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Curious to hear if others on here are experiencing what’s described in this piece. I enjoy most of the replies I get on here (though I never have time to respond to most of them, I like reading them)

I do think Mastodon could use more safety/audience limiting tools though, like what Ernie describes. Esp for larger-ish accounts on here who get a lot of replies, it would be nice to limit conversations on some posts. I would also love a real DM inbox on Mastodon! but that might be a pipe dream

@taylorlorenz Yes, unfortunately.

I run up against a fair number of FOSS zealots from time to time. And a lot of folks who generally just... don't know when to hold their tongues.

Some of this is structural - replies listed in-order with no ability to signal affirmation and sort accordingly means a lot of the same things get said/asked again and again. That's annoying but easy to dismiss as clunkiness.

The zealots, though - especially when stuff gets boosted to a wider audience - are rough.

@TechConnectify @taylorlorenz but this is basically a client side problem, right? so Mastodon is open source software, ActivityPub is an open protocol. if there is enough (monetary) interest in filtering tools, i'm sure some developers can be found who would implement client-side filtering (be it AI or keyword-based, mastodon instance, ...) tools, e.g. as a browser extension, android/ios app, ... integration into the server code would be better, but is not strictly necessary.

@nanobot248 A client-side solution doesn't necessarily fix the other half of the problem, though. It would solve my problem, sure, if I didn't have to see so many notifications or so much... drivel, but to be honest I think we need some mechanisms for *the crowd* to help moderate discussion and signal good vs. bad behavior.

The decentralized nature here makes that difficult, obviously - but even just showing that 20 people found a question interesting might help it not get asked so many times.

@nanobot248 Main problem there, though, is that that would be introducing

*thunderclap*

AN ALGORITHM

and folks within/who believe in this project are so allergic to that word that even something so simple as "display replies in order of popularity" is deemed antithetical to the very nature of Mastodon.

Little do they realize they don't speak for all - they're just very loud about it.

@TechConnectify@mas.to @nanobot248@mtd.sysblog.at seems to me like that would be a good, opt-in kind of feature.

Off by default but if you want your replies filtered by an algorithm - sure. Turn it on. Wouldn't affect anybody else's profile but your own.
There's already a similar concept for users opting in to full text search

@johnny @nanobot248 (but then we're back to the whole "what does this place even want to be?" conundrum that tortures me somewhat so... let's not go there)

@TechConnectify @johnny @nanobot248 I've had a few days to think since we last spoke on this (sorry about that misunderstanding) and it reminds me of Google Plus, which illustrated to me:

YouTube comments or article comments are not a public square, they're somebody's place. Commenters are guests, the channel or article-writer is the host. The host is providing entertainment but they're also in charge.

Maybe Mastodon needs an option to be able to throw people out of a thread?

@Pxtl @TechConnectify @johnny @nanobot248

The host is really the person who owns the platform. They decide who stays or goes.

Commercial platforms give special treatment to high-follower accounts for free because those accounts attract the little guys (who click ads). Without a profit incentive, most Mastodon instances treat all users equal regardless of follower count. This means hosting a high-follower user actually means more unpaid labor from the admin.

@JustinH @TechConnectify @johnny @nanobot248 which is why it makes sense to offer ways for people, particularly high follower count accounts, to curate the replies to their posts. Without the money flowing from ads funding 3rd-world moderators and without algorithms managing replies, Mastodon will need much more personal moderation tools.

@Pxtl @TechConnectify @johnny @nanobot248

Specialized tools for high-follower accounts sounds useful, but I just don't see a feature that only benefits .001% of users getting made anytime soon unless those high-follower users put up a bounty or something, which I also don't see happening because they're used to the treatment offered by commercial platforms.

@JustinH@twit.social @Pxtl@mastodon.social @TechConnectify@mas.to @nanobot248@mtd.sysblog.at

That could be a business idea. Create a service, connect accounts, run all the algorithms you want, show users the important stuff, let them reply right from the app, charge a fee