On Bluesky, people are mocking Fedi for its 4,200 Brazilian signups (Bluesky: 2 million), and @AstroKatie complained that last time she tried posting on Fedi, she posted a selfie and some asshole in comments demanded a CW for eye contact.
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@Alon @AstroKatie @Mabande But just quietly, if people do CW eye contact they’re only doing something to try to take care of strangers for whom that might be a thing. That “culture of CWs” — like encouraging alt text which BS used to not do, and now does — is just a way of saying “hey, keep in mind others aren’t living with the same needs or lived experiences as you”. In the end, erring on the side of caution isn’t the worst thing we could do for each other.
Of course there are better and worse ways to point things out. All we can do is try not to be assholes for any reason anywhere even with good intentions.
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@kate @AstroKatie @Mabande It doesn't matter how one points it out; *any* demand for CWs on a fucking selfie because some people don't like seeing face pics is unreasonable. If you want to err on the side of caution, don't write that @-reply policing how other people use the Internet.
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@Alon @kate The people wanting CW's for selfies aren't in the "don't like seeing face pics" category (there's a whole barrelfull of research on neurodivergence and eye-contact), but people _demanding_ CW:s on generally non-traumatic content are assholes (especially as there are tools to handle a lot of the issues).
Please don't confuse the two like an asshole would.(I'll untag @AstroKatie onwards)
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@Mabande @kate When you @-reply someone who posts a selfie with *any* mention of CWs, no matter how politely phrased, it's a demand.
It's also not about neurodivergence. The tech industry is full of autistics who look at face pics just fine. Discords by and for autistics are full of face pics. Entire communities of people on the spectrum, like railfans, largely aren't even on Fedi. CW demands are the combination of neurodivergence with extreme Karenism to the point of sociopathy.
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@Alon @kate You see no difference between unsolicited information sharing ("hey, dude, I can't help notice you post porn in the federated timeline without marking it as sensitive, a lot of people don't appreciate that"), a request ("sup? sorry to bother, but when you're talking about bulimia I'm getting kinda triggered, could you CW or hashtag it so I could filter?"), and a demand ("you _always_ have to CW images!")?
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L'égrégore André ꕭꕬreplied to L'égrégore André ꕭꕬ last edited by
@Alon @kate …
* "It's also not about neurodivergence. The tech industry is full of autistics who look at face pics just fine."
- Not all autistics are the same. Nor do all autistics work in tech (and mastodon's not a tech specific social media). It's almost as if it's called a spectrum for a reason.You've been on here longer than I, so you have to be aware of the old masto CW culture (and relieved that in lots of ways it's gotten better).
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@Mabande @kate A couple points.
1. The unsolicited information sharing example you give is really enfrocing a social media norm: don't post porn on main. Talking about CWs in someone's mentions is also enforcing a social media norm, but it's a stupid norm that most communities have rejected and have chosen to skip Fedi over.
2. Re "not all autistics are the same," that's how it's not like the alt-text norm, which is for *all* blind or low-bandwidth users, and which Bluesky adopted too.
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@Mabande @kate 3. Mastodon is an extremely open source space, with calling it Fedi roughly paralleling calling the operating system GNU/Linux and not just Linux. The demographics here are the same as those of the open source community, Cory Doctorow is a respected user, etc. Not all of tech, but a specific subset thereof; the main difference with the big tech autistics I know is a moral belief that big tech is evil, and this moral belief does not constitute an oppressed class, unlike blindness.
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@Alon @kate 1) "This thing I personally don't like is a stupid norm that no one accepts" is a take. I don't know if it's really a good one, but by all means. Good to see you could differentiate a bit at least.
2) While it's good that BS adopted alt text I doubt they had "low bandwidth" users on the radar (not in the least as the norm in UX accessibility is specifically blind users with a dash of "it's good for SEO too" sprinkled on top).
Care for low bandwidth users is mostly a fedi thing.…
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L'égrégore André ꕭꕬreplied to L'égrégore André ꕭꕬ last edited by
@Alon @kate …
3. Yes, there's a whole lot of autistic techies on mastodon (basically its brand). No, it doesn't mean all autistics here are techies, and it doesn't mean all om 'em are fine with eye contact.
As I said: you've been on here longer than I, so if you haven't only hid in your own little bubble you should have at least noticed the pre-22 usage of CW:s for a (then) relatively large subset of the users.
Now, why you want to whinge about "Big Tech's" haters I don't know, but go ahead. -
Kate Bowlesreplied to L'égrégore André ꕭꕬ last edited by
I’ve also been here a while (2016). I’ve learned CW things that were new to me, that did me no harm to learn. I didn’t feel imposed upon that it was asked for, any more than if someone asks me not to wear shoes in their house.
But I think generalisations are unhelpful now this is so big and diverse. There’s all sorts of cultures and demographics here. Generalising about this is like nationalism, it’s so tempting but can only be incomplete at best, and misleading at worst.
Cultures are diverse, hypothetical, continually evolving. The standard for what counts as demanding behaviour is clearly not agreed on either.
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@kate @Mabande The entire point of this is, it's completely wrong to say that "There’s all sorts of cultures and demographics here." There absolutely are not. This is an extremely monocultural space for first-world tech-literate people; the Brazilians aren't here and Fedi doesn't seem to mind that they've all moved to Bluesky instead. I've even seen people say that Fedi is fine as it is so there's no need to grow. People outside Fedi call Fedi an HOA; special rules and norms are part of it.