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#Mastodon is being more blatant—it will add quote posts.
This will piss some people off but frankly, this has been in the works for years.
To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse.
And actually, platforms like #Misskey, #Akkoma, and #Friendica have had that feature for years, and hardly anyone using those platforms has ever complained.
In fact, I use quote posts every day. No one’s complained to me about my use of quote posts.
Nevertheless, Mastodon is doing the right thing—and it takes serious courage to tell the Fedi Gatekeepers that this will happen. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But it’s a change that needed to happen.
"there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse" but is there any data whatsoever that shows there is no correlation between quote posts and abuse? Most time I saw them used on Twitter (years ago), it was to start a pile-on without warning the victim in their "mentions" tab. I hope Mastodon will notify the quoted author.
This entry was edited (Friday 14 February 2025, 19:18)
@mjr I saw a study that said specifically there is no correlation. That study was made in 2022. Unfortunately, I can’t find that specific study so I’m not going to cite it.
Whatever the case, though, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims.
Regarding what you saw on Twitter, that’s easily explainable: Twitter’s algorithm was incentivized to show you outrageous content. It’s unlikely that quotes caused dogpiles – it was more likely due to the feed algorithm.
yes, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims. Those claiming quote posts are safe should prove it.
I'm pretty sure Twitter quote posts were added way back when we still had chronological feeds and they were a problem pretty much as soon as people realised they didn't count as mentions.
@mjr No one is claiming that quote posts are safe. The claim is that there’s no evidence that they’re more unsafe than other social media features.
Tell me why hashtags are more safe than quote posts. Hashtags, just like quote posts, increase visibility of messages on social media. Yet no one is asking that hashtags be removed as a feature because they’re abusive.
@mjr From the linked article: In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:
-You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all. -You will be notified when someone quotes you. -You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time.
We also want to build a tight integration for Quote Posts with the reporting functionality, to help people to feel more safe.
@breakfastmtn @mjr This actually makes quote posts safer than replies.
I would love to lock a thread if I feel they’re attracting abuse. Or even remove comments if they’re toxic. However, Mastodon doesn’t allow this right now.
I’ve requested comment controls for years, and I have no update on whether they plan to do anything about implementing that.
@rlounsbury But let’s be real. If someone wanted to be malicious, they can always screenshot your post – bypassing any controls. They can pretty much do that right now anyway, though.
@tchambers “A thesis includes a very detailed report of mixed methods to study tweets on abortion in 2018 and 2020, in Ireland and the US [5]. There were quantitative analyses of 7.7 million tweets, including over 5.5 million retweets and over 850,000 QTs, and a qualitative analysis of a random sample of 3,000. QTs were more common in Ireland, and replies were more common in the US. This study was an outlier in this set of studies, which may be because of the intense topic: Incivility was more common in retweets and QTs than in replies. US tweets had a higher rate of incivility (15%) than Irish ones (9%). A key finding: More than 44% of all uncivil tweets came from the top 10% of the most active users.” from Hilde Bastians review that you link to below
@tchambers I’d wager that, properly conducted (which is incredibly difficult to do) there are, in fact, connections between QTs and abuse. I think also that some of the founding Mastodon intuitions about QTs vs. replies and fostering conversation with vs. conversation about are right, and I’ve found it refreshing and interesting to be somewhere where they don’t exist to explore the affordances. I was struck on Threads and Bluesky how annoying I now find many (non-abusive) uses of QT to be. That said, they have uses, and many people want them: crucially, they are now implemented on Threads, on Bluesky, and will be here, with safeguards built in. That, more than any empirical study, illustrates that they did cause problems, and trying to address them has been constructive. ….my take in a nutshell…
@UlrikeHahn @tchambers I emphatically disagree. However, Mastodon is now going in the direction it should be—which is to be an actual alternative to Twitter. Because the truth is, I don’t think the world can afford centralized social media anymore.
@UlrikeHahn @tchambers There's been a lot of study on this, and QTs just do not contribute significantly to harassment and abuse. But even if they did, the affordances here are different. Followers-only replies are a *much* larger concern than quote posts.
