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
Show threadMx. Alba Mar 19
@dave

But Dave, couldn't Mastodon just not allow you to reply followers only to a public post?

Dave: "Sure it could, but the harassers would simply run a system on their instance that doesn't have that restriction. The Fediverse is more than just Mastodon. And Mastodon is open source so they could also still use Mastodon but remove that restriction."
Show threadCassandrichMar 20

@MxAlba @dave No, it doesn't work like that.

If their instance was breaking the reply restrictions rule, your instance would detect that when they try to federate the reply to your instance, and would reject it. Then you would not see it, and it also would not get federated to anyone who opens your post looking for the replies.

Your instance could also use detection of this behavior to automatically place the offending instance on limited federation and add it to a review queue of abusive instances that are candidates for defederation.

Show threadDave Alvarado

@dalias @MxAlba yes, this. "Public post but only <my followers and/or people I follow> can reply" would be a huge step in the right direction. It would let you say something to the world without letting the world talk back, but you still get feedback from your friends.

"I want to get this off my chest but I don't want to hear your opinion about it" is not possible in Mastodon today.

Mar 20 at 1:41pmWeb
Show thread☃️karolherbst☃️Mar 20

@dave @dalias @MxAlba in my experience this might also only kinda work, but probs better than nothing.

Had somebody harassing me below my replies, but _I_ haven't seen it, because I've blocked them way before already, but that did mean some of my followers were seeing it and started to engage with that harasser, because some instances will just find ways to also get around that.

And then I saw the replies to the reply and was obviously curious what this was all about...