Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary.
If this is something that stresses you out, probably best to disable comments from anyone you do not follow.
Simple as that.
I do not think this is a problem with the tool.
I do think over-exposure to internet commentary is toxic. Like alcohol, it is a poison that is only fun if you are capable of moderation. Not everyone is, and that is okay.
For me I was addicted to reading comments from viral nonsense I did online. Giving up LTE and carrying always-accessible always-online devices meant I can only access the Internet from fixed locations that I am only willing to spend a limited amount of time in.
The internet does not follow me or summon me with notifications anymore. I visit the internet on my terms.
For me, this made me much happier with my relationship to the internet. YMMV.
vnuge 6 minutes ago [-]
This is a huge step I took a few years ago as well. My mobile phone is still a smart phone but It can only do dumb phone things + email which I keep quiet and check on a schedule. No notifications really of any kind. No real social media and I never receive notifications from any of them I have to schedule time to check on them. It has become quite freeing although I definitely miss the "euphoria" of that world if it makes sense, which is a sign of addiction I didn't realize till I opted out.
alt227 3 hours ago [-]
Fully agree. This person states how they have joined and left many social media networks over the last 30 years. They often quote the same reasons for leaving them (comment toxicity, it not being 'fun' anymore, etc). However they dont seem to have identifdied the common factor here, they they themselves dont like anonymous negative comments about their posts and content.
As you have pointed out, there are tools and ways to mitigate this, primarily blocking replies from people you dont follow.
VHRanger 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's an emotional skill to develop.
But the person first needs to realize they are the pattern.
beardedwizard 1 hours ago [-]
This assumes an awful lot about a person and what they may or may not need to do.
People don't have to learn to like anything, especially online commentary.
This thread sounds like a bunch of men attempting to invalidate this woman's feelings.
CaptArmchair 1 hours ago [-]
I agree, moreover, this is what the author wrote:
> All that aside, the problem isn’t just “bad comments”, because I’m a grown woman and can take critique. The biggest problem is that a portion of those folks take screenshots and share them with unsavory folks. Not a week goes by that I don’t get some nasty email from someone I blocked on Mastodon. Some of these have been threatening, and it’s gotten to the point where before I toot, I think “will someone threaten to kill me over this?” That’s not fun.
There's a difference between strongly disagreeing with a post, toot, tweet, what-have-you and outright taking things way beyond what could be seen as proper conduct with respect for the human on the other end.
The solution isn't to just accept that under the guise of emotional maturity. It's investing in proper governance and arbitrage, promoting shared values and morals, and providing enough affordances in digital tools that help affirm all of that.
6510 57 minutes ago [-]
If you deal with 50 people one is always a tad strange. As the numbers grow the weirdest person gets progressively weirder. Around 100 k some say they want to kill or hurt you, around a million some definitely want to, at 100 million one is definitely going to try it. You can get there faster by having a unpopular opinions.
alt227 1 hours ago [-]
Thats all lovely in principle, but in the real world humans with a veil of anonymity will always be rude, selfish and greedy. That will never change.
alt227 60 minutes ago [-]
People are always going to be rude on the internet. It gives people a sense of anonymity which allows them to care less about the feelings of people they are communicating with.
There are 3 options to dealing with this.
1. Never go on the internet.
2. Accept that people will be rude, and develop ways to ignore/deal with it rationally.
3. Complain about it, and expect something to change.
Looks like the author is choosing option 3.
Why are you bringing sex/gender into this? It has nothing to do with it.
beowulfey 1 hours ago [-]
I think there is an even simpler solution, and it's the one the author mentions...
stop using that medium to post things.
alt227 50 minutes ago [-]
The problem is that the author readily admits that they have done this on every social media site they have joined since the 90s.
At some point they have to realise that no matter the platform, if you put anything out the in the public domain you are going to attract negativity and wierdos.
beowulfey 28 minutes ago [-]
I think that is actually the exact bit of self discovery they are describing in the article!
alt227 15 minutes ago [-]
Thats what it looks like, but then you realise that the author has done this again and again and doesnt really seem to learn anything each time.
> Any medium where you invite commentary from strangers on the internet is going to be full of ignorant commentary. [...] I do not think this is a problem with the tool.
You think the design of this medium inherently attracts death threats (which the author mentions, and I assume you've generalised into 'ignorant comments') - but it's not a problem with the medium?
To me it sounds like a medium that's giving undue weight to the voices of the deranged; well adjusted people do not threaten one another with murder.
Almondsetat 3 hours ago [-]
Allowing any person to comment is the most freedom you can give people. If people are free to comment whatever they want and they choose to publish crap then that's just a commentary on human nature, not the tool.
ethbr1 1 hours ago [-]
All scenarios where anyone can comment anything are not equal, though.
F.ex. are anonymous comments allowed?
To some degree the platform defines the content it generates.