@UlrikeHahn @tchambers 1. The target posts anything at all 2. The harasser replies with followers-only visibility. The reply is visible to the OP, and the crowd of other abusers that follow the first abuser, but no one else. Not even the mods on OP's server 3. The crowd of other abusers pile on, invisible 4. Everyone else gas lights OP about it, saying they've never seen this abuse and so it must be made up, and/or OP's fault.
@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I’ve seen that happen, and I suspect it occurs in concert with Discord chats.
@UlrikeHahn @tchambers Yeah. The most pernicious harassment is coordinated off-platform. But it's still not great that mastodon (and many other backends) created this channel to be jerks in secret.
@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers I’ve always known Mastodon has a reply guy problem. And I knew it was worse than on other platforms but I couldn’t put my finger on why. And I think you elucidated exactly the reason.
Honestly, there's so much more in this vein. This is just the worst one. There's so many affordances that invite immediate, careless replies. And so many that discourage reading or seeking context. Replies are worse here because the software supports reply guys, and hampers establishing norms against it.
@jenniferplusplus Yep, three years ago, I put in a feature request on Mastodon for comment controls. It’s pretty common sense to have since, yeah, it would cut down on abuse drastically. Haven’t heard anything back from Mastodon, but I certainly got a lot of angry people who demand that this never be implemented.
At the very least, you should be able to opt out of receiving comments. Still not here, but at least Mastodon allows you to opt out of quote posts. Now if only they would allow this for comments.
You can be abused in broad daylight without a soul seeing it, from multiple sources.
Doesn’t get reported properly as nobody sees it but you. Doesn’t trigger any thresholds.
Massively open to widespread abuse and really skews people’s optics of the situation.
A lot like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia etc. online generally (“I don’t see it, so it doesn’t happen), but it’s built right into the Mastodon functionally to further enable it.
I see its intended functionality, but I don’t think you should be able to reply with followers only.
Mostly hidden child "nudity" (shoulders up and some kneecaps)
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Chrissy Teigen posted this adorable photo to Instagram and of course 2/3 of the comments are from absolute freaks sexualizing the hell out of it, because so much of the world (America especially) is so puritanical about "nudity" while any amount of violence is of course totally fine. 🙃
Regardless of what you think about Chrissy Teigen, it's amazing that she's able to still post so many photos of herself looking happy, considering the insane amount of hatred she gets on all her posts. people are so pathetically desperate for attention, they'll hate on anything for any reason.
Someone has hijacked the Tor Project's X/Twitter account and is advertising a Tor Coin crypto scam, in case you're wondering how things are going in the Bad Place.
Started the day with the trumpers' kid shoving my 6-year-old to the ground while they were waiting for the school bus... he says that Aeden was being mean to him first but this kid has a history of being rather physically violent so even if Aeden was being annoying, I don't think shoving him to the ground against the curb is the answer. I texted the trumper kid's parents, who I get along with as long as I don't ever ever mention politics, and asked if we could meet with the kids after school and try to work out some kind of conflict resolution, but privately it's not surprising to see the child of loud, unabashed Trump supporters turn out more violent even though he's only eight so far. 😡
Or if you're a Patreon donor or Promo Squad member, you can watch through our Discord server: toplesstopics.org/chat
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What do we do in society that outlaws murder...(at least for those who cannot afford to buy out) but literally turns a blind eye to "a healthcare system" responsible for suffering and criminal negligence causing the deaths of thousands if not millions?
@Lilith111 Cowardly killer? Folk Hero? Or can someone be two things at once?
The most balanced think piece I've come across...from the article: "Obviously, an explanation is not a justification. Nothing justifies murder. I see it as a primal scream from a society that has had enough. I view it as a warning."☠️ 🇺🇸 ☠️ ekathimerini.com/opinion/12562…
First in his class, valedictorian, Ivy League top university graduate, instructor at Stanford, private high school attendee, handsome, friendly, hailing from a very wealthy and successful family. And a murderer, with no previous criminal record.
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She most definitely needs a movie. She was part of the Resistance in Holland, and Damn, she was a badass. She also helped Jewish people escape camps and blew up some train tracks the Reich used.
This entry was edited (Sunday 26 January 2025, 12:47)
Big Tech is using the nationalism card. When the EU wants to regulate American companies and fines them when they break the rules, then they want to see that as attacking American companies.
