Here's my take on pingbacks:
1. The sheer amount of "public" data on the internet allows people to have "public" whispernetwork conversations with the expectation that the problematic person is unlikely to notice.
2. People are unclear about what a "public" toot is. Unlisted? Still public.
3. Because of #1 and #2, pingbacks set up the most vulernable users so that problematic people will get a *notification* of people linking to a problematic website.
This will lead to more online harassment
Additionally, pingbacks themselves become a vector for abuse. Nazis discussing your latest post about mastodon content warnings helping trans folks avoid transphobic triggers? Yeah, you're going to see every comment they make.
Turn pingback off on your blog, you say? Unfortunately I want to leave them on so I have some idea when I get linked on a shitty site and need to lock my social media down. I just don't need to see every comment people make when linking to a page. That would be hell.
For every new software feature you want to add, think, "How would a group of persistent, tech savvy people use this feature to harass someone."
Maybe that means you decide not to implement it. Maybe that means you work on something else that would support people who get the majority of harassment.
@sphakos from your description here, I feel like it's both good and bad. For more or less the same reason. Like "it's bad that I can see bad people talking about me, and it's good that I can see bad people talking about me so I can prepare if something specific is about to happen"
