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I am legit fascinated by the number of folks who are assuming I want the features I'm looking forced on every user.
Setting aside that that's technically impossible, it says to me that a lot of folks here who like it as it is view any change as some kind of threat.
The Notorious Kyo 
@TechConnectify idea: until this is fixed. I’m going to use #techconnectify when I want to respond to things you are saying. I don’t want to inundate you.
Posting this publicly so others can see the idea.
Paranoia rules over the fediverse in a way I haven't seen it in other social media, contemporary or past. Probs one part sign of the times, probs one part all the rhetoric and ideology about the fediverse and autonomy that attracts certain types.
Humberto @ttpphd @TechConnectify it's not paranoia when the owners of big social network have the power to impart their ideologies on their users
Paranoia is an emotion. We are talking about the emotional climate of the fediverse. Whether you think the paranoia is justified or not doesn't stop it from being the emotion of paranoia.
This is unhelpful "reply guy" behavior.
Reply gal, please. But also...I said it because I don't see that behavior in the corners of the 'verse that I frequent. So, I was pointing out that the "paranoia" may be relative to the set of accounts you follow or usually interact with. It took me five tries before I build up a slice of the Fedi that felt good to me. There was a learning curve, too.
Sorry I don't mean to misgender you. The phrase preexists in a gendered form.
And replies can come from any corner of the fediverese. This is a discussion about replies, not what's in the local or home feed.
Replies can come from any instance your instance's admins aren't blocking. A carefully chosen instance does much of the curating for you. But also, if you curate who you follow and who follows you, you are mostly in control of who replies. Beyond that, there's blocking for repeat problem accounts.
I understand. I am not looking for an explanation of federation.
@Frances_Larina @ttpphd i will second that I don't see that sentiment
@ttpphd @TechConnectify It pretty much sums up a chunk of the open source community. They want to stay as far away from any commercial services. Also everything should be open source, and no binary blobs. In reality, that's just not how things work in the real world...
@TechConnectify Everyone is really worried about an algo that would hide a friends posts from them. But never realising that unflitered, chronological only just means you get swamped. Even when you aren't a big account.
Sounds like PTSD from Twitter. Which is reasonable; Twitters algorithm drove awful behaviors.
But there are all kinds of algorithms, and lots of possibilities to make them opt in, but people freak because Algorithm.
Again, not unreasonable, but you don't get over PTSD by indulging it.
@TechConnectify For what it's worth, I suspect these folks have a reading comprehension issue and don't understand what you're asking for.
@TechConnectify I couldn't grasp from the thread exactly what those features would be, if it's not a big burden, would you please summarize them? Thanks!
(With the extremely important preface that this is all OPT-IN)
•sentiment analysis on replies to detect jerks
•a filter that puts those replies behind some kind of warning and prevents them from appearing in my notifications
•ideally, allow me to sort replies by likes to discourage the same comment again and again (but that's tricky as I'd want my choice there to affect other people viewing replies too otherwise it's worthless)
@TechConnectify those are all very reasonable and even attainable -- are you interested enough in them as to organize funding for development?
@massa I would be if I believed enough people thought this was actually a problem. Right now, I don't. I can't get into the reasons why exactly without revealing details of a private conversation, but I really don't.
@TechConnectify it's okay and I should add two disclaimers: I'm a developer, and this kind of work is in my ballpark (should you change your mind about it); and I'm a subscriber and a fan, I love your work on YT!
@TechConnectify @massa even if it’s not a problem for all users, is a problem for some accounts and, as you have said, you wanted as opt-in for those affected. Also, I don’t think what you said is unreasonable. I’m also with you.
A lot of us who agree with you are just quiet. A lot of those who disagree with you are loud. There’s probably a large chunk in the middle who don’t even think about it, but since you’re talking about opt-in features, they’ll continue to not need to care.
tl;dr: Enough of the right people already agree with you. IMO you’re in a perfect spot to make big, positive, lasting changes for the benefit of all users. Wise devs should already be reaching out to you.
@zachariah @TechConnectify @massa Ditto. That or we don't have the following large enough to make these points heard in the ActivityPub/Fediverse....
@TechConnectify @massa Add myself to the list of people who agree then. I have a bone to pick with each of the Twitter alternatives....
@massa context: I'm a programmer, but I only have a _very vague_ sense of how Activity Pub works.
Is sorting replies something that's possible for a server to dictate to a client? I would've thought that replies are fetched from their own servers, the client gets them in a vaguely random order, and the client sorts them itself.
@3geek14 yes, you are correct. And you can't force the client to sort as you want; but as I understand, Alec wants to change sorting on his replies on *his* view (so it would be just a client thing). It would begin to touch the server where he wants to "sort replies by likes to discourage the same comment over and over again" (I don't agree with him that it would be worthless as a client-and-his-account-only feature). But somethings could be done to propagate his choice to compatible servers.
@massa One of the reasons he's mentioned in other toots for why he wants this: if someone scrolls and sees the top 3 replies, they'll hopefully not bother copying one of those three. But currently, he gets tons of identical replies. This is why it'd matter more to give this ordering to other users' clients.