What does it then mean when the DOJ in the US wants to regulate Big Tech and fines them for breaking the rules?
The reality is that we need regulation. Big Tech has gotten away with too much. They have grown too powerful. They are doing too much damage.
Choose smaller companies, when you can. Take a stand.
A Twitter post by John Sipher ([@]johnsipher.bsky.social) states: "On 21 March 1933 Adolf Hitler was officially sworn in as chancellor of Germany. The same day he pardoned 8,000 Nazis, who had committed violent acts, starting with the failed Hitler coup on 8 November 1923." A profile picture of John Sipher is shown to the left, and a "Following" button is to the right.
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screenshot from my "goodbye #youtube" video I JUST FINISHED EDITING. It'll premiere on Youtube when I start my twitch stream at 12pm pst so we can watch it together! (and hope it doesn't immediately get banned, even though I super-duper-UPER-censored out any heinous female nipples!)
(no actual nipples visible in pic, even male, but CWing just in case)
I'm actually not sure I'll be able to premiere my new "Goodbye" YouTube " video that I spent all week furiously editing because I'm still fresh off another YouTube ban of a fully-clothed video of me simply talking to the camera as" sexually explicit nudity," which is just *chef's kiss* irony. I can at least show the YouTube-safe version on Twitch since I scraped out all nipples, even male nipples, because I'm banned to a degree that nobody else faces.
man I'm so close to just not even caring anymore about if my post get banned on mainstream social media. I'll just post them to decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Peertube, and if no one watches them, so be it, but at least I won't have to be holding my breath waiting for a fresh ban 🙃
@OnToGreatness I don't know what that is an am not really at liberty to physically take part in resistance protests right now (my identity is too easily found and I have kids to worry about) so not really 😅 but I'm glad to hear others are organizing!
Discussing nazis and nudity, photo from s trump rally, nonsexual nude photo of me
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Was just thinking about these "nudity not Nazi" memes I made years ago (before I really started to push against the #nudist / #naturist label because of how often they ignore my fight for top less equality to focus on freeing their genitals instead) contrasting Trump rallies and the January 6th Insurrection to innocent photos of non-sexual nudity. You can see what I made back then at toplesstopics.org/nuditynotnaz… I want to update it to what I used on my t-shirt design--"ban nazis not nipples"
Looking for instance recommendations by and for PoC, for some people I've been talking to who balked at using mastodon years ago because at that time they experienced a lot of "white liberal" racism here.
(I'm nervous I'll be perceived as racist for even asking this... But I'm not sure how else to frame this request)
I am really tempted with the idea of getting a bunch of stickers and putting them on those cars. The only problem is that so many cameras on them, that it’s a very bad idea.
Anybody have a homebrew recipe for EMP? It looks like automobile to telemetry is using G2.
This entry was edited (Wednesday 22 January 2025, 04:04)
Well, the Tesla logo is already a rotated KKK clan hat, so that's not exactly surprising.
He literally was raised in White Supremacist South Africa, wasn't he? (Well, his family is supposed to have been progressive anti-apartheid, but that is either a lie, or SA anti-apartheid progressives are only slightly right of Adolf, politically.)
American far-right plutocrats are now targeting Wikipedia because it's a platform they don't control.
The Wikimedia Foundation is an invaluable non-profit organisation that is not for sale. Please help keeping it that way by making a donation - big or small: donate.wikimedia.org
Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and other crucial free knowledge projects. Each year, the generosity of the 2% of readers who donate allows us to expand the reach of Wikipedia and its sister projects.
So after multiple hardware failures, database corruption, and re-installation issues I've finally restarted this instance as a completely fresh install.
Josh Wood
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Josh Wood • • •MJ Ray
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr I saw a study that said specifically there is no correlation. That study was made in 2022. Unfortunately, I can’t find that specific study so I’m not going to cite it.
Whatever the case, though, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims.
Regarding what you saw on Twitter, that’s easily explainable: Twitter’s algorithm was incentivized to show you outrageous content. It’s unlikely that quotes caused dogpiles – it was more likely due to the feed algorithm.
