thinking about writing about this as an interesting internet subculture conflict -- is it that mastodon users are mad that bluesky isn't on activitypub, and then bluesky users are mad that mastodon is mad? and the cultural divide of bluesky being a bit more shitposty and mastodon being more rules-y?
things really kicked off over the possibility of a bridge, but generally speaking there seems to be a fair amount of hostility among blueskiers towards mastodon users and vice versa
a lot of folks on bsky portraying mastodon users as HOA-style control freaks policing everyone else's posts
a lot of folks on mastodon condemning bskiers for using a platform that they see as less open, likely to be enshittified, and tainted by the Dorsey connection
I get it, but I haven’t really seen much of this policing on my Mastodon feed. Obviously, I don’t specialize in spider photography or political commentary but still, the only change I ever made was an occasional content warning.
But that's already it, isn't it? The content Warning is misused to a point where it's harmful, because all content is essentially behind a content warning, whether it contains violent imagery or not. And the only way to find out is to watch the content...
“All content is essentially behind a content warning?” You must be looking in very different parts of Mastodon than I have been. I don’t even think I see one content warning per day among my follows.
as with many platforms, it depends on your particular bubble. i never observed much of that in my particular mastodon bubble, even around the time period you reference, but i've heard it was more of a phenomenon elsewhere.
It is possible. I don't hate on mastodon, but I find Bluesky generally better for me. There have been reports of very questionable and arbitrary moderation decisions, which I guess is the bigger problem formmore decentralised systems
i have to say i don't really get the disdain for content warnings, even heavily used, on mastodon. they're used, presumably, because they are helpful to some people. if you don't need them, you can just click through. if you don't want to click, most clients also have an option to expand by default.
A problem with CWs as used on Mastodon is that the hide/display function is all-or-nothing. One of the expected CWs on there is for insects. I'm an entomologist, and I'm trying to help people appreciate bugs. Turning off CWs for bugs *also* turns off CWs for gore, violence, and porn.
I liked the overall idea of CWs (especially for spoilers, rants, or other things you think might be a bother to some of your followers).
But if your whole account is based on a thing, that seems different to me.
The way muting and CWs work together probably needs a thorough rework tbh.
I found it annoying because there was no distinction between different types of warnings so if I turn them off because neurotic people are tagging literally any image of food, I’m also turning off warnings for things that actually need one like nudity or gore.
+1. CWs on everything is no different than CWs on nothing. I don't know if it settled down or I moved instances, but I don't see a lot of CWs any more, but early on it seemed over the top. Also, a lot of the requests for CWs seemed more like concern trolling than genuine.
I've found it does depend a lot on your instance and the crowd it attracts and who they follow.
I have two I use frequently and one I see CWs used abundantly and people fussing when others don't and on the other hardly see a CW or mention of them at all.
I recall there being a lot of the thing where people were performatively indignant on behalf of the hypothetical needs of a group they don’t even belong to.
For me (after getting yelled at for not content warning that baked bean and egg pizza image) it's each little fiefdom trying to force their rules onto people on other servers.
"Our TOS says you have to CW food". That's nice, I didn't sign up to that on the instance I'm on.
I have never appreciated CWs on food (or at least picture-marked-sensitive, which Masto can do separately) more than when surfing fedi after a *really* bad bout of food poisoning.
content warnings aren't bad, but getting angry at people who join a platform and don't immediately understand the nuances of how people tag posts on the platform is bad
the disdain for *seeing* content warnings, to be clear. i understand why it can be off-putting to have others (sometimes aggressively) demand much more substantial content warning than you might be used to (though this is another one of those things i hear about more than i've seen it)
If I'm acrolling through a feed and my kid happens to watch, for example, content warnings help avoid unsuitable I.agery, which does happen. If CW are ubiquitous, the warning beckmes meaningless and either you don't open anything, or open everything.
I've always assumed food warnings are about sensitivity to eating disorders. A couple of my mutuals use food CW, who I suspect have issues here.
OTOH there's woof.group, where the instance rules are that CWs are only needed for hardcore sexual material and certain drugs.
I guess this points to another issue, ie most people think of mastodon.social as Mastodon, when there's a tonne of instances with their own rules; which is confusing and a barrier to adoption for a whole load of other reasons 🙃
content warnings (warning people before they see a photograph of food) are very different from ingredient labels (warning people if a food contains an allergen)
There seems to be a lot of miscommunication in this thread, as some people are talking about warnings on physical goods, while others are talking about warnings on social media posts.
Please note that what you are talking about (warnings about the ingredients contained in food products) is not what is being discussed here at all, despite the use of similar words.
Fwiw, on mastodon “content warnings” are a whole thing for the HOA types, and speedrun the whole fandom “trigger warning” arc very rapidly. Hence the assumption that people know “content warning” means that, and not, say, warnings about contents.
