@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.

@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.

@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

@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]

@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.

@hollie

@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.

@jdp23 @hollie