Technology Connections
So. Three folks I follow are echoing pretty much the same sentiment I've been trying to express and are spending less time here.
I'll preface with a reminder that you may very well feel my opinions are bunk. I am a successful YouTuber, after all, with all the privileges that entails.
But here's the brass tacks: it's harder for me to be here comfortably than it was on the birdsite. And to be honest, I think Mastodon's always gonna be this way.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"And who's accountable for taming that? Nobody! Because it's between instances."
That's not quite true.
Your instance admin is responsible for blocking abusers, and the abuser's instance admin is responsible for punishing such behaviour.
If an instance allows abusers to flourish, it tends to get defederated.
Whether it works perfectly or not is another issue, but there is definitely a line of responsibility there.
Technology Connections
So, I have been trying really hard to live within the space where nobody can reconcile whether they want Mastodon to be more popular or whether they wanted it to remain a bunch of small corners in personal sandboxes. But it's getting really hard some days, and because the stakeholders of this idea are so spread out and so disparate in their opinions, I'm not hopeful anything will get better in this regard.
Mastodon's whole existence feels tortured.
Technology Connections
And as much as I would love to be a cheerleader for this idea, well firstly, I'm not sure people even want me to be a cheerleader! This feels like a place full of hipsters that don't want people to find their fun coffee shop.
But even if people wanted me to help spread the idea of mastodon, or Fedi more broadly, to be honest there are just far too many caveats for me to suggest my friends and colleagues come here.
I would hope you'd be concerned by that.
Technology Connections
But at this point, it feels like that's what people want. There is no desire to make this platform more usable for people with larger audiences.
Christ, just the fact that notifications aren't stacked makes using this really hard as someone with a sizable following.
If the culture is that anti-growth, if it's to remain that fractured and rudderless, I don't see a fun future here.
Fin
Technology Connections
If a post of mine gets a boosted to a broader audience, I am subject to harassment. I'm not going to sugarcoat that, it's harassment.
Sure, of the various kinds of harassment I have not been subject to anything serious. But it is exhausting and personally insulting, with one person telling me in no uncertain terms that they don't believe my job should be a job.
This. Fucking. Sucks.
And who's accountable for taming that? Nobody! Because it's between instances.
Technology Connections
Whenever I encounter problems, I am inevitably told I should try different instance. Whenever anybody has problems, people say "maybe you should move instances"
I do not know why so many people fail to grasp this, but we are experiencing mastodon between instances far more than we are on our own. I hardly ever look at the home tab for mas.to, I look at who I'm following on the Home feed.
That in-betweeny space is apparently impossible to moderate.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
When you report abuse it goes to both your admin and (anonymously) to the admin of the other instance, so they can both carry out their responsibilities.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"There is no desire to make this platform more usable for people with larger audiences."
I've got 200k followers on here and the features seem to work okay for me?
If the notifications are overwhelming you, you could customise what is displayed? I just did a post about that topic today:
Fedi.Tips 🎄
I'm trying to make the platform more usable, which he asked for?
eblu :neurodiversity: :aroace:
@feditips @TechConnectify I hate to say this but this is the exact kind of behavior that he was saying that he wasn't happy with
Fedi.Tips 🎄
Ah okay, I see what you mean. Sorry for that, wasn't intended that way, I should have phrased it differently. :😳
I was trying to say that it should be possible for it to work with large numbers of followers, and wondered if there was some specific thing they were having an issue with.
eblu :neurodiversity: :aroace:
@feditips I understand this; the fediverse has a learning curve and all, but your initial response essentially boiled down to a fancy "well it works on my machine", which is really not a good response when the OP is explicitly complaining about people that do that. I understand that you want to defend your position, but I personally believe that it might be a better approach to understand the behaviors that are being called out instead of attempting to solve problems for other people.
These are just my two cents though.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"block/report functions do not scale to the noise created by having thousands of followers boosting you into the feeds of people who didn't want to see it that are apparently incapable of ignoring it - even if they WERE conduct breaches"
That doesn't match my experience at all.
I have had abuse occasionally, but my experience is that it was handled well and did not carry on.
1/2
Interpipes 💙
@feditips @TechConnectify IMO the issue with this is that
* merely being.. "boringly unpleasant" and adding 0 value (e.g. "youtubers out of our fedi, boo") is not going to be a conduct breach on the majority of instances, and
* block/report functions do not scale to the noise created by having thousands of followers boosting you into the feeds of people who didn't want to see it that are apparently incapable of ignoring it - even if they WERE conduct breaches.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"merely being.. "boringly unpleasant" and adding 0 value (e.g. "youtubers out of our fedi, boo") is not going to be a conduct breach on the majority of instances, and"
If it was personal abuse then that would usually breach most instance rules.
But it's difficult to know whether something breaks rules if you can't see it.
2/2
Interpipes 💙
@feditips @TechConnectify (also there seems to me to be a very strange disconnect between 'fedi' expecting accounts having problems at scale to be the ones responsible for blocking the "offended" parties exhibiting the antisocial behaviour and not instead "societally" having the expectation that complainers who "don't want to see" certain people in their feed should actually be the ones taking responsibility for shaping their feed and doing the blocking?)
Fedi.Tips 🎄
No, that's not what was intended at all.
I was trying to help, as someone who has also had to deal with running a large scale account.
Technology Connections
@interpipes @feditips "works on my machine" spilling into social media.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
" relentless, unimaginative, self-centred, no value gripes about the existence of an account or the things it does that are NOT personal abuse..."
