Is there some technical reason why followers only posts that mention another account couldn't be made visible to followers of the poster + followers of anyone mentioned, instead of the current situation where they're visible to followers of the poster and only the mentioned person? That does seem to me to be a technical fix that would instantly make a lot of hidden abuse visible and easier to eradicate but is there something I'm missing about why that would be a bad idea?
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@afewbugs Yeah, I still haven't seen a good explanation for why this specific behavior is useful, or why it can't be removed, other than "this is how it is right now".
Have you seen https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26937?
Opened since 2023.
It's obviously always been important to tackle technical issues facilitating abuse on here, but with the likely future influx of people from the US now BlueSky is supporting ICE and from the EU with the move to switch from US to #EuropeanAlternatives, making sure they're safe when they get here is getting even more urgent
@afewbugs agreed. i've seen a ticket suggesting something similar on the mastodon github page. it was not well received — but suggestions for change there rarely are, sadly.
@afewbugs
As a bad actor, I can tag an account with lots of followers to hijack that follower count & get my post seen by them?
@qwwerty the way I would imagine it working would that it would be visible to followers of the people tagged but not appear in their feed by default, so if the followers clicked on the post mentioning someone they were following they could see all replies
@afewbugs That would solve that issue. I think another problem would be people unexpectedly sharing something wider than they intended. I'm thinking posts like "<mentioned big account> is a real inspiration. They've dealt with <private issue> before, and I find their posts really help me with my <same private issue>"
@qwwerty I think that's part of an existing issue with privacy settings not really being very well explained on here though and could be fixed with better information, we already have a bit of a problem with people not realising direct messages go to everyone mentioned and you can't dm person 1 about person 2 without person 2 receiving it
@afewbugs
I wonder if the answer here is that followers-only posts shouldn't be visible to mentioned non-followers. That'd prevent them being used for hidden abuse & make the label "followers only" more closely aligned to what it does.
@qwwerty that's an idea, though still wouldn't stop people flagging a target to recruit for a pile on - even if the target can't see what's being said about them they could potentially still be doxxed or attacked on another platform say. But it would be an improvement
@afewbugs no, why would I want that?
@Tattooed_Mummy it's a tool that some racially abusive accounts are using. If arsehole@nasty.instance makes a followers only post mentioning person@minoritised.indentity and targeting them for abuse, all arsehole@nasty.instance's followers can see it and then pile on person@minoritised.indentity with more abuse and person has to block them all individually but none of their own followers can see it and help report.
@afewbugs @Tattooed_Mummy I was just about to make the same comment! It's a serious vector of abuse and one reason a lot of minority groups are convinced no-one cares about the harassment they're facing on here. Instances dedicated to abuse know how to make it so none of the target's followers can even see it. Which has the added ancillary benefit of making the target look hysterical and/or delusional when they start complaining in public posts about it.
There's gotta be a fix for this. 🤷🏻♂️
@ApostateEnglishman @afewbugs @Tattooed_Mummy
There is support in the protocol that allows for better moderation/reply tools in situations like this. I saw a recent conversation about it around here but I can't find it now.
That support however - is in the protocol - but as of yet not yet implemented in the client/server I believe (hence the discussion) I'll look a bit more in case I find it but wanted to share this ahead of time :)
@afewbugs as I said they can screen shot, post follower only and report.
I don't want to lose the ability to speak to only one person or followers plus a person just because some people misuse it