@TechConnectify @massa I have basically no followers (which is fine) but these make a lot of sense for anyone, I think. Aside maybe from the sorting thing, which as admitted would be tricky in a federated space.
Maybe it could be a preference flag for the thread that would be followed - or not - by an instance backend and personal settings? Just like a flag that says "Default listing for showing replies to this post should be like-sorted."
I'd enjoy seeing that implemented.
@lothus @TechConnectify I'm starting to feel like Alec is not as alone in his wishes as initially thought
@TechConnectify @massa These feel like reasonable requests, and they seem to be achievable on the client (except that last one on the choice affecting other viewers).
I wonder if an alternative client to Mastodon's might help to address or alleviate these issues? A bit like what Tweetdeck used to be like as opposed to Twitter's default web client/apps?
@TechConnectify @massa I might have already mentioned this before and in that case apologies - https://trunks.social/ has a way to view your replies as best/chronological/ controversial. I think "Best" is # of likes/ boosts and Controversial might be based on responses? @trunksapp would know more. Definitely helpful for posts with lots of replies.
@TechConnectify Opt-in is a pretty big philosophy here yet people don't seem to get it, how strange.
@TechConnectify With a certain kind of context blinders on, new features *are* a threat to Mastodon though. Or rather, it is one avenue for Embrace / Extend / Extinguish efforts.
I think that reaction is coming from knowing that, if something adds to the protocol or to a client, it is either going to be something debated at length before being gradually incorporated into the protocol, or it will become a differentiator, and to a lot of Masto's more technical userbase, they've seen Embrace/Extend/Extinguish work often enough that it seems justified to fear the latter.
For a lot of posts I'd reply with agreement, but I feel that if I do it's really just one more notification that's really not attention worthy for a large account.
Even leaving a "like" doesn't sit well with me because I'm permanently uncomfortable with similarities between social media likes and operant conditioning.
So, for what it's worth your posts on the Fediverse in practice in your experience are perfectly clear and reasonable to me.
@TechConnectify Says to me many view Mastodon through the same lens as Twitter, etc. Where a single company controls both the client and server, because how else would computers work?
These expectations set by Silicon Valley are a frequent source of frustration for me, both professionally & not...
@TechConnectify I always found it weird that people feel entitled to other people's attention. I don't think they realize the cognitive load handling a flood of unsolicited messages has, especially critical ones
This is why I'm warming up to 'quote boosts' or w/e since people can be pedants about something in their own thread elsewhere
@TechConnectify I agree with you. Whenever I see anybody suggest anything for Mastodon to do I always see people say how bad that idea is. Normally in a rude way.
@TechConnectify perhaps half missing your point and half fear that things will end up like the other place they were escaping from where changes were forced on them? It’s telling that the web has become so centralized that a decentralized option like Mastodon, and all it entails with regards to control and configurability, has so much trouble being understood.
@TechConnectify I'm not surprised though, people always seemed to think gay marriage was intended to be mandatory, and the same for being trans and queer: people seem to think that I'm requiring everyone to be trans and queer*
*I mean, I think that would be for the best...
;)
@pyoor @TechConnectify I mean, it might make things easier. I’d settle for the “or” operator. Some folks seem to want the “Not”.
Now you’ve got me thinking about logic gates for a happier society.
@TechConnectify So right dude, it is not like money grubbing billionaires and their soulless lackeys are trying to figure out a way to monetize the Fediverse.
All change is good, do not ask questions.
, 
; Soni L. @TechConnectify maybe they want some kind of threat...
Commercial internet kind of creates an expectation of things only going downhill. 
Even as mastodon isn't part of that, it's also newish enough that we don't understand how the upkeepers ad features without creating fragmentation.
aka Compy-chan @TechConnectify the threat is the trolls will lose their power
@ilovecomputers I mean, I am hearing from several folks that they do believe they have a right to put their words in front of me...
@TechConnectify I've seen you say that the earliest adopters of masto have shaped the culture, and I agree. They got one kind of harassment on Twitter and have built tooling to prevent that. Their harassment was much more about one person consistently showing up in their replies to be a jerk, no matter what they posted. What you're seeing is very different, and needs a different solution than "just block the trolls." I truly do not understand why that's such a difficult concept for them.
@TechConnectify That sounds like the same phenomenon as when features are removed / added / gated in a certain MMO. The hardcore players complain about anything they see as accommodating casuals.
The concept of "Let me play my way and you are not being forced to use (feature)" is beyond comprehension.
@TechConnectify I think you’ve got very reasonable feature requests! Some of this sort of exists in mbin (https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin) when viewing the microblog section (same sorting algorithms available there as with the reddit-like threads). Lemmy also has similar sorting, but it’s limited to a reddit-like UI
@TechConnectify Some of what you want could feasibly be done client-side, which *inherently* doesn’t impose it on all users. (Now if only someone would make that magic client already.)
@TechConnectify Just replying to say that I've been quietly agreeing with you throughout this conversation. Thanks for putting to words what many of us have been observing and struggling to articulate.