Yotsugi 2 hours ago [-]
Let's say I create another website that allows people to share things and other people to comment on those things, pray do tell how do I prevent ignorant comments?
Should only people who have Mensa certification be allowed to comment? Does Mensa alone rule out all cases of error possible in human brain? Does any metric in fact? How about the other way, how does having 87IQ prove that this person cannot say something profound sometimes?
willcipriano 2 hours ago [-]
"Death threats" are so overplayed I don't take anyone claiming to get them seriously anymore.
It's often a lie and when it isn't it's a comment clearly written by a 12 year old with a Rick and Morty avatar.
Retr0id 2 hours ago [-]
> disable comments from anyone you do not follow
A good chunk of what I publish online doesn't have a comment section at all, but the moment someone posts a link to HN (or reddit, or...), suddenly it does.
VHRanger 2 hours ago [-]
You don't have to read it?
If you hate reading comments AND you can't stop yourself from reading them, go see a therapist.
I don't mean this blithely, it's a sign of unaddressed emotional issues, it's a fixable thing and nothing to be ashamed of. It's not "who you are", it's just "a bad behavioral habit".
Retr0id 57 minutes ago [-]
The world is small, I regularly stumble across my own work or discussion thereof. I don't hate reading replies, I just hate reading replies that suck, and you can't tell if a reply sucks until after you've read it.
MichaelZuo 50 minutes ago [-]
Since the benefits of the internet connected world are practically impossible to reject, and unless you go full hermit. It stands to reason the downsides are also practically impossible to reject, unless you go full hermit.
bbarnett 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but provide a differing perspective.
Imagine that for no reason you can fathom, you hear that Bob claims <bad thing> about you. You don't know why, so you seek to find out, and you feel you should let people know that Bob isn't right!
That's the sort of logic involved sometimes. Is it wrong? Well, likely in the world of "1 million strangers are reading and some are replying" it is. But it's perfectly sensible in a local community, to want to 'set the record straight'.
And this peer-pressure derived desire to not be seen as a 'bad guy', is moderately important in a cohesive society. This desire to be seen by others in our community in a positive light, is just part of how we as animals, form a society.
It's a "good thing", when locally derived. But yes, we need new ways to deal with this I guess.
catapart 56 minutes ago [-]
You're very close to hitting the main point that people miss: Posting on the internet is a global audience and that means writing with a global audience in mind.
It's a thousand times more taxing than a local audience because you lose all colloquialisms and points of common reference. It's more taxing than even writing for a newspaper because even in the worst case of national coverage, it's rare that an article author would have to consider the global perspective (though still required for certain types of news).
This whole article is just the author chafing at WANTING to use social media like ne has a local audience, while being FORCED to use social media with a global audience in mind. I very much empathize, in the same way I empathize with product manual writers or software documentation authors. Having to come up with every way some dickhead is going to misunderstand you is a massive undertaking. And THEN you have to come up with all the ways that some dickhead will TRY to misunderstand you. To guard against all of them is impossible, so you just have to shore up as many sides as you can and take the criticism as it comes. That is what it means to write for a global audience, and its exhausting.
So I don't blame anyone at all for saying "this isn't my job, fuck this."
Personally, I just write how I want to write and let the chips fall where they may. I don't begrudge anyone for just not writing at all, and leaving all the chips alone. But I also don't find their intention to do so particularly worth description; especially not in long form. It's not like its a binary choice. When you have the spoons to troll any troll that comes at you, and engage earnestly with anyone who is trying to engage with you - no matter how misguided - then have at it! Make your posts and enjoy or muddle through as applies. And on days when you don't want to deal with it? Just shut the fuck up. Don't say anything. Don't reply to people. Don't engage at all.
It's that "easy".
themaninthedark 1 hours ago [-]
Just because someone links to and has the ability to commentate on your work does not mean that you need to read/engage/acknowledge the commentary.
Retr0id 1 hours ago [-]
Good point, I'm going to un-read your reply now.
Yotsugi 3 hours ago [-]
Regardless of commentary, it's free publicity. As for
>Giving up LTE
that's very heavily personality dependent, if I didn't want to be bothered by anyone I'd turn off my phone and leave it at home, limiting myself on other days where I do want to access internet from anywhere and be bothered by internet, it would be highly inconvenient for me.
Ciantic 2 hours ago [-]
The only solution I can think of is smarter algorithms that hide negativity and other unwanted comments. Yes you could limit replies, but that doesn't solve the problem for big accounts, their followers have all kinds of unhinged people who like to ask trivial questions and waste your time.
Some think that by changing a service they can get better replies, but there will be no single service that has "sane commenters". This shouldn't be surprising, I saw in Threads complaints that replies had "Facebook vibe", or a common complaint about Mastodon that there were too many geeky reply-guys.
