CLOSED: [2022-06-05 Sun 18:27] SCHEDULED: <2022-06-05 Sun> :PROPERTIES: :CREATED: [2022-06-05 Sun 17:24] :ID: 2022-06-05-mastodon-cw-misuse :END: :LOGBOOK: - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2024-01-11 Thu 10:52] - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2022-11-19 Sat 14:30] - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2022-11-11 Fri 11:44] - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2022-11-07 Mon 18:44] - State "DONE" from "STARTED" [2022-06-05 Sun 18:27] :END: - Updates - 2022-06-07: small Mastodon survey - 2022-11-07: Friendica posts in Mastodon - 2022-11-11: - Popularity of This Article - Eugen's Message on Consensus on Usage of Content Warnings - 2022-11-19: Github Issue on Renaming CWs - 2024-01-11: Research Proves CWs Fruitless If you are user of the social network [[id:2020-05-17-mastodon][Mastodon]] (part of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse][Fediverse]]), you may have stumbled over [[https://mastodon.help/#ContentWarning][the feature called "content warning"]] (CW): #+BEGIN_QUOTE Mastodon features a Content Warning system. It’s an optional mask that covers the content of a post with an editable warning message. It’s used to cover content that is admitted by your Instance policy but may still hurt people, like spoilers, nudity, depiction of violence or threads about sensitive topics. For example, if you want to start a thread about the ending of a fresh new movie, you can do it using a CW like “Spoiler about the ending of...” Every Instance has its own rules about CWs and therefore it’s common to see them used in different ways, like on selfies or depictions of food. That is because what on an Instance is considered a sensitive topic on another may be something commonly accepted. It’s possible that an Instance is blocked by others because of its misuse of CWs on certain kinds of topics. This said, if you want you can always go in the Setting page and set to automatically uncover all the CWs. #+END_QUOTE While there are tons of valid reasons to use a CW, there is a growing number of posts that do seem to dilute this great idea of CWs. **** Random Real-World Examples I just took screenshots of some posts from my current personal and global timeline to give you an impression on what I mean. The examples are absolutely random and are only used here to demonstrate the real-world use of CW. #+CAPTION: Mastodon post: "Facebook, help request, boosts appreciated". #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 346 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-06-05T17.29.54 Mastodon post with non-clear CW 346x158 - Facebook help request boosts appreciated -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-05T17.29.54 Mastodon post with non-clear CW 346x158 - Facebook help request boosts appreciated -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] "Facebook, help request, boosts appreciated" doesn't give me enough clues why it requires to click on "SHOW MORE" to read the content. After clicking on the CW button, I saw: #+BEGIN_QUOTE If you could visit this link: [...] and tell me what you see, I'd be super grateful. [...] #+END_QUOTE Well, I really don't get why this required a warning. #+CAPTION: Mastodon post: "FOSS Rec? (Help Wanted)". #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 343 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-06-05T17.50.20 Mastodon post with unclear CW - FOSS Rec Help Wanted 343x158 -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-05T17.50.20 Mastodon post with unclear CW - FOSS Rec Help Wanted 343x158 -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] FOSS stands for [[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Free/Libre_Open_Source_Software][Free/Libre Open Source Software]]. I don't know what "Rec" stands for in that context. Well, I had to click on "SHOW MORE" to see: #+BEGIN_QUOTE Hello all! I'm looking for a FOSS journaling application for my phone or computer. I would like for it to be able to use text, images, url links - but dates are not necessary. I'm having trouble finding much on FDroid. If this helps the inquiry, I'm looking for something to catalogue my house plants in and put down information like their name, watering, light, soil, photo, etc. Let me know if you have anything in mind! #foss #help #recommendations #+END_QUOTE OK, now I know that "Rec" stood for "recommendations". But why on earth did I have to click on that button? Who would be offended or triggered by this message? #+CAPTION: Mastodon post: "ph-". #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 338 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-06-05T17.32.25 Mastodon post with non-clear CW 338x97 ph- -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-05T17.32.25 Mastodon post with non-clear CW 338x97 ph- -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] This one's perfect. Two letters and a hyphen that doesn't mean anything to me at all. I can not have a clue about the content of the post or the motivation why I should expand the message. I did anyway and could read a harmless personal rant about a person who was helping a peer to get rid of a mold although the person is allergic to mold. Poor gal but I don't see any reason why this deserves a CW to click on. **** Implications Somebody could argue: "If you are annoyed to click on the button in order to see all the CW, you might enable following option in the settings of your Mastodon account": #+CAPTION: Mastodon preferences with "Always