@caterpillar @stefan @ErickaSimone sure. I'd rather be in a place that has both good visibility controls and good interaction controls than in a place with only one of them
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These are just classic Bluesky features. It seems to me that Mastodon's solution of restricting the visibility of posts makes more sense than just restricting the reply function, because people can quote and comment on the post. The Bluesky quote function has already been copied by Mastodon, and I don't think Mastodon should become a second Bluesky, especially since everyone thinks Bluesky is so bad.
"restricting the visibility of posts makes more sense than just restricting the reply function"
I've said this in another thread, but will repeat it here: As a straight white dude I never have to choose between reaching a wider audience and staying safe. I can always post publicly without ever thinking about this.
@stefan @caterpillar @ErickaSimone hell, as a straight white guy it's still useful to me anyway: I tried to ask what I thought was a reasonable question of a prominent Black guy over on Bluesky. He didn't want to have that conversation, and he turned off replies. Fine! Strong signal, message taken, he doesn't want to talk about this with me, I can think about why, and leave him alone.
You know that the current options on Mastodon offer a higher level of protection for people than simply turning off replies?
@caterpillar @stefan @ErickaSimone the dynamics of harassment, "reply guy" type behavior and other things that people want to see change here are best dealt with by an evolving set of safety tools. Existing visibility tools have value and help to curb certain types of behavior. But they demonstrably are not enough by themselves
When people who are targeted, who experience harassment, etc. tell me that certain tools might help make this a better place for them, I believe them.
That's true.
The question is whether people have already had experience with these tools and therefore know whether they are helpful for what they want to do.
Bluesky users know that "everything is public, restrict interaction" is not enough because they have experienced it themselves.
@caterpillar @stefan @ErickaSimone sure. I'd rather be in a place that has both good visibility controls and good interaction controls than in a place with only one of them
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@caterpillar That might be great news for all the people who gave the fediverse a genuine try and have been driven away.
Yes, above all, it's a good reason not to create even more opportunities for bullies. But that's just my personal impression.
@caterpillar @ricci @stefan blue sky is just as evil. This is what twitter was trying to do before it tanked. There should be a full safer team.
Also, again. I don’t know if restricting visibility really works for the reasons you listed. Also, because of mastodons hostile environment, someone’s always going to find a way to say something. So how do you address that part when it happens is what I want to focus on.
That's kind of the problem with decentralized networks. They can't offer consistent protection/moderation. It's not technically possible, and because the freedom to moderate is delegated to individual servers and their operators.
@caterpillar @ErickaSimone @stefan by the way if you're curious about what fraction of your timeline and audience are moderated by various servers, I built a tool for that: https://moderation-explorer.online/
@ricci Remember seeing this a while ago very cool!