@djsundog

[*promptly returns crown*]

@balrogboogie Perhaps I should have used the word "dictate", but there are definitely obnoxious ways to ask, and the point is that it's your feed and nobody's forcing anyone to read it if they don't like it.

@Gargron ok, that makes more sense. And I agree, there is asking and there is dictating, and if you can you should definitely avoid doing the latter

@balrogboogie Liiiike you have your own audience, you don't have to adjust to every single person who comes along with a demand. If you're a journalist or political activist and all you talk about is news/politics there's little point in insisting you tag your news/politics posts, people who follow you follow you *for* that shit

@Gargron I sort-of agree with that, but if you're gonna post a lot of without a CW that probably should be behind a CW, I think you should at least post them such that they don't end up in the federated TL

@balrogboogie @gargron yeah my issue with this is Local/Federated TLs, and boosts. A lot of people are less strict with boosting non-CW’d content than with their own CW usage. This would be somewhat mitigated by the ability to add CWs to boosts.

@gargron @balrogboogie also worth considering: if someone is complaining about a lack of CW, it is likely because they were just exposed to content they didn’t want to. It’s reasonable for them to be upset, and that might show through a bit in the wording and that’s understandable. It may be slightly annoying for the person receiving the complaint, but I don’t think those two are equivalent.

@balrogboogie @gargron also the whole, "just unfollow/mute" as a universal solution is frustrating. Sounds a lot like a lot of the fossbro arguments about how everyone should run desktop linux. some people are important sources of news and information. i can't just unfollow, for example, you, because well, you get boosted a lot, and muting you comes at a cost because you're the lead developer of mastodon, and if i care about mastodon i need to follow you.

@balrogboogie @gargron these have been really rambly and i'm sorry about that. basically though, what this amounts to is:

what exactly is the cost of CWing content? Aside from edge cases of like, people's identities being othered by CWs, what is the cost of adding a tag so that people know what kind of content is in a post before reading? a few seconds of typing?

compare to the cost of not CWing: inevitably exposing ppl to unwanted stuff + excluding them from community and discussion.

@LogicalDash @gargron Eugen has a fairly consistent social prescription strategy and I think it’s sound. We can’t control other people. We can only control their access to us. If someone hurts, we let them know. If they don’t do anything, we rectify access and move on.

@sophia @gargron yeah I was subtooting the rest of the discourse, I guess I was unclear. Sorry

@gargron @LogicalDash I mean this is also why repeatedly harassing someone after they ask you to stop is bannable in the CoC of many instances. I prefer solutions where we don’t reach to block but.

@jakobpunkt @Gargron he's more referring to people who make demands, not ask or try to inform. people who decide to try to make everyone do things the way they want.

they may not be the majority but they are kind of a toxic loudness on a lot of sites.

@kellycrow @jakobpunkt @Gargron Yeah, this is less "hey, would you please CW your posts about spiders?" and more (these are actual posts I have seen) "If you want to be on Mastodon you have to CW political talk" and "my instance will block anyone who uses CWs for jokes".

@noelle @kellycrow @Gargron makes sense. Thanks!

@Gargron

I agree with @paulfree14. CWs exist primarily for the benefit of readers, not writers. If the writer only uses them how *they* see fit, then any discrepancy between that and what their readers need/prefer represents a problem.

Readers talking about what *they* would prefer is part of the process of arriving at good uses.

Unfollowing and muting are crude solutions at best, and exist on pretty much every other social platform ever. Mastodon is better than that.

@woozle @maloki @Gargron @paulfree14 Relatively consistent use of CWs creates a more pleasant environment for us all.

@woozle @Gargron @paulfree14 I don't want anyone telling me how to use a functionality or not. This is federated space, that's why. No, it's not public space. If it were, there would be crazy differences in how people act: some would watch people go naked, as it is legal in their country, or even make love in a park, as it is legal in their country, while others would chase them with pitchforks, as Trump is legal in their country.

@how ( @paulfree14 )

<coughs politely>

Well, if you don't like people *suggesting* how you do stuff...

...then as @Gargron suggested, perhaps you should unfollow or mute.

...unless, of course, that seems like a bad solution.

<anticipatory face>

@woozle @paulfree14 @Gargron

Isn't it what I just said?

