bad reply guys are one of fedi/mastodon’s biggest problems.
I’m realizing it’s not only a demographic issue but a structural one with the platform. if people cannot easily see one another’s replies, and if the original poster can’t easily QT replies, someone with a popular post has to field dozens of nearly identical replies. if these replies enforce white supremacy or patriarchy (spoiler: they often do), the structure of mastodon tends to center and amplify white supremacy &patriarchy
we’ve all seen some amazing conversations unfold here but what you don’t see until you make a post that elicits hordes of replies, is how infuriating it is to get bombarded with carbon copies of the same idea you’ve already refuted 8 times. we need clear threading and an upvote system and yeah, QTs
the tough thing is you just don’t really see it until you write a post that really extends beyond your own followers and into the nether regions of the fediverse. so one person can be ready to implode from dealing with this pattern while hundreds of others really have no idea that it even exists! not good and def an impediment to attracting some of the thinkers and writers we’d love to have in this space
@seachanger you’re highlighting, IMO, one of the key challenges/issues with federation. Similar ideas/concepts can be surfaced across the fediverse, but not connected and amplified (to demonstrate support) because they’re decentralized and dispersed. It’s great to have democratization, but if there’s no simple way to aggregate or connect, then it’s less beneficial in the long run.
@seachanger in season 1 of social media, it was possible to “build it, and they will come” because it was a novelty. Unfortunately, for the new social media companies and platforms being built now, we’re in season 3 of social media. What users want is paramount to what companies and platforms want to build (especially since there is healthy competition for the same users). The past few weeks have been a live use case of this, IMO: Threads decreased engagement, Bluesky this week…
@seachanger Won't the features you suggest ALSO benefit a patriarchy/white supremacist poster who draws large-scale attention from people like us?
I dislike the upvote idea because often the metrics become the point, rather than the quality of the ideas and the arguments expressed. All the others have metrics - reddit, facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube etc.. The air is clear without them. They are a surveillance capitalism secret weapon, especially in the case of facebook likes. They were a key feature of its descent into a genocide-promoting hellscape.
@seachanger Yeah, I've seen a bit of this and the invisible, repeating reply guys are exhausting.
Genuine question, though: How do you see QTs helping here? I've had some luck adding replies to my original post (something like a P.S.) to add clarifications/answer common questions. But most of my repeating replies aren't from people who follow me, so they wouldn't see the QT anyway. I'm guessing you're envisioning some kind of different situation, then? Always appreciate your thoughts.
@design_law One thing people did on Twitter is pull up annoying replies with a QT so that everyone can actually see it, and deal with it publicly. It takes a lot more work to do that here and this is what I saw people of color talking about last fall—they are being treated one way in the replies, but a lot of people just have no idea what’s even happening leaving the original poster feeling alone/vulnerable/bombarded
@seachanger@design_law One thing people could try to call out a reply is to just post a link to the foot with any comments they have. Some Mastodon clients will display it as a quote toot, and everyone else can follow the link to see what is being talked about. I know, it is far from ideal.
@seachanger speaking as someone who had (has?) a moderately popular account and many viral tweets in The Other Place, these features absolutely do not mitigate having the same reply 1000 times over, because the issue is people just think their point is Special and Unique so will make it over and over nonetheless; it's simply a product of reach.
@seachanger from my perspective, it absolutely was not and once a tweet got Out There it would be the same replies over and over, maybe people replying to the top two bad replies and replying-all so there's now an argument in the mentions (arguably even more annoying). And then if it gets to big, it would be QT-ed, which led to even more of the same replies and same QT notifications.
The only actually good feature twitter had in curbing that was being able to switch off replies.
@seachanger that said, the QT feature was very cathartic from my end, meant I could pick a couple of bad replies at random and set my followers on them, but in my experience it was never, in any way, constructively helpful to stopping the reply thing because at the end of the day it's just jerks being jerks
@seachanger tbh I feel like the problem you outline is broadly a human problem - experienced fedi users know that not all replies show up - especially abusive ones - and that's a product of how federation works, so the big problem isn't threading or quoting to increase reach, but white users denying there's a problem to sweep it under the carpet.
@seachanger I wonder if there are mastodon alternatives that allow someone to disable commenting on a post by post or account level basis. That can allow people to make clear if their posts are open for discussion or not.
