Mastodon Migration
☝️ Very interesting and informative article on Quote Posting. Really appreciate that the Mastodon dev team is talking to the community and thinking this through...
"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."
Maxi 10x 💉
@mastodonmigration @heliomass Also nice research: https://github.com/mastodon/specs-background/blob/main/quote-posts/quote-posts-research-and-goals.md
The Sleight Doctor 🃏
@mastodonmigration @heliomass These details of implementation are in that category of ideas so simple and obvious, no-one has thought of them before!
The whole opposition to QTs comes from control being with the QTer, thus opening up a vector for coordinated harassment. I know what it's like being bombarded with aggressive comments because some 5-figure follower account has rallied their minions with a QT.
Even as someone who isn't vulnerable, it still raised my stress levels through the roof.
Rich Felker
@mastodonmigration @ApostateEnglishman @heliomass Yes. The whole point is that you can control globally whether or not you want this kind of exposure to begin with, in addition to just blocking particular instances of it.
Mastodon Migration
@ApostateEnglishman @heliomass
That makes sense. Seems like the implementation would per.it you to block posts from ever being quoted too. Perhaps opting out entirely is the safest thing to do unless you are prepared for the potential abuse.
Mastodon Migration
@ApostateEnglishman @heliomass
Curious if you think the ability to deny the ability to quote your posts, changes this power balance?
The Sleight Doctor 🃏
@mastodonmigration @heliomass It's a big improvement, but wouldn't prevent the scenario of being *offline* for a few hours, only to return to 200+ notifications from strangers all spoiling for a fight because some large account whipped them up by QTing you out-of-context.
At that point, the damage is already done regardless of whether you withdraw the QT.
But if you catch it straight away? Yeah, that would stop the abusive behaviour in its tracks. So I guess the answer to you is, "yes and no".
Rich Felker
@mastodonmigration @lauren @heliomass 👆 This. Folks can always switch to a screenshot if needed, but removing the semantic "quoted context" makes it hard for the audience of the person doing the quoting to initiate unwanted contact with the original author.
I think the ability to take oneself out of quoted context will also help prevent quoting from turning into a substitute for functioning moderation like it was on :birdsite: (i.e. relying on mob to do the work mods weren't doing) and encourage continuing to just report something if it's abusive rather than quoting it for everyone to see. (This will also help avoid folks just seeing a bunch of outrage bait.)
Mastodon Migration
"...since anyone who really wanted to quote a public post could do so with a screen grab of the post of interest, creating the potential for new battles."
As happens now.
Lauren Weinstein
@mastodonmigration @heliomass The ability to remove quoted posts from quoting posts is a recipe for misinformation disasters, since it removes the context of the post that did the quoting. I would strenuously and publicly object to this. I would also note that the ability to say you don't want posts quoted could open a can of worms, since anyone who really wanted to quote a public post could do so with a screen grab of the post of interest, creating the potential for new battles.
Rich Felker
@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass I hope they have a means to make it so quotes that have been edited will show as "edited since quoting occurred". It seems like this should be easy to do: it's just quoted.lastedittime > quoting.lastedittime.
But I actually don't think it's all that important, because the intent here is not for quoting to be *adversarial* like it often was on :birdsite:. If you're quoting someone who has the power to remove themselves from your quote or edit the contents, there's a strong incentive to quote only people who want to be quoted by you.
Lauren Weinstein
@mastodonmigration @heliomass Yes, that's another context disaster issue.
Mastodon Migration
Guess another thing that should be mentioned in this can of worms is the ability to edit a quoted post. 🤔
Rich Felker
@lauren @raphaelmorgan Your mistake is thinking that the problems came from mechanisms of interaction and not from the toxicity of having the platform run and moderated by people with no interest in wellbeing of the community, only engagement and data mining metrics.
