If you're a white person on the Fediverse and you've never seen someone called a slur, or threats made against them--congratulations!

[fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk]

@julesbl @dave i suppose it's true what they say: if you build a social network you will have no idea how to use that network.

[mc_chouffe@mamot.fr]

@dave it never occured to me that the "followers only" setting could be used that way. Wouldn't it make more sense if the replies automatically followed the same restrictions as the original message ? You've chosen to reply to a public message, you follow the rule set by the author of the message.

[fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk]

@shlee @dave okay, that makes sense. thank you for explaining.

[alexadeswift@lgbtqia.space]

@dave

This is unfortunately something that I have seen, certainly on Black Mastodon along with Trans Mastodon.

Often black Fediversians will be on the receiving end of racism and will rightly call out white Fediversians for not pushing back against it. Unfortunately we typically cannot do that as we simply cannot see the bigots and their bigotry, often because of either the way they are posting and/or the admins of the instances we are in defedding from problematic instances and blocking bigots.

It does seem to be less of an issue on trans and LGBTQ Fedi and Mastodon, probably due to so many of us being on instances explicitly run by and for LGBTQ folx.

Unfortunately, that is not an option for everyone, and I have wracked my brains as to how we can stop all racism and other bigotry.

[patrick@retro.social]

@dave That sounds like a defect of the "followers only" mechanism… Maybe we should modify its behavior to not reply to non-followers? That way, only mutuals can join in the harassment (instead of all followers of the original instigator), and an unfollow shuts things down, too.

[jmax@mastodon.social]

@dave ty

[markus_quandt@mastodon.green]

@dave I honestly had not understood that before, thanks for explaining.

[toothpaste_sandwich@mastodon.nl]

@kkarhan @dave I'm not sure if I read this bug report as "unwillingness". No actual replies from any developers is not ideal, but it's different from a hard no.

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@toothpaste_sandwich @dave I consider the maintainers closing a valid issue as unwillingness…

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@Rhube @MxAlba @dave I think you misread because the above has no impact on public posts without any reply restrictions. It would be part of the long requested reply control features one could use if you want to limit who can reply to you. And one very useful limitiation would be "you can't change the scope of who the post is visible to".

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@gunchleoc @dave That would be another useful control, control of who can @ you outside a reply context.

[catdragon@mastodon.world]

@semitones @dave harrassers have no shame. They prefer anonymity because they hate repercussions in the real world.

[toothpaste_sandwich@mastodon.nl]

@kkarhan @dave I don't know enough about the issue to say if it's a duplicate issue or not... But it still doesn't read as unwillingness to me.

That said, I share your hope that this is something that can be improved on soon!

[flesh@transfem.social]

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io @pierrenick@hachyderm.io @dave@alvarado.social It's certainly a useful feature, but one with its own potential for abuse.

[light@noc.social]

@dave
>The most information they can share is "see look, this *happens*.  It happened to *me*."
That's the value of receipts

[sibylle@troet.cafe]

@dave I was fully unaware of this. And as far as I understood from the comments, this has been filed as an issue and has been ignored by the developers.

I love mastodon. And I really think it should be like this for all the people.

Maybe it helps, if we adress this publicly? Like we expect men to act up on sexual violence instead of just shrugging it off as "never happened to me, can't be that big of an issue".

Sorry for my ignorance - where can we complain?

[flesh@transfem.social]

@dave@alvarado.social @flippac@types.pl I am not accusing anyone nor denying the harassment, but it's also worth keeping in mind that screenshots don't really prove anything, especially given how the accounts are sockpuppets.
If one is inclined to believe you, they'll probably believe you when you just say you were harassed. If one's inclined to accuse you of lying, they can easily dismiss screenshots as fabricated.
So the people who "need more proof" are generally not people who are gonna be convinced by it anyway.

[harueb@mk.absturztau.be]

@dave@alvarado.social I feel like I'm missing something here, how does the target see the followers only replies if they don't follow accounts of the harasser(s)? Do people mentioned in followers only posts also see those posts, even though they aren't followers?

[dave@alvarado.social]

@HaruEb because they're directly mentioned, the same as you're directly mentioned here in my reply.

[dave@alvarado.social]

@flesh @flippac I agree, and generally when people are posting screenshots it's in response to "I don't see it so I don't believe it's happening". it's not to accuse a particular sock puppet.