Dave Alvarado2d ago

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
Show threadCrissa Kentavr2d ago

@dave
This is why hiding content (either from blocks, lists, etc) has so many trolling edge cases.

...Which leads me to wonder: What is the reply's visibility being able to be set that supposed to do? What is the intended use case? Why can a replier or quoter be allowed to isolate someone like that? Is it hidden from moderators?

Show threadJess👾
@Crissa @dave I limit reply visibility to followers only or mentioned only a lot when it's something that I don't want to show up on random stranger's timelines. Sometimes it's to reduce the amount of replyguys. Sometimes it's sorta personal stuff (not to the level of "move to Signal" but still not the sort of thing everyone needs to read)
Mar 20 at 3:33amWeb
Show threadJess👾1d ago
@Crissa @dave It's the same as any discussion of privacy. Sometimes I want to talk to a smaller group of people because it's none of anyone else's business why I want to talk to a smaller group of people.
Show threadMorgan ⚧️1d ago
@JessTheUnstill @Crissa @dave I do it for call-ins. There are a lot of marginalized people in my circles, but we all make mistakes and every once in a while let slip an unexamined bias. So when one of my peers says something harmful, I'm likely to call them on it in a followers only post, because I don't want to leave it unaddressed but also really don't want to cause a dogpile. So it's a tool that's used both for preventing harassment and for harassment :/ I'm not sure how to resolve that
Show thread⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe1d ago
@raphaelmorgan @[email protected] @Crissa @dave so, just a dogpile from your followers, then?
Show threadMorgan ⚧️1d ago
@fishidwardrobe my followers are vetted for shit like that. I guess I can't be certain they're not doing harassment I can't see, but it's way less likely than if my post was public. Do you think I should do DMs instead?
Show threadCrissa Kentavr16h ago
@raphaelmorgan @fishidwardrobe
That does seem to be what DMs are for.
Show threadCrissa Kentavr1d ago

@JessTheUnstill @dave
But why should this limit who the thread source can show it to? Why should you have control over showing it to (from their perspective) randos, and not the person who's being replied to?

Being able to hide it from *their* followers - what legitimate purpose does that serve?