Morgan ⚧️
@lauren if people are inclined to see a post and run with it without context (and you're right, they are), then we absolutely should not be forcing people to keep our posts in someone else's thread without context. If them not seeing my post will lead to them jumping to conclusions, them seeing my out-of-context post will lead to a dogpile of harassment. I will die on the hill that we should try to avoid dogpiles and harassment. Why are you so insistent that we shouldn't?
Lauren Weinstein
@raphaelmorgan What I'm saying is that I saw at scale the problems that can occur with deleted posts and edited posts and other kinds of contextual problems related to threads, both related to G+ and YouTube, during my times working inside Google. And based on that experience having seen what happens at scales ranging from tiny to enormous, my view is that the proposed methodology for dealing with quoted posts on Mastodon is repeating some of the mistakes I saw. But as I said, if that's the path Mastodon devs wants to take, that's their choice of course. And like I said earlier, good luck. I mean that. Cause it's gonna be needed, and I don't want to see Mastodon pulled into new sets of problems, because I do enjoy Mastodon. And that's about all I have to say about this.
Morgan ⚧️
@lauren as long as there's an indication that it was once a quote post, I cannot overstate how easy it is to go "damn, no context, guess I don't get to know"
Lauren Weinstein
@raphaelmorgan You're assuming most people pay enough attention to realize this. Actually, they usually don't, and misunderstandings based on loss of context (or not even realizing the context was lost) can quickly get out of control. I saw this firsthand at Google when the Google+/YouTube comments integration took place, something I argued strenuously against and that was eventually rescinded, but not before Google+ was seriously damaged reputationally.
Morgan ⚧️
@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass if someone is harassing me, I frankly don't care what information you can see. It will not kill you not to see my post. What do you do when people block you, cry to their admins that you don't have all the information so you need them to undo it?
There is no way that seeing a quote post missing a quote is all that dangerous. If you don't have all the info, just scroll
Morgan ⚧️
@lauren @mastodonmigration @heliomass if there's a notice of "this was a quote post but the original author pulled out" it's not *mis*information, just a *lack* of information. No one is entitled to the information in my posts. So if someone does a quote post and the original quoted post isn't in it, you can just scroll and accept that you don't have all the information! Everyone knowing the context of every post is NOT more important than safety.
Lauren Weinstein
@raphaelmorgan @mastodonmigration @heliomass Lack of foundational information can be equally dangerous on a long and complex thread.
Rich Felker
@lauren @raphaelmorgan And yes, Google has been Evil since the beginning. I'm sorry that's hard to come to terms with for people who were working there, but there's no need to project that onto communities who are building a future that's not controlled by the likes of them.
Rich Felker
@lauren @raphaelmorgan When I say Google was always evil, I don't mean the people working there weren't well meaning, but the system was evil all along because it was predicated on debt to investors who expected huge returns.
I watched for decades as people in various parts of the company believed they were doing good and it was "just a coincidence" that the things they were doing were enabling bad actors and that they somehow weren't assigned/allowed to do the obvious things to fix that.
Lauren Weinstein
@dalias @raphaelmorgan Google was not evil from the beginning. It certainly made a lot of mistakes early on, and over the years matured into world class expertise in a bunch of important areas, especially security and privacy. Absolutely top notch. I've worked with many of the involved individuals. G+ was problematic for several reasons (it really began as more of an identity service than a standalone social media platform, and the YouTube comments integration was an absolute train wreck that was rescinded too late). In my view, it's been rapidly downhill at Google since Sundar took over, but there was a bunch of very good years of which Googlers can be very proud of their work.
Lauren Weinstein
@dalias @raphaelmorgan I am not anti-capitalism, and I do not object to the corporate model per se. Compared to many firms, Google managed a decent balance for many years. Again, I consider the atmosphere under Sundar to be very different and frankly very sad to see.
Rich Felker
@lauren @raphaelmorgan There's a difference between not objecting to the corporate model and not objecting to the VC model. The claim that the latter necessarily produces evil is much weaker than the claim that corporate model in general produces evil.
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