Services should have good filtering in place. A lot of big accounts don't have time to read replies, and they probably shouldn't for their own sanity, but they probably want to see replies from people they follow, i.e. their peers.
willjp 1 hours ago [-]
This is interesting. I don’t find that she’s hating on the tool at all - I think she’s frustrated by negative interactions that sap her energy, has taken note of that, and is explaining her absence.
I both agree and disagree with some of the comments. Until very recently my interactions with the internet have been fairly shallow and that has protected me in some ways. But I think some people are looking for community, and want to give a bit more of themselves to form deeper connections. I think others are trying to grow an audience - reading the comments is not much different than surveying your customers.
Veronica seems really lovely, and I hope this helps make her life happier.
Simulacra 36 minutes ago [-]
What she wants is a billboard, not social media. She seems to want to post her views, and have them be seen, but doesn't want commenting on them they are positive reinforcement.
dsign 2 hours ago [-]
Here's my "reply-guy" comment of the day: if you are posting about where you buy your wall decoration and you get negative feedback, well, maybe it's not worth to tell strangers where you buy wall decoration.
But sometimes somebody puts a lot of effort on creating things for other people to enjoy. It can be a youtube video, a tutorial, a technical opinion. Or curl[^1].
Feedback provided on such an effort often takes a minuscule fraction of the work the creator put in, and they can be really nasty.
I just think that providing opinions should require some effort. An affordable amount of effort, but not too low. Maybe if I do something worth of notice someday, I'll invite feedback by creating a public Minecraft server and asking people to log in there and post their comments on the book at coordinates 1000, -58, 1000.
I disagree with your first sentence. People should be able to post about watching paint dry, or whatever else they want to mention. Strangers disagreeing with your choice of wall paint shouldn't turn into real-world anxiety/stress.
It's effectively impossible to post anything or do anything online (or even IRL) where someone won't disagree with you; there will always be someone (that's me toward you in this case), and that's fine.
What's not fine is the escalation from "I disagree, here's why" to "I disagree, and I'm going to make you miserable". Add to that death threats and you've got a cocktail for being unhappy. Add to that people doxxing you and harassing your real life for their perceived justices, and it makes you very unhappy.
Self-induced outrage seems to be a popular thing now. Where no real problem exists, create one, and manufacture outrage. Find next topic, repeat.
justaj 5 hours ago [-]
I've stumbled across this post by an ex-COBOL admin YouTube creator I've been following after wondering why she wasn't active on Mastodon.
Definitely some interesting and nuanced points being made there.
Back in the day, people used to make the infamous "quitting this forum" post. Is this the same thing, but in 2024?
catapart 52 minutes ago [-]
I was definitely waiting on the "it's not an airport; you don't have to announce your departure" comment coming around.
HuwFulcher 1 hours ago [-]
I find that Mastodon has become the mirror-verse version of Twitter/X. I've tried spending time on there but unless if you subscribe to certain political/ideological values then you wont find much to hang around for.
On the flip side I find the discourse on X a lot more varied. There are definitely big problems with the types of conversations that happen on X but I have to go out of my way to find them. On Mastodon it's not that hard, mainly down to it being a smaller pool of content.
ActivityPub/Mastodon is flawed at its core with its concept of federation. They paint a pretty utopian picture of decentralised communities but there really isn't much difference between them. They are mostly part of the same political zeitgeist and if you don't toe the line you get banned. Once you're banned that's it, you've lost your profile, sure you can recreate elsewhere but have to start from scratch.
For the problems alternatives have like Nostr at least they are truly censorship resistant.
krapp 57 minutes ago [-]
I don't know... I have game developers, authors, scientists, musicians and all sorts of interesting people on my feed, and I see a wide variance in discussion, despite the likely political commonalities. I suppose if you can only find value in online community through political debate and heterodoxy, most well-curated communities will seem hostile to you, since most people aren't looking for shock and chaos.
INTPenis 2 hours ago [-]
Lack of nuance, and taking things too personal, was why I also left fedi back in 2022. Had been running an instance since 2017.
But in the past 2 years I've realized that you should just ignore the haters. They're on youtube too and I don't get involved with them there, so why do I focus on them elsewhere?
No need.
So I'm actually going to return with a personal instance, simply because I enjoy having somewhere to post random pics and stuff when I'm not by a computer, using my phone. I don't care if anyone follows.
flpm 1 hours ago [-]
Ultimately it's not a question of agreeing or disagreeing, it's a question of respect. We live in a world where either you agree with me in everything or you must be destroyed.
The lack of nuance is spot on. The web went from long content in homepages/blogs, to short posts on social medias, to "like" and "share" buttons (1-bit)... it's hard to have nuance when you only take 2 seconds to form your opinion.
rpgbr 2 hours ago [-]
It's truly disheartening. Instead of embracing the practice of quietly observing, some individuals feel compelled to disparage those they view as less knowledgeable (often inaccurately) in a communal setting.