@how @paulfree14 @Gargron

I'm glad you understand that muting or unfollowing isn't a good solution.

So now you understand why it's important to have discussions about how people use CWs.

(You're welcome.)

@woozle @paulfree14 @Gargron

Don't put words in my mouth. I find a good use of CW that we can have "threads" that don't pollute everybody's timelines.

On the other hand, I'm firmly sharing @Gargron's position, and not yours. Although the CW might be for readers, as you suggested, I, as a writer, don't want any reader's morality sit on my freedom of expression. This is because there are way too many moralities that contradict each other. Complexity begs to differ.

@woozle @Gargron @how
😁 do you see the irony of your post?

You just joined in a discourse that's about to make needs visable and build around that while making your need visable that claims to be about not wanting to hear them from others.

@paulfree14 @woozle @Gargron You misread me obviously.

@woozle @how
I think you don't understand the implications of what you've said.

What's wrong about my interpretation.

@paulfree14 @woozle

Please be kind and explain to me what are the implications of what I said that I do not understand.

@how @paulfree14

You are agreeing that just unfollowing people is insufficient remedy for dealing with problematic behavior, yes?

@woozle @paulfree14

I didn't know I ever mentioned that. I talked about the CW functionality, and how reader's morality as a guideline to use it was inadequate.

Dealing with "problematic behavior" doesn't mean much to me, since there are such behaviors that we may agree to qualify as problematic, and others that we might disagree qualifying as problematic... According to our ethics, right?

@how @paulfree14

Did I misread you here? --

~~~~~
me: if you don't like people *suggesting* how you do stuff, perhaps you should unfollow or mute. ...unless, of course, that seems like a bad solution.

you: Isn't it what I just said?
~~~~~

It sounds like you're agreeing that unfollowing/muting isn't a good solution for dealing with people whose behavior you find problematic -- but if that's not the case, then please clarify your position.

@woozle @paulfree14

What you hear is what you want to hear. My position is: "I don't want anyone telling me how to use a functionality or not."

Meaning: I don't want readers complaining that I should use CW or not to satisfy their inability to deal with stuff I would post.

That's because I won't shitpost for example. And yes, I unfollow people who shitpost, because I'm not interested in dealing with their shit.

Now if it were political, I wouldn't need CW...

@paulfree14 @woozle

Because I can choose by myself whether to engage or not in a political discussion.

I also know that there are children out there in this federated space, and that's why I don't shitpost.

If people like to share gore, they probably want to do it responsibly, on specific domains that don't federate with every other instance. Having CW won't change anything to their posting, will it? Are you gonna spoon-feed them your ethics?

@how @paulfree14

The problem is, you're doing the same thing you're saying we shouldn't do, just with a different topic.

You don't want people telling you how to use CWs.

We don't want you telling us what we can't talk about.

Do you see how this is a problem?

@woozle @paulfree14

> We don't want you telling us what we can't talk about.

I'm not telling you what you cannot talk about!

@how @paulfree14

In that case, nobody's telling you how to use CWs, either.

@woozle @paulfree14

You are arguing that readers should have a say in how CW is used. I'm saying they cannot. The rest of your argument is simply that I'm not telling what I'm telling. This is silly.

@how @paulfree14

What do you mean by "cannot"? If a community (e.g. the users of a particular instance) agree that CWs should be used a certain way, and the admins decide to put it in the CoC, then the readers and the writers (many of whom are the same people, of course) do both get a say in how CWs are used.

Many CoCs do in fact include guidelines for CW usage. This is not a new thing.

@woozle @paulfree14 Yes, but you solve that on an instance's level, not at federation level. See our code of conduct at https://s10y.eu/ You can only solve CW at your own server, and even there you only enforce compliance by muting or banning people, not much different from what anyone would do for their own stream, is it?

@how @paulfree14

That's pretty much what we've been talking about, yeah.

If you were under the impression that I was advocating some kind of Mastodon-wide enforcement of CW standards, then I apologize for being unclear about that.

@how @paulfree14 @Gargron

I was making a point: your position is inconsistent.

@woozle @paulfree14 @Gargron

How is that inconsistent?

@Concerned_Catgirl @gargron gargron_Irl