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@dysfun @TechConnectify @JustinH what is being asked for (I think) is to first recognise the problem. This thread shows that this is far from happening.
Second you need some tools and policies to filter the poor behaviour. Less than a ban, but more than "don't look at messages that are addressed to you, that might upset you"
At least I think that's what is being asked for.

@cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH exactly. One thing that I've just realized is that, when we compare this platform to email, subject lines are effectively content warnings. I don't go to my inbox and see every email that's been sent to me, I see a list of content warnings.

Here, though, it's as if I open my inbox and am reading every single email.

Social media is a different beast from email. A feed full of content warnings is tedious and boring. But there has to be filtering.

@TechConnectify @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH I want this platform to work for folks like you, so I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I assume that the volume of block requests you would have to submit is unworkably high, not that your instance is ignoring your block requests? For instance, we're quick to block accounts that are aggressively annoying our users, but we're only like 5 users with the most followed having under 5k followers, so we only get about 1 request/wk.

@holly @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH On the bird site, this sort of stuff was just... not a thing I ever had to do.

I blocked maybe half a dozen people and muted perhaps a dozen.

The sort of behavior that's bothering me here simply didn't cross my feed on twitter /because they had automated systems to detect it/ and it was hidden.

I'm really asking for a jerkwad detector - not for a means of recourse when I encounter jerkwads. Because, frankly, not much of what they do merits real moderation.

@holly @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH There is absolutely no means of filtering signal to noise here. And the common response to complaints of noise is to play whack-a-mole and stomp it out, or else move instances because they'll have more thorough instance blocking.

But that's not the problem - it's not individuals. It's behavioral norms in aggregate. Some really shitty behavior is tolerated here in no small part because there's no means for the crowd to signal it's bad behavior.

@TechConnectify @holly @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH it sounds like you're looking for "the algorithm" which the rest of us kept trying to escape. Which makes sense if you have an unmanageable volume and we just want to read everything our friends post in chronological order.

@stark @TechConnectify @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH Well I think that's just it -- the algorithm we got pushed outrage nazis at us all day and left us to play whack-a-mole with the block button and send ignored reports, meanwhile missing your friends' posts, but since I've left, and certainly it seems for large accounts, they maybe had some sentiment analysis tools that hid all of that. So a much nicer version of the algorithm.

@holly @stark @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH

Either we're talking about different algorithms or different things - I'm talking strictly about what I could and could not see directed *at me*

As far as I was concerned, Twitter's algorithm didn't exist as I only ever used the following tab. Sure, it influenced what the folks I followed were retweeting and that can't be denied, but it didn't have much immediate presence to me.

Then again, I didn't ever reply much to things.

@holly @stark @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH And that could be yet another difference between our experiences.

I didn't use Twitter to prod and only ever replied to friends and mutuals. Sure, I got pretty spicy in the depths of COVID and the Black Lives Matter protests, but mostly it was a place to post my thoughts and engage with my audience and friends.

The fact that we may have used Twitter in very different ways surely makes this conversation difficult to navigate.

@TechConnectify @holly @stark @cbehopkins @dysfun @JustinH out of interest, how many followers did you peak at on twitter ?