JojoFatsani 3 hours ago [-]
Kudos on stopping. I’ve cut out several of the platforms from my life. The grief of unchecked “opinions”, some of which are enhanced by algorithms, is simply not worth whatever dopamine you get from likes or whatever.
a_bonobo 3 hours ago [-]
What's interesting here is that many of 'us' and the current mainstream say that Internet toxicity is due to The Algorithm, the methods of Facebook/twitter that maximise engagement leading to constant negativity and toxicity.
Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen it for myself, there's an undercurrent of Twitter's holier-than-thou outrage, it's just from different sources: part exclusionary crusty geeks who've always used Mastodon ('you use Windows???'), part exclusionary leftists ('you're with the Judean People's Front????').
Perhaps it's not always The Algorithm that's to blame.
CM30 2 hours ago [-]
It's really just down to the size of the site/service and Dunbar's Number. Whenever a site or service gets big enough that you can't really know everyone who's active there, then it tends to spiral towards toxicity. Hence why big forums used to be a lot crazier/dramatic than smaller ones, why social media platforms tend towards becoming a cesspit over time, and why the means of which a platform is run matters less than people think civility wise.
rsynnott 2 hours ago [-]
The Algorithm(TM) tends to make it worse, in that it greatly increases the risk that weird cranks will see your posts, but "the internet is full of arseholes, some of whom will probably reply-guy you" is a problem as old as Usenet.
Personally, I've generally had far more positive interaction on Mastodon than I used to on Twitter, but I've got about 300 followers. I think the author of the article had many thousands, and at that level you're going to be exposed to weird cranks at a much greater rate; the advantage of not having The Algorithm(TM) is likely diminished.
4bpp 59 minutes ago [-]
The funny thing is that while the "big move" population likes to say that they wanted to get away from The Algorithm, what actually convinced them to move was the threat that the Algorithm might change (due to Musk's takeover).
Yotsugi 2 hours ago [-]
When it's a social problem, it's always people who are to blame. Reddit for example even had(? I think they fixed that one) downvote trolls farming downvotes because any attention works, and if it can be measured long term, it's even better!
You can't blame made up things if people actively choose to engage with rage baits. Every time something like that has occured, I time and time again notice that people could've solved this by doing nothing.
In real social setting, when someone says an unfunny joke, literally nobody laughs, and whoever said it feels very uncomfortable. On internet, when someone writes something stupid, they might sometimes get more replies than an interesting thing...
How can something like "The Algorithm" be blamed for people laughing at incredibly bad jokes?
polytely 39 minutes ago [-]
Setting my mastodon account to locked (followers have to be approved) was the best social media choice I've ever made.
bravetraveler 3 hours ago [-]
Hopefully some time away does them well. I hope they find their way back, in healthier portions
It's a tough knob to dial, attention/engagement. Too much of a thing. Not even going to try to say good/bad/whatever. The internet is what we make of it. I hope they return to strengthen it.
This is something I'm working on now, in a different avenue. Work. I changed jobs last week because I was putting too much of myself in, and not getting enough out.
rsynnott 2 hours ago [-]
> I toot about Matrix, and I’ve got reply-guys berating me for not using XMPP instead.
Huh, those are extremely contrarian reply-guys; if anything I would expect the opposite.
Macha 2 hours ago [-]
There's some very passionate XMPP supporters on every HN discussion on Matrix, have you not seen them before?
keikobadthebad 4 hours ago [-]
I did not hear 'reply guy' before joining mastodon.
If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent.
It works both ways - I replied to a post from an artist really enraged with AI and pointed out it's no different from a human artist seeing art and incorporating it into their style; that radio dealt with this in the US by legislating 'compulsory licenses' so the outcome is unclear.
The response was an immediate perma-ban from mastadon.social... this is not crypto right wing content they are unable to process anything except agreement.
esperent 3 hours ago [-]
I think it might be good for you to reflect on what this "reply guy" thing actually means, and why it is (IMO) a good idea to use it to judge your comments before replying to someone, if you care in any way about empathic online discourse.
For example, the artist: their livelihood is directly threatened by AI, if not now then probably in the near future, and they are responding by posting about their fear. It's transferred into enragement because that's what gets them engagement and support, but underlying that is fear. If they were to directly post about their fear there's a good chance they'd be mocked even worse so don't judge them too harshly for this.
Then along comes someone who has no skin in the game, except that they think AI is cool and something they want to be seen as an expert in. They feel it's necessary to point out to the person who is fearing for their way of life how WRONG they are. When all that person wants and needs is support.
In these types of situations, when you don't directly have skin in the game, and you don't have any support to offer, it's almost always better not to reply. Make your own post proving how right you are (without linking/tooting/screen-shotting or in any way referencing the other post), and let that other person get the social connections and support that they need. Otherwise, you are Reply Guy!
keikobadthebad 2 hours ago [-]
Well, I don't disagree it's good to see the other guy's point of view.