expand posts marked with content warnings" (bottom). #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 400 :linked-image-width original [[tsfile:2022-06-05T17.23.33 Mastodon preferences with disabled Always expand posts marked with content warnings -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-05T17.23.33 Mastodon preferences with disabled Always expand posts marked with content warnings -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] Yes, this really would solve the issue for me. However, this would be shortsighted for this great platform in general. Imagine a person who is really triggered by certain topics such as suicide, war, death, or other clearly horrible topics. Such a person is not able to enable the option above because *there are really good cases* *where CWs are perfectly valid and in my opinion also necessary*. Following that logic, you either have to decide to enable the global preference to basically disable CWs by showing their content without clicking on "SHOW MORE" all the time. Or you do need to mass-click posts of your time-line in order to read perfectly normal posts that do not need any warning at all. *This kills the CW feature for this platform* and it harms the people who do rely on warnings. If you do try to find as much reasons to use a CW, you're going to end up with a CW for every post. You can't win here. *You can always find a poor soul who's offended by any post you do without CW.* **** What to Do About It? In my opinion, there are great alternatives to mis-using CWs for non-warnings or warnings related to stuff that doesn't trigger most people. Everybody should *learn how to maintain a set of words or hashtags in his or her personal filter settings*: #+CAPTION: Mastodon preferences for filters. #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 630 :linked-image-width original [[tsfile:2022-06-05T18.11.24 Mastodon preferences for Filters -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-05T18.11.24 Mastodon preferences for Filters -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] Using that method, you can avoid contact with certain topics. This makes much more sense than forcing the sender to anticipate potential personal aversion of something for each potential reader. Use *CW only for things that typically triggers normal people*, not [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_(slang)][snowflakes]]. If you triggered now, please do read [[id:2022-08-28-woke][this article how I mean that]]. The Internet is and never will be a safe space for everybody. Using Mastodon filters is a near-perfect tool of providing a solution for this issue. Of course, this also requires the *use of proper #hashtags* which I also recommend for other reasons because on Mastodon you can search for content using hashtags only. My personal approach is that I'll send out links to this article to people who mis-use CWs. If I get a response that doesn't explain why a warning was really necessary (I might change my mind as well) or if the person can't explain the reason to me and keeps using CWs like that, I add the account to my list of muted accounts so that I never see anything again from them. **** Small Mastodon Survey :PROPERTIES: :END: Update 2022-06-07: I should have done this before I wrote this article. [[https://graz.social/@publicvoit/108429458066719151][I started a Mastodon survey]] which asked for the preference of using CWs. I tried to come up with neutral questions in order to minimize any bias. Here are the results after 53 people took part: #+CAPTION: Mastodon survey with results: 36% for CWs everywhere, 25% don't care, 40% only for important warnings. #+ATTR_HTML: :alt alterantive-text for the image #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 339 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-06-07T12.45.13 Mastodon survey result for the preference of CWs 339x416 -- screenshots publicvoit.png][2022-06-07T12.45.13 Mastodon survey result for the preference of CWs 339x416 -- screenshots publicvoit.png]] To my surprise, it's a result with no clear winner. Anyway, if the majority of people voting for a very broad definition of CWs, I'd still think that we should change that behavior as it is hurting the platform. Back in the good old days of the Internet, we had a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_technology#Netiquette][Netiquette]] which contained rules and suggestions so that services and platforms like email, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet][Usenet]], instant messengers are working fine for its users. I miss something like that on nowadays platforms in general. And it should be clear that this is not a matter of taste according to the majority of the users, this is a matter of providing workflows and habits so that the platform is working in a good way. Therefore, I don't care for the current majority, I care for the long-term aspects for the platform. **** Update: Friendica posts in Mastodon :PROPERTIES: :END: Friendica posts in Mastodon tend to come along with CWs where the title is shown and the rest is hidden. If you're interested in the technical details, please do read [[https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1363-693a-06c4-e40472583363][this thread that describes the issue at hand and how you can fix it]] in your settings. **** Update: Popularity of This Article :PROPERTIES: :END: With the 2022-11 mass migration from Twitter to Mastodon instances, this article gained momentum. At a certain time, it