"New Mastodon accounts should be private by default."
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Private accounts are *more* social. They're about connecting with people you know and care about, rather than broadcasting to the aether.
Fewer, deeper connections, and more comfort sharing real details about your real life.
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@evan We already get complaints about needing to opt-in to features people consider essential for a social network, this would confuse people.
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Nik | Klampfradler 🎸🚲replied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
Option 5: "Default should be an instance setting"
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@evan Have you done a poll on if Threads accounts should/should not be federated by default? I feel like that's in the same vein of discussion
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Brooke Vibber :blobcatcoffee:replied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
@evan @luis_in_brief *nod* i want social networks where i can communicate with people who have something fun or interesting to say, not social media where i passively ingest what a few celebrities produce en masse.
of course, i'm probably not a very profitable customer for ad-supported networks
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BeAware :fediverse:replied to Tom Casavant last edited by
@tom it would be an irrelevant poll because meta already said they don't plan on ever doing that.️
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@tom I have not!
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Brooke Vibber :blobcatcoffee:replied to Brooke Vibber :blobcatcoffee: last edited by
@evan @luis_in_brief more generally i just think panopticon culture is *really creepy* and i think we need to get out of it, not embed it into our social expectations
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@Gargron Do we know if any other social networks are private by default? I can think of Snap and BeReal, but there are probably others.
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How do you get to know people if it defaults to private? I like the concept of private groups you can join or be invited to, like WhatsApp, Discord (etc) groups for "closed" social circles. When I joined Mastodon I knew nobody. How does one get get know people with private profiles but with whom you might share similar interests?
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Luis Villareplied to Brooke Vibber :blobcatcoffee: last edited by
@brooke @evan I'm mostly agreed philosophically, but from a product-management perspective, but you can't simultaneously build a twitter-style tool and be defacto DM-first. They're just completely different UIs, user expectations, ways of finding your friends, etc. So if Masto wants to build Signal or Discord on top of activitypub, that's fine! But that's an entirely different product than what they're currently building. And sadly there is no sign they understand any of that.
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@tom @evan @Gargron I was going to mention that too. As a response to criticisms from law makers, users who identify themselves as teenagers on IG are now private by default https://www.platformer.news/instagram-teen-accounts-private-default-daily-limit/?ref=butts
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Raphael Lullisreplied to Evan Prodromou last edited by
Strongly disagree. It's not real privacy and we should not pretend that anything on a social network is not available. Those that want/need privacy should be instructed to use proper, secure, group communication tools.
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@luis_in_brief @brooke Are you familiar with using friends-only mode in Snap, Instagram, Facebook, or other platforms? It's not SecureDrop. It's just a more pleasant, personal system where you can be more vulnerable.
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infinite love ⴳreplied to Eugen Rochko last edited by
@Gargron @evan maybe the people are wrong. maybe their expectations are shaped by hostile design of the past decade+. maybe we shouldn't replicate that design.
arguably this specific example is one of the lower-stakes ones, but "auto approve follow requests" defaulting to "true" is more accurate to what's really happening than "manually approve follower requests" defaulting to "false". spec/protocol-wise, all Follow activities need to be Accepted. that's the default flow.
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@hallenbeck @luis_in_brief you already know people, though.
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Evan Prodromoureplied to Doctor Popular last edited by
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@evan @luis_in_brief Ah so you're suggesting Mastodon could potentially be something like Signal or WhatsApp and, by default, be a private messenger (with encryption) that you then opt-in to on public posting?
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@hallenbeck @luis_in_brief no, more like Instagram in private mode. You share more personal information with people you already know.