@adhdmarie@franktaber@seachanger For what it's worth, there's been discussion among the mastodon discord development channel about the need for limited reply settings for posts in order to be compatible on a technical level for Threads federation, so hopefully we get follower-only, following-only, mutuals-only modes sometime soon.
@adhdmarie
mastodon could have been a forerunner regarding comment permissions, but eugen rochko chose a different path many moons ago, quite like evan prodromou and christine lemmer-webber, as reported by mike macgirvin
@seachanger 💯 this post by @seachanger. Not only are quote needs missing (you need web-app hacks), servers do not download all replies to a post. If your instance has no links to users, it just doesn't know. Since users encouraged each other late 2022 to take part in post-discussions, it grows into horror reply guy situations.
@seachanger I'd really like to see a client developed that has these settings for "power users". For example a sentiment analysis to classify replies would be extremely useful.
Email has this (Gmail's inbox tabs, Outlook's focused/other).
@seachanger i have linked & shamed the worst of replies and it was effective (it's not a full solution, but just saying that it has been effective for me to link & shame)
@seachanger this isn't super effective for reply guys, unfortunately because they're usually not the worst of replies
(like, i'm talking about when people tell me that my frustration regarding accessibility and image descriptions makes them want to purposefully exclude blind people from the internet levels of the worst)
i wonder though if there is some value in aggregating the reply guys as links to point it out
obviously, still doesn't fix the root of the problem, but might at least make me feel better when it's overwhelming me
@seachanger i have trouble thinking it's folks who can't see the replies because typically when i get hit with reply guys they're usually on the same few instances, so would be able to see each other
but my demographic of reply guys aren't the same as POC deal with
looking at popular toots or just in general POC accounts with large followings on other instances is honestly painful
i feel like more people should do that sometimes
just see what things look like via mastodon.social
@seachanger Wondering aloud the effectiveness of a #UI#UX implementation disabling/greying out the reply button until you have read the parent thread to the bottom. Not unlike a terms of service, eula type workflow.
No matter it's effectiveness, expecting a "Thanks, we hate it" response from users.
@seachanger And this is why I want to hit people (with a sturdy foam bat) who say you shouldn't block or mute people over here.
You absolutely should, and early, because there are fields full of reply guys out there and cutting them off from you at the least and at the root if you're an admin is both easy and necessary.
There are big voids, and there are smaller voids. Scream your thoughts into either and expect equal effect, as the differences in their echoes are meaningless.
@seachanger In thinking about this, I haven't quite been able to figure out yet if the tech issue is an underlying structural or operational problem. Structurally, ServerOps may ban or limit content from other servers - which would hide some replies from some viewers. Operationally, smaller or under-resourced servers will suffer from queue lag, so replies may not appear in a timely manner on the user's insurance. Overall, I agree that more controls are needed to limit or deal with replies - and there are numerous suggestions being voted on and considered in the development repository. I'm glad people are calling out these issues, as it's the only way we can push for improvements.
@seachanger
Thank you for raising this issue. I find it frustrating that I can't see what it is you're responding to. I'm the sort of person who learns by example rather than from explanation, so until I can see directly what the problem is, I can't really understand it. It's like listening to someone talking on the phone; I get the outrage, and I believe it's justified, but I can't wrap my head around the situation as a whole. If there are tech solutions to this, I'm all for them!
@seachanger@bosak I also never have the kinds of toots that would generate this problem and am definitely having trouble understanding how QTs would fix this. It feels like maybe a more productive solution would be something else entirely - but I suspect we'll run into the "people not reading" problem no matter what.
I wish there was some social media diagram equivalent of the coding minimal reproducible example!
@seachanger There’s quote tooting (?) on Mona, the iOS app, and likely some other iOS apps. And your post can be targeted at a ltd audience, but that can be easily overridden with a click (even unintentionally)
@seachanger At the very least there should be a "fetch more replies" button and when you click "reply" there should be an alert encouraging you to "fetch more replies" first. Wouldn't solve all the reply problems, but might reduce redundancy.
@seachanger is there a mechanism to hide (or even delete) individual reply comments? That would be great. Especially if a memo could be left behind (e.g. "addressed elsewhere").
QT would definitely be helpful, but I'm not 100% sold on the pros outweighing the cons yet (unless you can control the QT-ability of your own posts).
Anyways, I'm #NewHere so my ignorance is genuine at least. 😜
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