twipped, 5 months ago

@malwaretech @catsalad Because there is no central authority to enforce it. Even when you block someone, that doesn’t prevent them from messaging you and having that message fowarded to any servers theirs federates with.

A single user on the network cannot alter the content of other users. Replies aren’t actually child elements, they’re just new messages with citations to previous posts, and the server is smart enough to form a graph to fetch all linked posts.

twipped, 5 months ago

@malwaretech @catsalad What you’re basically asking for is an api to delete other people’s posts, and wow would that be exploitable.

dalias, 5 months ago

@malwaretech The data model isn't really conducive to it and the decision makers don't consider it important. 🤬

dgoldsmith, 5 months ago

@dalias @malwaretech Why do you think the decision makers don't consider it important? The CTO for Mastodon said elsewhere in this very thread it's on the roadmap for 2024: https://oisaur.com/@renchap/111591172720132753

dalias, 5 months ago

@dgoldsmith @malwaretech Isn't it low prio exploratory not planned yet?

dgoldsmith, 5 months ago

@dalias @malwaretech Read what he said.

renchap, 5 months ago

@malwaretech because this is hard to do in a federated protocol. Claire started a FEP on this tomic but it went nowhere due to the complexity (and bad decisions in the current implementation).
The basic idea is that you ask the OP account for a signed token allowing your reply, which can be checked by all other instances.
We want a similar thing for quote posts.
Main issue here is lack of resources, as usual 😞 but on my roadmap for 2024

renchap, 5 months ago

@malwaretech here is the FEP if you want to have a deeper look, and reae more about the roadblocks in the replies: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-5624-per-object-reply-control-policies/2723

just_a_frog, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

@malwaretech

The main answer to that is probably "funding". Mastodon has like two full time developers who shoulder a lot of different burdens and thus new features only get implemented extremely slowly.

MattFerrel, 5 months ago

@just_a_frog @malwaretech

Why is the Mastodon team so small though? If funding is the problem it seems like it could be funded by users like most instances.

@Gargron

cchelberg, 5 months ago

@just_a_frog @malwaretech this is what I was going to say. Not enough funds > not enough staff.

Xoriff, 5 months ago

@cchelberg @just_a_frog @malwaretech wow really? With as much as tech folks jumped onto mastodon I'm amazed there aren't more night/weekend folks contributing. (Not that this should be how it is supported. More that people who enjoy working that much exist so I'm surprised there aren't more folks actively working on it)
edit: whoops. Sorry. Meant that in reply to parent comment

just_a_frog, 5 months ago

@Xoriff @cchelberg @malwaretech

My bad. What I meant to say was two paid full time devs. I'm sure there are the occasional contributions from other people too. And there are some different people paid to work on the mobile apps as well I think.