Mastodawn

@heliomass

☝️ Very interesting and informative article on Quote Posting. Really appreciate that the Mastodon dev team is talking to the community and thinking this through...

"In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:
-You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all.
-You will be notified when someone quotes you.
-You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time."

#QuotePost

Maxi 11x 💉Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @heliomass Also nice research: https://github.com/mastodon/specs-background/blob/main/quote-posts/quote-posts-research-and-goals.md

specs-background/quote-posts/quote-posts-research-and-goals.md at main · mastodon/specs-background

A place to store background documentation and research that informs specifications and FEPs - mastodon/specs-background

GitHub

The Sleight Doctor 🃏Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @heliomass These details of implementation are in that category of ideas so simple and obvious, no-one has thought of them before!

The whole opposition to QTs comes from control being with the QTer, thus opening up a vector for coordinated harassment. I know what it's like being bombarded with aggressive comments because some 5-figure follower account has rallied their minions with a QT.

Even as someone who isn't vulnerable, it still raised my stress levels through the roof.

@ApostateEnglishman @heliomass

Curious if you think the ability to deny the ability to quote your posts, changes this power balance?

The Sleight Doctor 🃏Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @heliomass It's a big improvement, but wouldn't prevent the scenario of being *offline* for a few hours, only to return to 200+ notifications from strangers all spoiling for a fight because some large account whipped them up by QTing you out-of-context.

At that point, the damage is already done regardless of whether you withdraw the QT.

But if you catch it straight away? Yeah, that would stop the abusive behaviour in its tracks. So I guess the answer to you is, "yes and no".

@ApostateEnglishman @heliomass

That makes sense. Seems like the implementation would per.it you to block posts from ever being quoted too. Perhaps opting out entirely is the safest thing to do unless you are prepared for the potential abuse.

Cassandrich Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @ApostateEnglishman @heliomass Yes. The whole point is that you can control globally whether or not you want this kind of exposure to begin with, in addition to just blocking particular instances of it.

Lauren Weinstein Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @heliomass The ability to remove quoted posts from quoting posts is a recipe for misinformation disasters, since it removes the context of the post that did the quoting. I would strenuously and publicly object to this. I would also note that the ability to say you don't want posts quoted could open a can of worms, since anyone who really wanted to quote a public post could do so with a screen grab of the post of interest, creating the potential for new battles.

@lauren @heliomass

"...since anyone who really wanted to quote a public post could do so with a screen grab of the post of interest, creating the potential for new battles."

As happens now.

Leia Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @lauren @heliomass Even that acts as a useful bit of a brake though. I know it's a tiny extra energy barrier but its still there. It's not quite counting to ten before acting but almost. It doesn't stop determined bad actors but I do think it reduces spilt second impulse driven rants at least a little.

@leiawelsh @lauren @heliomass

Makes sense. Just like screenshotting is an impediment.

Cassandrich Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @lauren @heliomass 👆 This. Folks can always switch to a screenshot if needed, but removing the semantic "quoted context" makes it hard for the audience of the person doing the quoting to initiate unwanted contact with the original author.

I think the ability to take oneself out of quoted context will also help prevent quoting from turning into a substitute for functioning moderation like it was on (i.e. relying on mob to do the work mods weren't doing) and encourage continuing to just report something if it's abusive rather than quoting it for everyone to see. (This will also help avoid folks just seeing a bunch of outrage bait.)

@lauren @heliomass

Guess another thing that should be mentioned in this can of worms is the ability to edit a quoted post. 🤔

Lauren Weinstein Feb 14

@mastodonmigration @heliomass Yes, that's another context disaster issue.

Cassandrich Feb 14

@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass I hope they have a means to make it so quotes that have been edited will show as "edited since quoting occurred". It seems like this should be easy to do: it's just quoted.lastedittime > quoting.lastedittime.

But I actually don't think it's all that important, because the intent here is not for quoting to be *adversarial* like it often was on . If you're quoting someone who has the power to remove themselves from your quote or edit the contents, there's a strong incentive to quote only people who want to be quoted by you.

