@informapirata "the inability to reply to a public post actually increases the risk of that post being copied, linked, and screenshotted"

There will never be a perfect solution, it's true. But we can at least put up safeguards and empower people to protect themselves.

The bottom line is, the ability to disable replies is the top-voted issue on Mastodon's repo. Clearly people really want this.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc

@stefan 100%. I'm not sure how on their radar it is, either. I see no evidence in that issue thread of it being prioritized at all.

Also, low-hanging fruit: Blocking someone should hide their reply under your post.

So much simpler to implement, the code was literally already written back in **2022** but isn't being shipped.

Hide subthreads by blocked users when looking at a post's descendants by ClearlyClaire · Pull Request #18468 · mastodon/mastodon

This is about the server not returning known subthreads started by people blocked by the post's author, not the viewer. e.g., if we have A → B → C → D → E, where a → b means “b replies to a”, and B...

GitHub (github.com)

@stefan @AlsoPaisleyCat exactly! There are so many people not on here because of this who I would really love to be here. While not a silver bullet reply controls would be significant help.

@stefan Is anyone on this thread actually working on this?

afaiu, it's a protocol change and these are hard to manage across implementations (masto + general fediverse).

@stefan one cannot solve social problems with technology...

@funbaker Right. But we should still give people, particularly marginalized people, tools for protecting themselves.

Disabling replies is the top requested feature, I think we can trust that it's needed.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc

@lobingera From what I understand, goToSocial has been working on this with the Mastodon team waiting for them to publish a proposal for his this feature can be more widely adopted by other fediverse platforms.

It looks like that hasn't happened yet, probably because the feature is still being actively developed, based on what I see here: https://docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/federation/interaction_policy/

@dgodon Absolutely! @AlsoPaisleyCat

@graue I've seen it come up in a few conversations, but it seems like things are a bit stuck waiting for goToSocial to write an FEP, from what I can tell?

Stefan Bohacek (@stefan@stefanbohacek.online)

Any #GoToSocial developers, or anyone else who might know what the hold-up with publishing the FEP for reply controls is, interested in chiming in? https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/115316306587338554 #fediverse #FEP #fedidevs #ReplyControls

Stefan's Personal Mastodon Server (stefanbohacek.online)

@stefan On a decentralized network, replies are just links to your post. They are hosted externally by the server hosting the account publishing the reply.

It’s not that this isn’t being implemented. It’s that there are *no technical means in software* to prevent someone else’s computer server from hosting a URL pointing to your public post (which is because it is their computer and not yours).

The endless requests for this inherently impossible feature are just old Twitter habits dying hard.

@8124 Well the problem here is unwanted @ mentions. Again, I am not typically a target of harassment, so I don't want to speak for those affected by this, but I'd imagine unwanted @ mentions are a much bigger problem than strangers linking to your posts without tagging you.

Which, I suppose, based on the nature of such posts, could be a whole another problem, and much like people sharing screenshots of your posts, a lot harder to address.

@stefan I've mentioned wanting this a couple of times and always it draws stiff criticism of the "you're doing it wrong" kind. But I should be able to preemptively shut up jerks when I know they're going to dogpile, or sometimes I want to post something personal like a remembrance of someone I've lost, without replies. Or sometimes I want to pin a post without it getting replies. I should have all that control to prevent randos from jumping in where they're not wanted.

@Nonya_Bidniss Yeah, it's the type of people that are the reason we need tools like this being the loudest opponents, go figure.

@stefan Replies to posts are implemented as links under-the-hood, though. Really, think about it, is there any other way it could work?

Our posts are hosted on different servers. They have to link to each other in a hidden metadata field, because otherwise how could threads be rendered? Each post would be standalone.

That is why reply controls are inherently impossible under a decentralized approach. There is no way to enforce that everyone runs the same software and configuration.

True, but https://pdsls.dev/ is a useful hack.

@dec23k @stefan @USelaine

GoToSocial has already implemented this. As I understand it Mastodon the worked with GoToSocial to tweak the protocol-level specification, and the Mastodon implementation can build on mechanisms that were put in place for Quote Boosts. Not sure just where it is on on the Mastodon roadmap though.

@stefan @lobingera

@8124

Going back to this again:

"no technical means in software to prevent someone else’s computer server from hosting a URL pointing to your public post"

Right, anyone can publish a link to my post, but then, based on the reply settings, my server can reject those and not show them under my posts, and I won't get @ mentioned?

Seems like that should solve the problem for people who are now leaving for platforms that provide tools like this, in some cases even back to X/Twitter.

@stefan Bluesky genuinely sucks but there's literally nothing better at the moment. Most Twitter refugees flocked there because they're not interested in decentralized social media.

@kycm_ancy Yeah, I'm not going to lie, seeing how Bluesky seems to have reversed its decline over the past week, the fediverse has a lot of catching up to do.

Bluesky User Growth and Active Users

See how activity and usage of Bluesky has been growing over time. How many users are currently active? How many posts are posted daily on Bluesky?

(bluefacts.app)

@stefan That is exactly right.

It is 100% possible to block users from your own server/software. Accounts being limited or suspended is the “good enough” solution for moderators and server operators.

It is also possible to exercise control over who can reply via post visibility settings.

The only impossibility (for decentralized) is: the ability to make a publicly available post while also preventing replies to it (because all that’s needed to reply is to link, which you already granted).