Mark likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •@mjr Actually, I found a reference to the study:
absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/…
Quote Tweeting: Over 30 Studies Dispel Some Myths - Absolutely Maybe
Hilda Bastian (Absolutely Maybe)MJ Ray
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •yes, it’s on people making a claim to prove their claims. Those claiming quote posts are safe should prove it.
I'm pretty sure Twitter quote posts were added way back when we still had chronological feeds and they were a problem pretty much as soon as people realised they didn't count as mentions.
Chris Trottier
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr No one is claiming that quote posts are safe. The claim is that there’s no evidence that they’re more unsafe than other social media features.
Tell me why hashtags are more safe than quote posts. Hashtags, just like quote posts, increase visibility of messages on social media. Yet no one is asking that hashtags be removed as a feature because they’re abusive.
Adam
in reply to MJ Ray • • •@mjr
From the linked article:
In order to mitigate these issues, we plan to include several features in our implementation:
-You will be able to choose whether your posts can be quoted at all.
-You will be notified when someone quotes you.
-You will be able to withdraw your post from the quoted context at any time.
We also want to build a tight integration for Quote Posts with the reporting functionality, to help people to feel more safe.
@atomicpoet
Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Adam • • •@breakfastmtn @mjr This actually makes quote posts safer than replies.
I would love to lock a thread if I feel they’re attracting abuse. Or even remove comments if they’re toxic. However, Mastodon doesn’t allow this right now.
I’ve requested comment controls for years, and I have no update on whether they plan to do anything about implementing that.
Chris Trottier
Unknown parent • • •Chris Trottier
Unknown parent • • •Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@tchambers
“To those who believe quote posts are abusive, there is no data whatsoever that shows any correlation between quote posts and abuse. “
there is no conclusive data; that’s not the same as saying there is no data whatsoever….
Chris Trottier
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@UlrikeHahn @tchambers What you’re quoting implies that culture has a bigger effect on incivility. Which seems pretty common sense to me.
Practically speaking, though, what’s your actual stance on quote posts?
Ulrike Hahn
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Ulrike Hahn • • •@UlrikeHahn @tchambers
There's been a lot of study on this, and QTs just do not contribute significantly to harassment and abuse. But even if they did, the affordances here are different. Followers-only replies are a *much* larger concern than quote posts.
absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/…
Quote Tweeting: Over 30 Studies Dispel Some Myths - Absolutely Maybe
Hilda Bastian (Absolutely Maybe)Mark likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers Can you tell me a little bit more about the phenomenon of followers-only posts being used for abuse?
Is it similar to how Discord is used for pile-ons? Or is it something else entirely?
Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •1. The target posts anything at all
2. The harasser replies with followers-only visibility. The reply is visible to the OP, and the crowd of other abusers that follow the first abuser, but no one else. Not even the mods on OP's server
3. The crowd of other abusers pile on, invisible
4. Everyone else gas lights OP about it, saying they've never seen this abuse and so it must be made up, and/or OP's fault.
Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Yeah. The most pernicious harassment is coordinated off-platform. But it's still not great that mastodon (and many other backends) created this channel to be jerks in secret.
Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •Jenniferplusplus
in reply to Chris Trottier • • •Chris Trottier likes this.
Chris Trottier
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus Yep, three years ago, I put in a feature request on Mastodon for comment controls. It’s pretty common sense to have since, yeah, it would cut down on abuse drastically. Haven’t heard anything back from Mastodon, but I certainly got a lot of angry people who demand that this never be implemented.
At the very least, you should be able to opt out of receiving comments. Still not here, but at least Mastodon allows you to opt out of quote posts. Now if only they would allow this for comments.
Security Writer
in reply to Jenniferplusplus • • •@jenniferplusplus @UlrikeHahn @tchambers I call it abuse multi-threading.
You can be abused in broad daylight without a soul seeing it, from multiple sources.
Doesn’t get reported properly as nobody sees it but you. Doesn’t trigger any thresholds.
Massively open to widespread abuse and really skews people’s optics of the situation.
A lot like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia etc. online generally (“I don’t see it, so it doesn’t happen), but it’s built right into the Mastodon functionally to further enable it.
I see its intended functionality, but I don’t think you should be able to reply with followers only.
Chris Trottier likes this.