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I really hope we never reach the point where someone implements a way to silence OTHER people from having an opinion about your post... You have every right to decide what you see, you have no right to decide what other people can see. If i want to see what people have to say about your comment, I should be able to, and you should be powerless to stop me.
@freemo This is implemented in Twitter and it's actually a really nice feature. You could "hide" replies to your own posts. It would then have a little notification to readers saying "some replies have been hidden by the thread poster" and you could click in to see those hidden posts.
It provided what the OP you're quoting wants with reasonable balance for others. And, when you looked at which posts someone chose to hide, it was very revealing about who they are.
I wouldn't mind this feature making its way to Mastodon at all.
@LouisIngenthron as long as readers have the option to turn it off or ignore it i wouldnt have a problem with it..
like there should be a check box, off by default, in settings that says "hide posts the author suggests you to hide"
@sim @freemo We're not talking about the timeline, though, we're talking about a thread.
Someone hiding replies from their thread presumably wouldn't prevent the post from appearing in your timeline if you followed the hidden replier and have replies turned on in your home feed.
I think the feature makes sense because most users treat threads they start as their own property. People can come in and join the conversation if they want, but the host should have the right to kick them out of the thread if they disrupt the party. The person kicked out is then free to start their own competing thread.
I miss the days when the fediverse was a lot more open and we weren't shutting ourselves off from each other with curation. A lot of people have come over since and decided that we need the same attitudes that you get on corporate centralised platforms. How can we be an alternative to that if we copy them?
I would argue that it isn't just a tool. I have seen the fediverse change in its attitude over time, and I don't know if this is just because of the various people involved as humans often filter themselves or if the tools change us and how we communicate with each other. I would also argue that I have more fear being here than I used to and it is hard to pinpoint where that comes from.
I agree with this... unless someone is intentionally blasting hate at me for the sake of hate, id rather not blocka nd disengage.
Its not about being able to ignore it... its about noise..
When I listen to the radio with lots of noise, sure I can ignore it... but it means more of the signal is lost and i need to put in more active effort to hear and decipher the signal... Why do that if I have a filter that can turn off the noise, even if i can ignore it.
Well thats the crux whether we are talking actual radio or online coms... how do you create a filter that cuts out the noise and doesnt effect the signal.... that is an unsolved problem in most fields.
The problem isnt solving... but what we should do is enable the power to the viewer to do what they want... have many tools that provide filters in many forms and let the viewer decide what filters get them the best comrpromise they can. This ultimately depends on what tolerance the user has for noise and how ok the user is with some signal getting lost accidentally.
Until the problem is solved... enable the user to control their view of the world how they see fit.
Well where we are headed and where we are discussing we should head are two different things...
We are talking about enabling the user to choose if they want to agree with the OP or not and hide the replies the OP chooses to hide.. its one filter a viewer can adopt or not, the power is in their hand.
That said the suggestion in the toot I quoted I suspect would not give the viewer the choice at all, but forced upon them... which is where I suspect we are more likely to head.
I do suspect that we are heading towards having these things forced upon us, yeah. This is the power of centralising everything... and I do worry how it will impact our psyche. It's not a stretch to say that social media has an impact on that. We are encouraged to polarise ourselves... especially when you look at algo suggestions or who you are surrounded with.
Uea I think that makes sense as an option too... if i want to hide a post reply just for myself anot others, sure why not...
Though im not sure why someone would want to when they could silence the person.. but i guess a thread-scoped silence might be useful... why not
Well, we can already mute the user and the thread where I am. Being able to mute the thread further would be useful, especially when people have veered off topic and I'm no longer interested in that branch of the thread. But I'm still interested in the topic itself or it is my own thread. I have come across this problem before.
@sim @freemo
> "We are encouraged to polarise ourselves"
Yeah, but that encouragement comes, not from social media, but from thousands of years of evolution teaching our lizard brains that we're safest and most likely to reproduce if we stick to our tribe.
It's one of those problems that people keep trying to fix with technology, but that technology cannot fix. The only way to fix it is to exercise self-awareness and restraint, which are skills few possess.
@LouisIngenthron
I was just about to say something similar... the other thing that prevents open communication is if you go to a thread and there is so much hateful spam that doesnt even attempt to be constructive or have a conversation that the thread becomes tedious to follow or interact on at all.... so people who want a conversation just avoid it and the problem gets worse.
The only way to have healthy open communication is if you have filtering on some level... obviously filtering can be abused too so you have to address both sides for the viewer.... this I like louis's solution, one that empowers everyone to see what they want.
I mean hell i shouldnt be **forced** to see something just because I need to have open communication... if i dont want open communication, as idiotic as that is, that is my right.. I should be able to see what i want to see, and filter what i dont.
@sim