Again, it's sort of difficult to comment on this without seeing an example, even a hypothetical one.
However, with closed source filters you will never know what they are improperly hiding from you. There might be good stuff there which Twitter etc is preventing you seeing.
Interpipes 💙
@feditips @TechConnectify the point is that there is a world of difference between *abuse* and merely receiving relentless, unimaginative, self-centred, no value gripes about the existence of an account or the things it does that are NOT personal abuse and will not breach most instance rules but nevertheless crowd out meaningful interactions. Twitter has/had a quality filter specifically for preventing those replies turning into notifications.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
To add though, Mastodon and the Fedi are open so there's nothing to stop a third party client implementing such filters.
If someone wanted to build such a filter, they are free to do so if there's enough demand to sustain development.
Technology Connections
@feditips @interpipes Y'know what this sounds like, though? "Well, I don't think this is a big deal. Hopefully somebody else does. Good luck!"
And that attitude isn't great.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
It's not intended to sound like that, sorry.
My account exists to try to help people on here, if there's some way I can help I'd like to?
Fedi.Tips 🎄
What specifically would you like to see happen if someone posts that kind of statement?
(Genuine question, I'm trying to understand the problem.)
Interpipes 💙
@feditips @TechConnectify I imagine the second half of the toot Alec recently boosted;
“eh, I'd prefer if all the YouTubers get out of here anyways. go to bluesky or whatever corpo bullshit.”
is probably a pretty good example of the sorts of comments / sentiments that don’t add value to a conversation, but aren’t abusive and don’t deserve to get equal priority ranking with those from people who actually follow & want to engage with someone.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"(at least, large accounts not about fedi itself), "
What do you think I am not experiencing?
Interpipes 💙
@feditips @TechConnectify you must understand that
“someone could make that”
is not a ringing endorsement of
“what exists today and how what exists today is experienced by accounts with large followings” (at least, large accounts not about fedi itself),
which is the subject of the critical thoughts/observations being made
Fedi.Tips 🎄
"I would, in fact, like it to be shadowbanned - they can think their post is there, but nobody will see it"
So, to be absolutely clear, you are asking for a complete ban on people saying they dislike YouTubers? No one else should be able to see such posts?
Technology Connections
@feditips @interpipes I would like to not see it. I would, in fact, like it to be shadowbanned - they can think their post is there, but nobody will see it
If that's too spicy a take, so be it. But that's how Twitter's Quality Filter worked and that's why I could exist there with 90K followers but being here with 30K followers is really starting to suck.
And please don't say this is a problem I need to solve. This is a culture issue the platform needs to work on
Fedi.Tips 🎄
Anyone can make a report, it doesn't have to be the OP. I've often reported posts I've seen in other people's threads.
The reporting is so that the admins know to do something.
The ratio of human moderators to users is much higher on here than on Twitter, so the moderation happens through human processes like reports.
The reason Twitter etc use algo is because they don't have enough humans to do anything else.
1/2
Technology Connections
@feditips @interpipes No. Not at all.
This is specifically about replies. There are currently no consequences for bad behavior on Mastodon unless the OP takes action against someone.
That's just not tenable for accounts like myself to engage in. I want a filter *on my replies* - I don't care what people say about YouTubers in their own spaces, but as far as I'm concerned, I should have at least some modicum of agency over discussions that I start.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
This is why I was trying to ask if I can help, because quite often the processes here exist but they work differently.
When I've had problems with abuse I've reported it, and the reports have been acted upon.
If someone was telling me in a nasty way to leave the Fediverse, I'd report that as personal abuse, and the process would go from there.
2/2
Fedi.Tips 🎄
It sounds more like this is more to do with personal tastes than general principles?
I run a large account and I'm happier with a human-based system. I don't want an algo stripping away replies that I might want to see. I would prefer to be deciding on mutes/blocks myself.
But you prefer to have such decisions taken by an algorithm, even if there's a risk it blocks stuff you might want to see.
Is this a fair summary?
Technology Connections
@feditips @interpipes I'm afraid you will never understand this.
There is too much for me to report, and much of what I experience that is irritating isn't likely to be deemed abuse anyway.
People are just rude, or mean, or pedantic, or arrogant, or snarky, or insulting. I wouldn't report them for that anyway, but I still don't want to have to see it.
Everyone here is allergic to automated anything but guess what? I think it's needed.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
Speaking personally, it doesn't feel healthy for me to have an automatic filter pre-emptively blocking/muting without asking me first.
Sometimes I've had quite unkind replies which nonetheless raised valid points about what I've posted. It's not fun to see criticism, but it's sometimes stuff I need to see, especially if I'm running an account with a lot of reach.
I'm not judging others if they have a different approach, though.
Technology Connections
@feditips @interpipes I think it's a fair summary, but I'm not sure you're empathizing with it.
Fedi.Tips 🎄
Different people will feel different things when they see unkind stuff, have different things going on in their offline life etc etc so it's difficult to say one way is better.
If you prefer using an automatic filter to make social media work for you, and you think it's a better trade-off for you, that's your decision.
jz.tusk
@feditips @TechConnectify @interpipes
How many replies does a typical post you make get?
Fedi.Tips 🎄
@jztusk @TechConnectify @interpipes
It really varies, no typical amount. But especially after the whole Musk buyout happened I was sometimes getting continual pings for hours at a time as people were asking for help directly.
Some of them were pretty nasty as they seemed to think I was a paid employee, and complained to me about features, but there were relatively few I had to block or report.
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