LisPi Feb 14

@lauren @heliomass @mastodonmigration I expect people to keep linking to the original post to have vaguely-reliable quotation.

Morgan ⚧️Feb 14

@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass if there's a notice of "this was a quote post but the original author pulled out" it's not *mis*information, just a *lack* of information. No one is entitled to the information in my posts. So if someone does a quote post and the original quoted post isn't in it, you can just scroll and accept that you don't have all the information! Everyone knowing the context of every post is NOT more important than safety.

@raphaelmorgan @mastodonmigration @heliomass Lack of foundational information can be equally dangerous on a long and complex thread.

@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass if someone is harassing me, I frankly don't care what information you can see. It will not kill you not to see my post. What do you do when people block you, cry to their admins that you don't have all the information so you need them to undo it?

There is no way that seeing a quote post missing a quote is all that dangerous. If you don't have all the info, just scroll

@lauren as long as there's an indication that it was once a quote post, I cannot overstate how easy it is to go "damn, no context, guess I don't get to know"

@raphaelmorgan You're assuming most people pay enough attention to realize this. Actually, they usually don't, and misunderstandings based on loss of context (or not even realizing the context was lost) can quickly get out of control. I saw this firsthand at Google when the Google+/YouTube comments integration took place, something I argued strenuously against and that was eventually rescinded, but not before Google+ was seriously damaged reputationally.

@lauren if people are inclined to see a post and run with it without context (and you're right, they are), then we absolutely should not be forcing people to keep our posts in someone else's thread without context. If them not seeing my post will lead to them jumping to conclusions, them seeing my out-of-context post will lead to a dogpile of harassment. I will die on the hill that we should try to avoid dogpiles and harassment. Why are you so insistent that we shouldn't?

@raphaelmorgan What I'm saying is that I saw at scale the problems that can occur with deleted posts and edited posts and other kinds of contextual problems related to threads, both related to G+ and YouTube, during my times working inside Google. And based on that experience having seen what happens at scales ranging from tiny to enormous, my view is that the proposed methodology for dealing with quoted posts on Mastodon is repeating some of the mistakes I saw. But as I said, if that's the path Mastodon devs wants to take, that's their choice of course. And like I said earlier, good luck. I mean that. Cause it's gonna be needed, and I don't want to see Mastodon pulled into new sets of problems, because I do enjoy Mastodon. And that's about all I have to say about this.

@lauren @raphaelmorgan Your mistake is thinking that the problems came from mechanisms of interaction and not from the toxicity of having the platform run and moderated by people with no interest in wellbeing of the community, only engagement and data mining metrics.

@lauren @raphaelmorgan And yes, Google has been Evil since the beginning. I'm sorry that's hard to come to terms with for people who were working there, but there's no need to project that onto communities who are building a future that's not controlled by the likes of them.

@dalias @raphaelmorgan Google was not evil from the beginning. It certainly made a lot of mistakes early on, and over the years matured into world class expertise in a bunch of important areas, especially security and privacy. Absolutely top notch. I've worked with many of the involved individuals. G+ was problematic for several reasons (it really began as more of an identity service than a standalone social media platform, and the YouTube comments integration was an absolute train wreck that was rescinded too late). In my view, it's been rapidly downhill at Google since Sundar took over, but there was a bunch of very good years of which Googlers can be very proud of their work.

@lauren @raphaelmorgan When I say Google was always evil, I don't mean the people working there weren't well meaning, but the system was evil all along because it was predicated on debt to investors who expected huge returns.

I watched for decades as people in various parts of the company believed they were doing good and it was "just a coincidence" that the things they were doing were enabling bad actors and that they somehow weren't assigned/allowed to do the obvious things to fix that.

@dalias @raphaelmorgan I am not anti-capitalism, and I do not object to the corporate model per se. Compared to many firms, Google managed a decent balance for many years. Again, I consider the atmosphere under Sundar to be very different and frankly very sad to see.

@lauren @raphaelmorgan There's a difference between not objecting to the corporate model and not objecting to the VC model. The claim that the latter necessarily produces evil is much weaker than the claim that corporate model in general produces evil.

