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1. Embed this notice
   John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:08 JST John Blair

   I’ve read posts from a few people wanting the ability to block or delete hostile posts that appear in their threads. I think this would be a great feature. Unfortunately, the way activity pub works makes this difficult, if not impossible!

   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:00 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @jdblair it feels like an incongruent desire to be able to publish freely to unknown "mailboxes" and at the same time restrict what sort of replies one gets.

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:01 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     Now I do think the ability to remove posts from your thread js a good feature, but it will mean that threads have to be first-class objects in the fediverse, with ownership by the entity that created the thread. This is a big! difficult change!

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:02 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     So to remove someone, or someone’s posts, from your replies, you have to be able to modify that post, without the posters permission, for all instances in the fediverse. This is a lot of power! And it is easy to imagine how this could be abused!

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:03 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     The fediverse is like this. Threads don’t exist except in presentation by Mastodon clients, which construct the thread for you using the in-reply-to information embedded in the post. Otherwise, the posts are all independent, each existing with equal significance in the system. It is our clients, or the mastodon web UI, which creates the concept of a thread with replies.

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:04 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     Now, suppose someone replies to a message on this hypothetical listserv and violated the standards of the community. The user can be blocked from future posts, but the message can’t be removed! It exists on all of the email servers and in all of the email clients of the listserv participants. The conversation is distributed, which makes it resilient, but also prevents removing a message from all threads.

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:05 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     Think of a classic listserv. When you reply to a message on the listserv, the only connection to the reply is the subject (most email clients prepend Re:) and various headers, like In-Reply-To, which are also set by the client. Email clients can use this information to present threaded views of the dialog.

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:23:07 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     To understand why, it helps to think of the fediverse less like twitter or facebook (a centralized server that controls the presentation of posts), and more like email.

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     John Blair (jdblair@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 19-Dec-2023 17:35:35 JST John Blair

     in reply to

     • phiofx

     @phiofx this is exactly the problem!