Screenshot of BlueSky post showing the power of composable moderation.

Tanguy Fardet

@jdp23 do you have examples of what could be done to limit abuse from followers-only replies?
I did not know it was used for harassment, though it now seems obvious in hindsight, but I know many who use them legitimately and would be curious to know whether/how the potential for harm could be mitigated.
@mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke @Bam @SRLevine

Mastodon Migration

@Gargron @Bam @mekkaokereke

Interesting reply post on the subject in this thread by @UlrikeHahn discussing the important GDPR privacy preserving features of this mode, as well as the need to address potential issues.

Ulrike Hahn (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] “followers only” is privacy preserving in that your posts are not public, which has important legal implications under GDPR. If they constitute personal data (as is likely) they cannot be scraped, collected, stored, (eg to train an AI system) except with very specific Art 9 exemptions. That they are a vector for abuse is horrific, and desperately needs fixing, but a lack of data privacy generates algorithmic harms too.

FediScience.org (fediscience.org)

Nemo

@mastodonmigration
Surely, there is no positive interaction happening if I reply to you in a way that you cannot reply to me.

I don't know the technical aspects of it, but as a user, I would wish replies to always have symmetrical rights.

@Gargron @Bam @mekkaokereke

Dave "Wear A Goddamn Mask" Cochran :donor:

@mathaetaes @janhelms @mastodonmigration @Bam @mekkaokereke i just sent an example "followers-only" reply. Did you see it?

Mastodon Migration

@dave_cochran @mathaetaes @janhelms @Bam @mekkaokereke

Answered your followers only reply:

"This account sees it. This account does not follow you, but is @ mentioned. It seems like this is the issue with the mode. You can @ mention a target, but the only other accounts that can see your post are your followers."

Dawn Ahukanna

@jdp23 @mastodonmigration @mekkaokereke @Bam @SRLevine
Posting about this unsuitable technical implementation from a conversation experience perspective - https://mastodon.social/@dahukanna/113216625933703711

lj·rk

@mekkaokereke I do notice it, and I understand somewhat of the why – I just don't understand why the solution that worked for me doesn't work for them because the problems superficially resemble mine, a white queer person.

On mastodon.social I had similar problems w.r.t. moderation etc., other people getting shit moderated away which left me alone reading transphobic comments. On my new instance not anymore.

Stefan Bohacek

@Gargron

"Some people prefer to keep their posts to a closed group of people"

The use case discussed here is a bit different.

You can tag a non-follower in your post, then set the post to followers-only, making it so that the person you mentioned can see your post, your followers can pile on, and nobody else gets to witness this.

There really is no reason for this functionality, a followers-only post should not be shown to people who are not followers.

@mastodonmigration @Bam @mekkaokereke

the people's eva

@ljrk @mekkaokereke look at mekka's response to you again, and apply what he said about white people to white moderators. Almost every moderator on the fediverse is white. That's why it doesn't work.

lj·rk

@tillshadeisgone @mekkaokereke I understand that, but I don't understand how that's a reason why the solution wouldn't work.

Specifically, this was the same for non-queer-aligned servers in the fedi as well. While the fedi is generally more queer than maybe some other platforms, many mods used to be cis-het and the policies often didn't recognize queerphobia much. That's why "we" did our own servers. This has both provided us with a safe-space as well as pushed the entire fedi slightly more queer because it provided reason for influx of (white) queer people.

And I just don't understand why this approach does not work for the BIPoC community as well

Semitones

@ljrk @tillshadeisgone @mekkaokereke From what I've read, it's because ActivityPub itself was unfriendly towards features black Twitter relied on (like quote tweets) and just telling people to fork it if they didn't like it.

lj·rk

@semitones @tillshadeisgone @mekkaokereke That's something specific to Mastodon but not AP in general, I'd say. Specifically, many queer instances use a Misskey fork that have Quote-Posts for that reason (amongst others).

What I'm saying is: I totally agree that the "standard" Mastodon on a somewhat "apolitical" instance is bad for the BIPoC community... as it is for *any* discriminated-against group indeed. But the beauty of the Fedi is that we can build our community and do *not* need to depend on 3rd party white cis savior-type dudes to help us.

(Side note: A lot of resistance against QP came from the trans community because we've seen QP weaponized for targeted harassment. Mastodon often prioritizes this kind of safety over features. A proposed solution was to add a permission-system for QP. But I think this went no-where for Mastodon itself.)

mekka okereke :verified:

@ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

Your confusion is understandable! And thank you for sticking with it to try to understand, and for being brave enough to ask these questions.

The part that is not connecting, for you, and for many people, is that other marginalized identities are not like being Black. Racism is worse, and more pervasive. People often use their other marginalized identities as a shield, from behind which they can be even more racist than non marginalized people. 🤯

1/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

I need folks to pay attention to what I said, because this is a point that is easy to confuse or get wrong:

* White women are *not* more racist than white men
* Trans people are *not* more racist than cis people

That's not what's going on.

But when a white woman is racist, or a trans person is racist, most people with privilege do not know how to even address that, without being accused of misogyny or transphobia.

So there is no defense.

2/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

And there is a reflexive desire in people that haven't fully unpacked their racism, to jump to the defense of white women, and give them the benefit of the doubt in every situation.

This is the inverse of the racism that jumps to attack Black men and never give them the benefit of the doubt.

They're both sides of the same racism coin.

3/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

It's really easy to see when you unfairly accused a Black man of something. It's very hard to see when you make excuses for racist white women

As I've said on here many times, defending Black women or calling out racism from white women, triggers more aggressive pushback than anything I say.

More pushback than from cops and GOP politicians who follow me from their puppet accounts. More than from literal *self-described white nationalists*. Not joking.

4/N

mekka okereke :verified:

@ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone

So here's what Black folk have been trying to say for years, that triggers so much push back from a lot of Mastodon:

A lot of the white trans women that built community in the early Fediverse, were super racist. A lot of the white trans women still on the Fediverse today, are super racist. They are *not* more racist than the white cis men on the Fediverse. But people who are racist and trans on the Fediverse, too often get a free pass for their nonsense.

5/5

Jon

Great diagrams, thank for sharing! @[email protected]

Jon

I haven't analyzed it in any detail, and it's quite possible that the mechanism needs to be rethought completely -- @[email protected] has some great thoughts in Right of Reply. And in general, what's really needed is a detailed analysis of the abuse vectors and how to mitigate them, using social threat modeling or some other structured technique -- here's an example of social threat modeling for quote boosts.

A couple of specific potential improvements:

* The abuse cases I've heard of all come from having the reply visible to a different audience than the original post. So, having the reply to a followers-only post visible to the original poster's followers (not the replier's followers) would cut one vector. @[email protected] has a good discussion here with helpful diagrams. A picture really is worth a thousand words! I believe it already works that way on Friendica and Hubzilla, but it turns out that this is hard on Mastodon, let alone making it work across implementations.

* It's also possible that followers-only replies to public and unlisted posts might need to be prohibited. It's counter-intuitive that decreasing the audience (as opposed to adding new people) can be an abuse vector, but "private RTs" (followers-only retweets of public posts) were seen as such a problem on Twitter that they wound up getting rid of them.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD

@mekkaokereke @ljrk @semitones @tillshadeisgone I am in all the privileged groups, but I am trying to understand what other people experience. One thing that I notice is that there are fewer Black Americans in my feed than their proportion of the population. The Fediverse is less dominated by people in the USA than the old Twitter was, with more people from Europe, and Europe has a smaller Black population, so that might be part of it.