@lauren @dalias @raphaelmorgan

Walrus 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿Feb 15

Oh, I did love Google+.

Todd Knarr Feb 15

@lauren @raphaelmorgan I'm absolutely behind you there, Lauren. It's bad enough when everyone involved is acting in good faith, then it just creates massive drama and gets people needlessly angry at each other. When prior conversations are edited after-the-fact in BAD faith... imagine a political debate where one side can go back and change the evidence after the other side's cited it and nobody can show what the evidence was originally.

@raphaelmorgan @mastodonmigration @heliomass I'm curious, do you have any professional experience with social media interaction models and criteria? Serious question. Because it sounds like you're just going from personal experience and I guarantee you that this subject is much more complex than that. But hey, the Gods of Mastodon can do whatever they want. I've given my advice.

@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass and you're right. I'm going off of my own personal experience of being a disabled trans person on Twitter pre-Musk. Why are my insights on the harassment I've faced and seen my friends face not valuable just because our experience is lived?

@raphaelmorgan @mastodonmigration @heliomass Your personal experience is absolutely valid. However, I would assert that the lessons learned from studying social media at scale (millions, billions) can significantly extend beyond anyone's personal experience. Yours. Mine. Anyone's. Including classes of personal impacts different from what any given individual has likely experienced.

@lauren in some situations, sure. When it comes to how to keep marginalized minorities safe, mass data has a lot of drawbacks. Most of what that sort of research finds is "what works for the majority population." I'm not interested in how to make fedi better specifically for cis white tech bros. They're already thriving here. I'm interested in a safe environment for trans people, Black people, disabled people, etc. We're usually the last priority in those studies.

@raphaelmorgan Don't assume that fascist Trump attitudes contaminated all earlier work on these subjects. I assure you that a great deal of work has been done that deals with (for example) social media harassment issues across a very wide range of cohorts. And it turns out that (executive summary) the solutions don't need to vary much in relation to the specific targeted communities. That is NOT to say that those solutions are necessarily implemented or implemented properly.

cy Feb 16

The problem is telling me I can't quote your words because "It will not kill you not to see my post" doesn't help trans people, or the disabled, but it does help nazis twist the narrative to make us seem like we're falsely accusing them. It does help abusers hide their abuse, after they say something awful to you, then delete the post... and then you just gave them the power to delete the evidence from everyone else's post quoting theirs. No one can support you without their post being edited to obey the abuser's authority. No one is even allowed to claim they are under attack, because that would be quoting without permission.

So... it's frustrating that they can quote us, but they could also claim we said just about anything. They could put awful words in our mouth, and all their wannabe natzee friends would scoff amongst each other about how stupid the libs were. And that's just... people talking, some of whom are douchebags. Nothing that needs to be authorized or controlled. We need to stop them from wanting to do that, because they get rejected by people who see what liars they are, and because they haven't been trained from childhood by complete monsters whispering in their ear that their greatest enemy is that one girl over there who wasn't born that way. Stop the monsters, save the children from manipulation and control, and give everyone a fair shake so nobody's frustrated and looking for someone to blame. Punch up, not down.

CC: @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org @mastodonmigration@mastodon.online @heliomass@mstdn.ca

Matt Hodgkinson Feb 15

@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass People can already delete a post or change its privacy when they're getting piled on. How is enabling disconnecting quote posts any different? You can't force people to keep posts up for the preservation of the conversation - this isn't blockchain.

@mattjhodgkinson @mastodonmigration @heliomass I've previously expressed concerns about the existing deletion and editing models on Mastodon, along with contextual problems in the reply visibility model as currently implemented (my understanding is that improvements to the reply visibility problem are at least under consideration). My view is that the proposed quoting policies will significantly exacerbate those issues. Again, this is an area that has been pretty well studied. But hey, if folks want to make it up as they go along, without heed for past lessons learned, that is, as I keep saying, their choice of course.

Kristoffer Lawson Feb 14

@heliomass any timeline on any of this, I wonder?