But the author and whoever deals with their complaints are not interested in any other point of view - literally, there was no reason given on the ban and when I challenged it, no response.
> Make your own post proving how right you are
It's really not like that, my wife is involved in the creative arts too, this has been discussed and considered here a lot. I was active 20 years ago and learned a lot about how 'the cancer' GPL became legally normal. Even if it was like that, how is a one-shot platform perma-ban encouraging that outcome?
oytis 2 hours ago [-]
It's totally OK to not be interested in other points of view. What got you banned from mastodon.social, not just blocked from commenting to that specific account though is I think the personal position of mastodon.social maintainer (and the author of Mastodon) regarding generative AI.
esperent 2 hours ago [-]
They are not looking for points of view, they are looking for support.
themaninthedark 54 minutes ago [-]
It sounds to me like "Reply Guy" is being used as shorthand for, you are not supporting me in either position, emotional needs...
Perhaps we have different concepts of what we use social media for, some use it as a para-social support system and others are as a tool to debate and examine different positions.
AlexandrB 3 hours ago [-]
What you're describing is an echo chamber. If that's something you want there are better ways to get it than a public, general purpose venue like Mastodon.
To flip the script a little, would this "Reply Guy" standard also apply when someone with family in Israel posts support for the Israeli government's actions and gets a bunch of replies about how Israel is committing a genocide? I kind of suspect that "Reply Guy" may just be a proxy for saying "you have the wrong politics".
oytis 2 hours ago [-]
> public, general purpose venue like Mastodon.
I guess that's what's wrong with Twitter, and what Mastodon unfortunately copied. The discussion dynamics roughly corresponds to shouting your opinions on a town square - and getting comments from passerbys.
There is little expectation of privacy, and few means to create it (banning indiscreet commenters being one of them). That's why Mastodon is great for niche interests - the town in this case is small, and its inhabitants are well-aligned, but might get frustrating as you touch topics where many people can feel they are entitled to having an opinion about.
esperent 2 hours ago [-]
Support the fearful artist, or leave them alone.
Speak up against the person who you see as advocating for genocide.
I don't think we need to over complicate this. Just do your best, you'll get it wrong sometimes but that's OK. It's a guideline for positive online discourse, not a law.
themaninthedark 41 minutes ago [-]
I think you missed the nuance there.
The hypothetical person supporting Israel has family in the country and is fearful of their family's safety. Wouldn't replying to them make you "Reply Guy"?
The parent of the conversation did not say that the artist was fearful, they said "enraged" or angry. It was posited in a child comment that the anger was out of a place of fear.
Depending on how you read the initial post, mood and priors, your reply to a comment can differ wildly.
oytis 6 minutes ago [-]
> Wouldn't replying to them make you "Reply Guy"?
Why not? I think discretion is needed in both cases. I, for one, am rather pro-Israel, but I wouldn't necessarily tell that to a Palestinian sharing their anger online.
Yotsugi 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rpgbr 2 hours ago [-]
>If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent.
A reply text box should not be an invitation to trash other the person who posted it. This notion that if you're posting in public you're submitting yourself to harassment is pretty bad.
CM30 2 hours ago [-]
Personally I supect it might be due to differing expectations as to what social media conversations are. I think those who weren't super active on forums and other old school chat systems think of them as closer to a chat between friends in a bar than between randoms on the street, and struggle to handle the idea that anyone in the world can reply at any point.
But that's kinda the thing. As you said, the whole 'messages with reply text box' design is set up to encourage responses from whoever wants to respond, and social media services are closer to a soapbox in Speaker's Corner or maybe Times Square than a chat between friends at home or in a restaurant.
bee_rider 1 hours ago [-]
It depends on the “old school forum” I think. Most phpbb style forums had limited populations, so they were more like chats with your friends at a bar; people come and go, but if you are a regular, there are some familiar faces, and you will likely be engaging with the same people in the short term, so being incredibly rude is counter-productive.
Really big boards like Something Awful were the ones known for their rudeness.
3 hours ago [-]
lurking15 50 minutes ago [-]
I kind of get the sense that she just finds the generalized sort of person who's drawn to Mastodon to be insufferable.
znpy 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Yotsugi 3 hours ago [-]
Is it "cancel culture"? Article reads like author simply can't handle what anyone who is even remotely relevant has to deal with on a daily basis. It's just reality of being known by more than a dozen people in one chatroom on internet.
There's a reason why most popular people in the world don't run blogposts or personal emails out in the open. They basically have to hire other people to do it for them via company level hierarchies.
The problem is there will always be a certain type of social outcast that will do anything for attention even if that requires doing illegal things to be noticed.
The only way to avoid these things is to be irrelevant, I never received a death threat in my entire life, but I also don't have anything like a blogpost website either.
This has always been the case in life, you also don't say things in public that you'd get beaten over, do you? Whether that's wrong is not my problem though, legal system as it is does not really care and can't prevent these things, the matter of fact is that whether you get beaten is your choice and legal system will only punish in hindsight. On internet, all of that is amplified, but at least noone can beat you up until you go outside.
