groups! i once read someone's theory that humans cannot really compute properly the large amounts of people and the large groups that the internet has connected us to. We just can't properly wrap our minds around it and still haven't found a way to work with this sudden new change in society and how we live. I can see how that theory could be true! So I agree with you that it's weird that they are not acknowledging privacy and small social connection

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️Mar 20, 2024

Have supported private groups and circles/aspects for years now. I don't know how anybody would think that privacy is optional. I don't see a lot of people taking showers in the public square. If you're interested, I've made this work available to other ActivityPub services that wish to implement it through a delivery model I call "conversation containers". It basically extends on some existing FEPs to let you implement contained conversations and not have the protected conversations boosted across the fediverse. I've got some background docs if you're interested.

silverpill Mar 21, 2024

@mikedev @hollie

>I've got some background docs if you're interested.

I'd like to read them too.

Mike P Mar 21, 2024

@silverpill @mikedev @hollie Me three.

I think I've read all the relevant FEPs, but I'd be very interested in a higher level description of how you've put them together.

(Does this model interact with the signatures in some way?)

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️Mar 21, 2024

@[email protected] @@hollie @@FenTiger

https://fediversity.site/help/develop/en/Containers

Help

silverpill Apr 1, 2024

>In a constrained conversation, conforming implementations will implement FEP-400e with some very minor additions

In a constrained conversation we work with activities, not objects, is that correct? If so, should "context" collection contain activities or objects?

It seems to me that FEP-400e was written with objects in mind. I think it might be helpful if you clarify this moment in documentation.

>In a constrained conversation, the target->id and the context are identical. This provides easy identification.

In "Add to conversation" example the context is

https://streams.lndo.site/conversation/ed4775f8-18ee-46a5-821e-b2ed2dc546e8

and the target.id of the Add activity is

https://streams.lndo.site/item/ed4775f8-18ee-46a5-821e-b2ed2dc546e8

A similar inconsistency exists in "Conversation owner Adds the reply to the conversation Collection" example.

Mike Macgirvin 🖥️Apr 1, 2024

Thanks @[email protected] - good catch. I've updated the documentation, now fixing the code I used to generate it.

Correct that we're dealing with collections of activities, not simple objects. I've documented that as well.

SeedLight Mar 20, 2024

It doesn't even have to be about safety; you can just want a closed group period - a way for you & your friends/classmates/colleagues to be together without strangers peeking in and eavesdropping on your conversation.

If you are a study group (for example), you want it to be just you and your study mates; no one else is welcome and it wouldn't be appropriate.

I would love to have something like this in the Fediverse instead of trying to use cumbersome and/or expensive commercial options.

Bill Statler Mar 20, 2024

@@SeedLight @@hollie
"...you can just want a closed group period... I would love to have something like this in the Fediverse instead of trying to use cumbersome and/or expensive commercial options."

We do have it in the Fediverse. Two options that I'm aware of: Hubzilla, and its recent descendant in the Streams repository (which I'm using).

As @@jeff noted above, this stuff existed before Mastodon, but for whatever reason, Mastodon has become so popular that many people aren't aware of other options.

Ryan Mann Mar 21, 2024

@SeedLight @weirdwriter @hollie I agree. It's like having a get together with your friends. If some stranger told me that me and my friends need to allow them to be at our get togethers, we would probably think they were weird . Private groups are the same concept.

alastair87 (old account)Mar 22, 2024

@SeedLight @hollie I can see it working a bit like Facebook groups but much smaller. The tricky part would probably be doing it cross-instance. Even on Facebook in the beginning when it was for academic institutions only, you could only join groups with others from the same one.

SeedLight Mar 22, 2024

@alastair @hollie

Ah, perhaps - I don't know *anything* about that side of things. But if true, wouldn't it be magnificent if that could be overcome? 😃

Lisa Mar 20, 2024

@hollie I just have to say this if you count peopel as normal forsome peopel like myself there is no normal

Chewie Mar 20, 2024

@hollie
Even if you're not likely to be the target of harassment, I can see they could be useful, for example, groups of local friends planning things, or a "club" of some sort.

I certainly would find it useful.

Someone in a different session mentioned Hometown: https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown that he used for a local punk scene.
It by default posts local, but you can still use it to read federated things on other servers.

If course, it means you'd all have to be on one server, but it's a start.

GitHub - hometown-fork/hometown: A supported fork of Mastodon that provides local posting and a wider range of content types.

A supported fork of Mastodon that provides local posting and a wider range of content types. - hometown-fork/hometown

GitHub

LWFlouisa Mar 20, 2024

@hollie As someone who experienced targeted harassment by right wing nuts in comics, the absence of private groups is a lot of why I rarely post on mastodon.

Its pretty much default on diaspora.

Jessica Smith Mar 20, 2024

@hollie Very weird! In addition to what you say, there are other reasons why people can't or don't want to share everything publicly – jobs that disallow it (or even try telling you not to use social media at all), and also just... discussing sensitive topics? Not everyone is some kind of thinktanker trying to boost their professional reputation through social commentary...

Hollie Mar 21, 2024

@jayeless Yeah the list of reasons is so long, and so HEALTHY, it's a positive thing for people overall to have their safe private spaces where they can built intimacy with the inner folks, that gives them the confidence to then be in the public square.