Dave AlvaradoMar 19

How (racist/sexist/whatever) harassment on Mastodon works:

1. Harasser replies to their target's post, with the reply set to "followers only", saying the most vile stuff you can imagine.

2. All the harasser's followers join in on the harassment, posting more vile stuff.

3. Nobody but the target and the harassment crew can see the vile stuff that was said.

4. Target is traumatized. Nobody else can see why.

5. Everybody says "I don't see it so it's not happening."

https://community.hachyderm.io/blog/2024/08/12/hachyderms-introduction-to-mastodon-moderation-part-1/

Hachyderm's Introduction to Mastodon Moderation: Part 1

The first post in a series about Mastodon moderation tooling. This post focuses on context for the upcoming posts.

Hachyderm Community
Sobri | Zoe (she/her)Mar 19
Show threaddragonfrog

@dave I don't know if this would be feasible, but I really really think that "followers only" should not mean "the followers of the account posting" but "the followers of the account posting and those of all accounts named in the post".

Even leaving aside the serious issue of harassment, it would make totally friendly and civil threads that hang off a followers-only top post, into a conversation one's followers could take part in without also following everyone who comments.

Mar 19 at 11:30pmWeb
Show threadLeelooMar 20

@dragonfrog @dave
How about "followers of the author of the original post that started the thread"? "Followers of anyone mentioned" is going to take a lot of queries to different servers to get the list of followers - and some instances may not even make the list available for privacy reasons. Followers of the OP could be done by having such replies go through the OPs instance.

Having followers only replies gobthrough the OPs instance would be more eork for the developers, but the current solution is useless for replies, because two people with distinct sets of followers having a followers only discussion are going to sound like listening to one half of a phone conversation.

Show threaddragonfrogMar 20

@leeloo @dave that was kind of my thought - each account named would publish the replies for its own followers to see.

But yeah, followers of the OP would
Would work just as well for keeping a thread readable, and preventing someone from invisibly harassing.