became even my most popular article: #+CAPTION: My message from 2022-11-08 about the popularity of this article. #+ATTR_HTML: :alt With the latest #Mastodon boom, my article has over three times as many readers as the second most popular article on my blog. Over 10% of all page visits end up there. It does seem to hit a nerve. #CW #publicvoit #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 500 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-11-11T11.10.59 My Mastodon message about the popularity of my not-misuse-CWs article -- screenshots publicvoit.png][https://graz.social/@publicvoit/109308607128483322]] It got even mentioned in media such as [[https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastadon-content-warnings-twitter/?amp][this daily dot article]]. I got all sorts of comments [[https://graz.social/@publicvoit][on Mastodon]]. The vast majority was very positive and supportive. Only a few negative comments were written. Most of those people did not seem to have read this article because they simply objected to the idea in general without going into details about my concrete arguments listed here. As I wrote: It does seem to hit a nerve. **** Update: Eugen's Message on Consensus on Usage of Content Warnings :PROPERTIES: :END: On 2022-11-11, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Rochko][Eugen (the founder of Mastodon)]] published an interesting message that relates to the subject at hand: #+CAPTION: Eugen's message about "consensus on usage of content warnings". #+ATTR_HTML: :alt Having been here since 2016, I can tell you there is definitely no such thing as a consensus on usage of content warnings on the fediverse. It's a decentralized network that doesn't belong to any one party, so by definition there is no single culture on it. Different corners have different expectations and customs. [...] #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 504 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2022-11-11T10.59.03 Eugen about consensus on usage of content warnings -- screenshots publicvoit.png][https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109323056922301691]] While some people may think that this is settled and everybody may use CWs as they wish, I do think that all of my arguments above are still perfectly valid. Of course, CWs that can't describe properly what's hidden below are an issue in any case. It's useless like the popular but senseless email subject "a question". For all the people who really do rely on content warnings (and I do mean [[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/warning][warning]] when I write "warning"), any different use of CWs other than for warnings with a clear purpose is an issue. We might start to use the CW feature for titles, summaries, abstracts, whatever, yes, of course. As Eugen is writing, the consensus of the community may change. However, this also means that there is no working "warning" feature any more. First, we would need to rename this feature as soon as possible in the UI and documentation in order to avoid misunderstanding and establish the new consensus. At the same time, it is inevitable that people with legit issues with problematic topics (death, suicide, pornography, strong violence, ...) for whom this feature was made originally (I presume), are not able to profit from its use any more. You can never tell what an arbitrary sender thought about this feature when using it. There might be some very violent content hidden, there might be an informative message suited for everybody. *You can never tell any more*. To me, you can not weaken up CWs without accepting the consequences. I'm lucky that I don't rely on CWs because I'm able to deal with most problematic content I've come across so far. The reason why I wrote this article in the first place was sympathy for the people who don't have that luxury. Warnings and titles/subjects/summaries/abstracts are two very different use-cases to me. Each do have their legitimacy. Done properly, we would require to have *separate* features for explicitly defining both. I would not recommend Mastodon to go into that direction as the interface should keep its current simplicity and not overcomplicate things. So far, I did not read or hear any single argument that proved the arguments of this article wrong. I got the impression that people tend to ignore the fact that using CWs for a different purpose than for warnings does cause issues for people who relied on CWs so far. Either way, we need to understand the consequences of any change of consensus in that direction. **** Update: Github Issue on Renaming CWs :PROPERTIES: :END: There is [[https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/20117][a Github issue which is discussing to rename the CW feature to something else]]. **** Update: Research Proves CWs Fruitless :PROPERTIES: :END: Here's a research study from 2023-08: [[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625][A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings, Content Warnings, and Content Notes]] It's free to read online. I'm just quoting the Conclusions: #+BEGIN_QUOTE Existing research on content warnings, content notes, and trigger warnings suggests that they are fruitless, although they do reliably induce a period of uncomfortable anticipation. Although many questions warrant further investigation, trigger warnings should not be used as a mental-health tool. #+END_QUOTE I guess that really supports my point here from a slightly different point of view.