Aral Balkan
Hmm, I would have thought a post starting with @mention would not be visible on the main timeline but only under posts and replies but apparently not.
I guess it’s “full attention of everyone following you” or “direct message.” Would be nice to have “public but I’m not shouting it to all my followers” as the default for @mentions.
Krzysztof Drozdowski
@aral isn't it something the Unlisted setting of a post tries to achieve?
Aral Balkan
@krzysztofdrozdowski Possibly; I’m still not 100% sure as it looks the same to me on my account (listed under posts) whether or not it’s unlisted so I guess I’d have to use a second account to check. Not sure if what followers see and what a signed out person sees is the same but guess I can see if there’s a difference when I sign out and view my feed.
Cheeseness
@aral Just to check, have you spotted the "change post privacy" button?
Aral Balkan
@Cheeseness Yep. Tried unlisted but still saw it listed in the main timeline (at least for me). Been using it for what, seven years now? You’d think it’d be more intuitive by now 🤔
Michael
Personally I find unlisted really hard to grasp. I believe unlisted posts show up in your followers timeline in the same way as public posts.
They just don’t appear in your server’s ‘Local’ timeline.
Aral Balkan
@michael @krzysztofdrozdowski Ditto. And we’re supposed to be technically-savvy programmers… It’s really not intuitive.
Cheeseness
@aral Hmm! How long ago was that? I can hunt through my "home" feed for it if it's helpful to know what a follower sees
Aral Balkan
@Cheeseness Let me do a test (I ended up sending that as a DM)
Daniel Schildt
@aral @krzysztofdrozdowski 'Unlisted' reduces visibility from the Public feed (from people who don't even follow an account), but those replies are visible for people who follow you. But when logged out, posts starting with @ mention are still public.
If you switch to "Mentioned people only", post goes to "Direct messages", but since people might not get notified about those, they might not see the reply. Inconsistencies in the usability of Mastodon are confusing many.
Aral Balkan
@autiomaa @krzysztofdrozdowski Not to mention (no pun intended) that there is a very real social difference between a public @mention that you don’t want to broadcast to all your followers (should be the default) vs a direct message. The default should be that you can say something to someone publicly without pointing at them and shouting “hey, everyone, listen to what I’m about to tell so-and-so!”
CC @Gargron
#mastodon #atMentions #social #visibility #volume #defaults #design
Aral Balkan
@autiomaa @Gargron Not to mention now we’re apparently going to be on encouraging such behaviour by introducing first-class support for quote tweets (sorry, did I just say tweets?)
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm
Daniel Schildt
@aral @Gargron For sure, the current default behaviour of Mastodon application can easily lead to a lot of unwanted attention. Problem with the current situation is that it enables (way too effective) Dogpiling attacks against people...
Aral Balkan
So the issue here is we’re not differentiating between directing a post to someone and mentioning someone in a post.
If a post begins with someone’s handle, that post should be treated as a directed post.
If public, it should not appear to all your followers by default (but should be in your replies if people look there).
If not public, mentioning other people in the post should not bring them into the conversation.
Aral Balkan
@decathorpe I just made a case for how it should work from first principles. And yes, that’s how it’s implemented on Twitter (or was, last I know). But the latter follows from the former, not vice versa.
Fabio Valentini
@aral You're saying it should work exactly the same way it works on Twitter? 🤔
Aral Balkan
@brunogirin If a private message feature were to be implemented in the protocol, it would have to be end-to-end encrypted to be fit for use.
Bruno Girin
@aral I'd go further and say that I would like an explicit DM function where the post is private, with the recipient being asked whether they want to receive the message, a bit like what Twitter does. Private messages open additional abuse vectors and handling those should be part of developing a dedicated feature.
Aral Balkan
@decathorpe Designing from first principles is about discovering the right problem to solve (e.g., how do we encourage civil discourse) and then working out from there to arrive at means of solving it.
What it’s not is looking existing artifacts and emulating them without understanding the needs, success criteria, and process(es) that led to them even if you end up in a similar place at the end (most times, you won’t.) It’s about constantly questioning fundamental assumptions.
Fabio Valentini
@aral As far as I know, there's no such thing as "directed posts" on Mastodon, so you just described a feature request for something you'd want to work - that's not "first principles", but ok 😅
Either way, even if there's no distinction at the protocol level (yet), it should be relatively straightforward for clients to implement something like that and not show "directed toots" in feeds ...
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