You should be mindful of what you can or cannot handle before you say anything, if you fear any adversity and god forbid are some sort of pacifist who wouldn't defend their own life to death if necessary, it's probably best to say nothing and go unnoticed by anyone, that's just how things always were and always will be on this animal planet.
drdrek 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 14:01:35 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If this is something that stresses you out, probably best to disable comments from anyone you do not follow.
Simple as that.
I do not think this is a problem with the tool.
I do think over-exposure to internet commentary is toxic. Like alcohol, it is a poison that is only fun if you are capable of moderation. Not everyone is, and that is okay.
For me I was addicted to reading comments from viral nonsense I did online. Giving up LTE and carrying always-accessible always-online devices meant I can only access the Internet from fixed locations that I am only willing to spend a limited amount of time in.
The internet does not follow me or summon me with notifications anymore. I visit the internet on my terms.
For me, this made me much happier with my relationship to the internet. YMMV.
As you have pointed out, there are tools and ways to mitigate this, primarily blocking replies from people you dont follow.
But the person first needs to realize they are the pattern.
People don't have to learn to like anything, especially online commentary.
This thread sounds like a bunch of men attempting to invalidate this woman's feelings.
> All that aside, the problem isn’t just “bad comments”, because I’m a grown woman and can take critique. The biggest problem is that a portion of those folks take screenshots and share them with unsavory folks. Not a week goes by that I don’t get some nasty email from someone I blocked on Mastodon. Some of these have been threatening, and it’s gotten to the point where before I toot, I think “will someone threaten to kill me over this?” That’s not fun.
There's a difference between strongly disagreeing with a post, toot, tweet, what-have-you and outright taking things way beyond what could be seen as proper conduct with respect for the human on the other end.
The solution isn't to just accept that under the guise of emotional maturity. It's investing in proper governance and arbitrage, promoting shared values and morals, and providing enough affordances in digital tools that help affirm all of that.
There are 3 options to dealing with this.
1. Never go on the internet.
2. Accept that people will be rude, and develop ways to ignore/deal with it rationally.
3. Complain about it, and expect something to change.
Looks like the author is choosing option 3.
Why are you bringing sex/gender into this? It has nothing to do with it.
stop using that medium to post things.
At some point they have to realise that no matter the platform, if you put anything out the in the public domain you are going to attract negativity and wierdos.
https://vkc.sh/another-lady-left-twitter/
You think the design of this medium inherently attracts death threats (which the author mentions, and I assume you've generalised into 'ignorant comments') - but it's not a problem with the medium?
To me it sounds like a medium that's giving undue weight to the voices of the deranged; well adjusted people do not threaten one another with murder.
F.ex. are anonymous comments allowed?
To some degree the platform defines the content it generates.
It's often a lie and when it isn't it's a comment clearly written by a 12 year old with a Rick and Morty avatar.
A good chunk of what I publish online doesn't have a comment section at all, but the moment someone posts a link to HN (or reddit, or...), suddenly it does.
If you hate reading comments AND you can't stop yourself from reading them, go see a therapist.
I don't mean this blithely, it's a sign of unaddressed emotional issues, it's a fixable thing and nothing to be ashamed of. It's not "who you are", it's just "a bad behavioral habit".
Imagine that for no reason you can fathom, you hear that Bob claims <bad thing> about you. You don't know why, so you seek to find out, and you feel you should let people know that Bob isn't right!
That's the sort of logic involved sometimes. Is it wrong? Well, likely in the world of "1 million strangers are reading and some are replying" it is. But it's perfectly sensible in a local community, to want to 'set the record straight'.
And this peer-pressure derived desire to not be seen as a 'bad guy', is moderately important in a cohesive society. This desire to be seen by others in our community in a positive light, is just part of how we as animals, form a society.
It's a "good thing", when locally derived. But yes, we need new ways to deal with this I guess.
It's a thousand times more taxing than a local audience because you lose all colloquialisms and points of common reference. It's more taxing than even writing for a newspaper because even in the worst case of national coverage, it's rare that an article author would have to consider the global perspective (though still required for certain types of news).
This whole article is just the author chafing at WANTING to use social media like ne has a local audience, while being FORCED to use social media with a global audience in mind. I very much empathize, in the same way I empathize with product manual writers or software documentation authors. Having to come up with every way some dickhead is going to misunderstand you is a massive undertaking. And THEN you have to come up with all the ways that some dickhead will TRY to misunderstand you. To guard against all of them is impossible, so you just have to shore up as many sides as you can and take the criticism as it comes. That is what it means to write for a global audience, and its exhausting.
So I don't blame anyone at all for saying "this isn't my job, fuck this."
