Mastodon’s lack of quotes and search does not prevent organized harassment campaigns.
Having now witnessed targeted harassment campaigns on the Fediverse multiple times—and also being a target of it—I see that the lack of quotes and search doesn’t inhibit harassment campaigns in any way.
If the mob is in search of a target, not only will they find you, they will use technology outside of the Fediverse to do it—including Google search, Discord chat, etc.
The only thing I’ve seen that stops targetted harassment campaigns is blocking at the individual and server wide-level, and also comment controls such as the ability to turn off replies.
In the end, it’s not lack of technology that prevents online harassment. It’s technology.
@atomicpoet not to invalidate anything you said, but rather to comment on what the lack of quote posts does stop: quote posts enable low effort and low value posts. I think the fediverse has higher quality and more positive posts without them.
To expand: people boost original content here instead of quoting a post with a low value comment added. And the friction of having to link to a post instead is enough to stop some of the outrage quote posts where people dunk on the OP.
@unchartedworlds@atomicpoet yes, I’m aware of those positives. However my contention would be that you can also achieve everything you just listed by creating a new post with a link to the post. As in, all those actions are currently achievable without quote posts.
I'd agree that neither harassment nor these constructive uses are made impossible by the lack of quote-posts. Rather, there's a bit of added friction for everyone.
Each of my example use cases is slightly different & so are the variations in harassment, so I'm not assuming the deterrent effect would be identical. Haven't seen a detailed analysis.
Any suggestions for why the friction wouldn't discourage to a roughly similar extent on both categories?
@unchartedworlds@atomicpoet oh right. With zero evidence to back it up, I’d assume they’re equally discouraged. Which I’m fine with m, for the reasons stated up thread.
@atomicpoet I didn't mention Mastodon? Afaik most of the main fediverse apps doesn't have quote posts (happy to be corrected), which is why I was speaking as if quote posts don't exist. Calckey only has 10K users, no?
@atomicpoet Fwiw, there are quotes for mastodon in the elk.fedified interface. For now, just go there, make the post, and return to mastodon. So there already is code for it. Should anyone wish to add it to mastodon proper, what could be easier? I don't see how posting a quoted toot leads to more or less potential harassment than any other. Everyone who follows you sees either one. Does anyone know if either BlueSky or Meta is blocking development of this? If not, what does that mean for growth?
@atomicpoet Of course it fucking doesn't, and anyone that actually believes quotes have anything to do with it have literally never seen the internet outside of Facebook or Twitter.
Fuckin' think Kiwi Farms is quoting Chris Chan? Nah.
Block, mute, defederate. Deplatform the fuckwits every way possible.
@atomicpoet no one said there could be no harassment without quotes and search. Only that it is harder and not as endemic in the culture. Your experiences (sorry to hear you've been subjected to it) don't invalidate that.
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