Catoblepas

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

In that case the instance you're on is basically the block list, right? That's good, especially if most instances are really dedicated to stamping out that kind of thing. But if/when Mastodon gets big, it becomes a problem of scale.

In practical terms it's kind of unrealistic to expect T&S to deal with people because they have garbage takes; most of their day is going to be dealing with the usual internet nightmare sludge, which is where I think block lists become a real utility on the user end of things. In addition to the advantage of just making the blocked users shout into the void when 90% of the site wants nothing to do with their ass, which I can tell you from observation makes them extremely mad.

On Bluesky anyone who really hates TPOT can make a block list that anyone can subscribe to and you never have to think of it again. You can also easily flag accounts to include on the list.

If TPOT moved en masse to Mastodon, across many different instances, how would someone achieve the same thing? My understanding is they don’t have any similar feature. As long as “just block them all individually or hope they all move to one shitty instance you can block” is the solution, it’s going to fail to attract people.

I’m not talking about targeted harassment specifically, I mean dozens of accounts leaving bigoted remarks on any post about queer subjects that gets traction (more than a few thousand likes). Melon certainly made the problem worse on Twitter, but there’s a reason prior to that they had an entire department dedicated to dealing with that shit: plenty of people see no problem with it, and it makes social media a nightmare for queer people.

If you don’t have a strong trust and safety team, then you need blocking tools that do the heavy lifting. And having to block 50k bigots manually is why I left Twitter. As long as Mastodon doesn’t have anything that can compete with block lists, it’s going to struggle to attract people who need those features.

It is literally night and day for queer people. Large accounts can’t post about queer subjects on Twitter without harassment anymore due to how the algorithm works, but if you subscribe to a couple of block lists on Bluesky that is GONE. You might run into the odd freak, but community run block lists will keep the tide at bay.

When Mastodon takes user safety practices as seriously as Bluesky does I’ll consider switching.

If you think this is the only reproductive healthcare that people are dying for lack of in the US, you have vastly overestimated your expertise of the subject matter.

Oh no, not the same thing I’ve been doing since the mid 90s! I might die if I migrate sites again! Or something.

Making a social network only usable by around 5% of the population and then complaining when only 5% of the population shows up is a pretty indicative attitude of why so many FOSS projects struggle to get widespread adoption. You don’t get to choose how tech literate the population is. You either make it more useable or you accept a limited audience.

Has an aggressively unpleasant user base and nowhere near the blocking functionality that Bluesky has, which is essentially mandatory now for minorities on the internet. Not to mention an onboarding process that can confuse the tech literate, much less the average person.

This comment is not an invitation to talk about how actually it’s very simple and intuitive if you follow a 20 step process that relies on detailed knowledge of how federation works.

I read an article about a leather artist who recycled secondhand Gucci (I think? It was a big name fashion brand is all I recall) bags into wallets and things like that, and despite everything being clearly labeled to make sure nobody could mistake it for an official product, they had a similar experience. I wish I could find the article again, because I don’t remember what came of it and my search skills are failing me.

“Do not comply in advance” includes giving in to despair before fighting. Stay strong and ask for support when you need it, everyone 🫶

I had a friend whose dad was in the military and got served something spiked at a party that popped up on a surprise drug test the next day. It was a huge deal (especially because this was like 40 years ago), he had to go to military court and get people that were at the party to testify for him. He was really fortunate the judge ruled in his favor.

So he’ll stop “trying” to get there (using the hype to scam people) if Harris wins, right?