Personally, I just write how I want to write and let the chips fall where they may. I don't begrudge anyone for just not writing at all, and leaving all the chips alone. But I also don't find their intention to do so particularly worth description; especially not in long form. It's not like its a binary choice. When you have the spoons to troll any troll that comes at you, and engage earnestly with anyone who is trying to engage with you - no matter how misguided - then have at it! Make your posts and enjoy or muddle through as applies. And on days when you don't want to deal with it? Just shut the fuck up. Don't say anything. Don't reply to people. Don't engage at all.
It's that "easy".
>Giving up LTE
that's very heavily personality dependent, if I didn't want to be bothered by anyone I'd turn off my phone and leave it at home, limiting myself on other days where I do want to access internet from anywhere and be bothered by internet, it would be highly inconvenient for me.
Some think that by changing a service they can get better replies, but there will be no single service that has "sane commenters". This shouldn't be surprising, I saw in Threads complaints that replies had "Facebook vibe", or a common complaint about Mastodon that there were too many geeky reply-guys.
Services should have good filtering in place. A lot of big accounts don't have time to read replies, and they probably shouldn't for their own sanity, but they probably want to see replies from people they follow, i.e. their peers.
I both agree and disagree with some of the comments. Until very recently my interactions with the internet have been fairly shallow and that has protected me in some ways. But I think some people are looking for community, and want to give a bit more of themselves to form deeper connections. I think others are trying to grow an audience - reading the comments is not much different than surveying your customers.
Veronica seems really lovely, and I hope this helps make her life happier.
But sometimes somebody puts a lot of effort on creating things for other people to enjoy. It can be a youtube video, a tutorial, a technical opinion. Or curl[^1].
Feedback provided on such an effort often takes a minuscule fraction of the work the creator put in, and they can be really nasty.
I just think that providing opinions should require some effort. An affordable amount of effort, but not too low. Maybe if I do something worth of notice someday, I'll invite feedback by creating a public Minecraft server and asking people to log in there and post their comments on the book at coordinates 1000, -58, 1000.
[^1]: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/04/22/curl-is-just-the-hobb...
It's effectively impossible to post anything or do anything online (or even IRL) where someone won't disagree with you; there will always be someone (that's me toward you in this case), and that's fine.
What's not fine is the escalation from "I disagree, here's why" to "I disagree, and I'm going to make you miserable". Add to that death threats and you've got a cocktail for being unhappy. Add to that people doxxing you and harassing your real life for their perceived justices, and it makes you very unhappy.
Self-induced outrage seems to be a popular thing now. Where no real problem exists, create one, and manufacture outrage. Find next topic, repeat.
Definitely some interesting and nuanced points being made there.
She also previously did a video about Mastodon / Fediverse: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mqocW7DUFpg - But that was before she left Mastodon.
On the flip side I find the discourse on X a lot more varied. There are definitely big problems with the types of conversations that happen on X but I have to go out of my way to find them. On Mastodon it's not that hard, mainly down to it being a smaller pool of content.
ActivityPub/Mastodon is flawed at its core with its concept of federation. They paint a pretty utopian picture of decentralised communities but there really isn't much difference between them. They are mostly part of the same political zeitgeist and if you don't toe the line you get banned. Once you're banned that's it, you've lost your profile, sure you can recreate elsewhere but have to start from scratch.
For the problems alternatives have like Nostr at least they are truly censorship resistant.
But in the past 2 years I've realized that you should just ignore the haters. They're on youtube too and I don't get involved with them there, so why do I focus on them elsewhere?
No need.
So I'm actually going to return with a personal instance, simply because I enjoy having somewhere to post random pics and stuff when I'm not by a computer, using my phone. I don't care if anyone follows.
The lack of nuance is spot on. The web went from long content in homepages/blogs, to short posts on social medias, to "like" and "share" buttons (1-bit)... it's hard to have nuance when you only take 2 seconds to form your opinion.
Mastodon's big selling point during the big move away from Twitter/X was the absence of The Algorithm, it was supposed to be a friendly, geeky thing, free from monetised outrage. But I've seen it for myself, there's an undercurrent of Twitter's holier-than-thou outrage, it's just from different sources: part exclusionary crusty geeks who've always used Mastodon ('you use Windows???'), part exclusionary leftists ('you're with the Judean People's Front????').
Perhaps it's not always The Algorithm that's to blame.
Personally, I've generally had far more positive interaction on Mastodon than I used to on Twitter, but I've got about 300 followers. I think the author of the article had many thousands, and at that level you're going to be exposed to weird cranks at a much greater rate; the advantage of not having The Algorithm(TM) is likely diminished.
You can't blame made up things if people actively choose to engage with rage baits. Every time something like that has occured, I time and time again notice that people could've solved this by doing nothing.
In real social setting, when someone says an unfunny joke, literally nobody laughs, and whoever said it feels very uncomfortable. On internet, when someone writes something stupid, they might sometimes get more replies than an interesting thing...
How can something like "The Algorithm" be blamed for people laughing at incredibly bad jokes?
It's a tough knob to dial, attention/engagement. Too much of a thing. Not even going to try to say good/bad/whatever. The internet is what we make of it. I hope they return to strengthen it.
This is something I'm working on now, in a different avenue. Work. I changed jobs last week because I was putting too much of myself in, and not getting enough out.
Huh, those are extremely contrarian reply-guys; if anything I would expect the opposite.
If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent.
It works both ways - I replied to a post from an artist really enraged with AI and pointed out it's no different from a human artist seeing art and incorporating it into their style; that radio dealt with this in the US by legislating 'compulsory licenses' so the outcome is unclear.
The response was an immediate perma-ban from mastadon.social... this is not crypto right wing content they are unable to process anything except agreement.
For example, the artist: their livelihood is directly threatened by AI, if not now then probably in the near future, and they are responding by posting about their fear. It's transferred into enragement because that's what gets them engagement and support, but underlying that is fear. If they were to directly post about their fear there's a good chance they'd be mocked even worse so don't judge them too harshly for this.
Then along comes someone who has no skin in the game, except that they think AI is cool and something they want to be seen as an expert in. They feel it's necessary to point out to the person who is fearing for their way of life how WRONG they are. When all that person wants and needs is support.
In these types of situations, when you don't directly have skin in the game, and you don't have any support to offer, it's almost always better not to reply. Make your own post proving how right you are (without linking/tooting/screen-shotting or in any way referencing the other post), and let that other person get the social connections and support that they need. Otherwise, you are Reply Guy!
But the author and whoever deals with their complaints are not interested in any other point of view - literally, there was no reason given on the ban and when I challenged it, no response.
> Make your own post proving how right you are
It's really not like that, my wife is involved in the creative arts too, this has been discussed and considered here a lot. I was active 20 years ago and learned a lot about how 'the cancer' GPL became legally normal. Even if it was like that, how is a one-shot platform perma-ban encouraging that outcome?
Perhaps we have different concepts of what we use social media for, some use it as a para-social support system and others are as a tool to debate and examine different positions.
To flip the script a little, would this "Reply Guy" standard also apply when someone with family in Israel posts support for the Israeli government's actions and gets a bunch of replies about how Israel is committing a genocide? I kind of suspect that "Reply Guy" may just be a proxy for saying "you have the wrong politics".
I guess that's what's wrong with Twitter, and what Mastodon unfortunately copied. The discussion dynamics roughly corresponds to shouting your opinions on a town square - and getting comments from passerbys.
There is little expectation of privacy, and few means to create it (banning indiscreet commenters being one of them). That's why Mastodon is great for niche interests - the town in this case is small, and its inhabitants are well-aligned, but might get frustrating as you touch topics where many people can feel they are entitled to having an opinion about.
Speak up against the person who you see as advocating for genocide.
I don't think we need to over complicate this. Just do your best, you'll get it wrong sometimes but that's OK. It's a guideline for positive online discourse, not a law.
The hypothetical person supporting Israel has family in the country and is fearful of their family's safety. Wouldn't replying to them make you "Reply Guy"?
The parent of the conversation did not say that the artist was fearful, they said "enraged" or angry. It was posited in a child comment that the anger was out of a place of fear.
Depending on how you read the initial post, mood and priors, your reply to a comment can differ wildly.
Why not? I think discretion is needed in both cases. I, for one, am rather pro-Israel, but I wouldn't necessarily tell that to a Palestinian sharing their anger online.
A reply text box should not be an invitation to trash other the person who posted it. This notion that if you're posting in public you're submitting yourself to harassment is pretty bad.
But that's kinda the thing. As you said, the whole 'messages with reply text box' design is set up to encourage responses from whoever wants to respond, and social media services are closer to a soapbox in Speaker's Corner or maybe Times Square than a chat between friends at home or in a restaurant.
Really big boards like Something Awful were the ones known for their rudeness.
There's a reason why most popular people in the world don't run blogposts or personal emails out in the open. They basically have to hire other people to do it for them via company level hierarchies.
The problem is there will always be a certain type of social outcast that will do anything for attention even if that requires doing illegal things to be noticed.
The only way to avoid these things is to be irrelevant, I never received a death threat in my entire life, but I also don't have anything like a blogpost website either.
This has always been the case in life, you also don't say things in public that you'd get beaten over, do you? Whether that's wrong is not my problem though, legal system as it is does not really care and can't prevent these things, the matter of fact is that whether you get beaten is your choice and legal system will only punish in hindsight. On internet, all of that is amplified, but at least noone can beat you up until you go outside.
You should be mindful of what you can or cannot handle before you say anything, if you fear any adversity and god forbid are some sort of pacifist who wouldn't defend their own life to death if necessary, it's probably best to say nothing and go unnoticed by anyone, that's just how things always were and always will be on this animal planet.