We need to talk more about reducing "tone policing" here.
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@scottjenson Very interesting point of view. I like it.
Only because you think you are one of the "good guys" gives you the right to expect everything to be done in your way of mind.
But that is a general observation for all social media, not only the Fediverse.@RandomMusickMayhem I find it humorous that me asking people to not dictate rules to others is somehow "expecting everything to be done in your way of mind".
I'm asking exactly the opposite: don't chase people away because you don't like what they are doing. I'm asking everyone to relax and not push "community standards" that are not agreed to by everyone.
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@RandomMusickMayhem I find it humorous that me asking people to not dictate rules to others is somehow "expecting everything to be done in your way of mind".
I'm asking exactly the opposite: don't chase people away because you don't like what they are doing. I'm asking everyone to relax and not push "community standards" that are not agreed to by everyone.
@scottjenson That wasn't meant in a negative way, the complete opposite. I totally agree with you. The comment was about the people expecting unrealistic behaviour.
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@scottjenson That wasn't meant in a negative way, the complete opposite. I totally agree with you. The comment was about the people expecting unrealistic behaviour.
@RandomMusickMayhem ah, I read your comment wrong. Thank you.
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@thisismissem Thank you for this. I'd like to know how BlueSky mods have felt about their responsibility in tagging users content. it's always helpful to learn how an existing system work (or doesn't)
scottjenson@social.coop for many core labels it's automated, rather than manual. I think the lack of content labelling and sheer reliance on content warnings is what creates the tone policing environment: the only people who can do anything are server moderators or the original poster, so people direct their ire towards the original poster.
Not everyone wants to see everything, and that's okay, designing our systems with that in mind would result in better social outcomes.
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@thisismissem yeah I'm really just trying to get my head around this. It's clear the status quo just isn't working. I don't have any clear improvements but content labeling feels like a strong (and complementary) solution.
Especially if some of these labels could be fun and supportive? It would be nice if moderators had something positive to add and not just "do policing"
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@thisismissem yeah I'm really just trying to get my head around this. It's clear the status quo just isn't working. I don't have any clear improvements but content labeling feels like a strong (and complementary) solution.
Especially if some of these labels could be fun and supportive? It would be nice if moderators had something positive to add and not just "do policing"
Labellers are interesting and can be useful -- including fun and supportive stuff like The Yard Crow's hand-crafted artisanal labels. And Bluesky's implementation, while interesting and useful, has some major problems -- so I think there's room for Mastodon and other fedi implementations to do a lot better. That said, I don't think labelelrs will help with tone policing here in general, or the issues around CWs in particular.
It would be nice if moderators had something positive to add and not just "do policing"
Yes! And while additional functionality could help here, this can happen now. A couple of thoughts:
Intervene in discussions in ways that aren't policing. Most obviously, when moderators see an example of unfortunate post that's not breaking the rules, they can reply (in the thread or with DMs) to suggest alternatives -- and if somebody has been unfairly tone policed (or attacked or critiqued nastily for not including alt text etc etc etc) saying something supportive, which can in many situations really help take the sting out of it.
Educating people on your instance (with posts, announcements, and emails if you do that kind of thing) about the norms you hope people will engage in -- and setting expectations about the challenges of cross-instance interactions where the norms are different. With CWs for example, make sure that people know (a) what the expectations are on your instance (b) what people should do and not do if they see a post from your instance that flouts the expectations and (c) what to do and what not to do if they see a post from another instance that flouts the expectations. (The "not to do" of those cases may well include "give the poster a hard time".)
Making sure that your onboarding process lets newcomers know about the norms.
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Labellers are interesting and can be useful -- including fun and supportive stuff like The Yard Crow's hand-crafted artisanal labels. And Bluesky's implementation, while interesting and useful, has some major problems -- so I think there's room for Mastodon and other fedi implementations to do a lot better. That said, I don't think labelelrs will help with tone policing here in general, or the issues around CWs in particular.
It would be nice if moderators had something positive to add and not just "do policing"
Yes! And while additional functionality could help here, this can happen now. A couple of thoughts:
Intervene in discussions in ways that aren't policing. Most obviously, when moderators see an example of unfortunate post that's not breaking the rules, they can reply (in the thread or with DMs) to suggest alternatives -- and if somebody has been unfairly tone policed (or attacked or critiqued nastily for not including alt text etc etc etc) saying something supportive, which can in many situations really help take the sting out of it.
Educating people on your instance (with posts, announcements, and emails if you do that kind of thing) about the norms you hope people will engage in -- and setting expectations about the challenges of cross-instance interactions where the norms are different. With CWs for example, make sure that people know (a) what the expectations are on your instance (b) what people should do and not do if they see a post from your instance that flouts the expectations and (c) what to do and what not to do if they see a post from another instance that flouts the expectations. (The "not to do" of those cases may well include "give the poster a hard time".)
Making sure that your onboarding process lets newcomers know about the norms.
One thing I'd add though is that some of what's described as "tone policing" is in reality call-ins or call-outs for racism, ablism, sexism, etc. So it's important to keep that in mind when trying to limit the less-helpful forms of tone policing.
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One thing I'd add though is that some of what's described as "tone policing" is in reality call-ins or call-outs for racism, ablism, sexism, etc. So it's important to keep that in mind when trying to limit the less-helpful forms of tone policing.
@jdp23
Excellent points, thank you for replying so thoughtfully. So if I understand you correctly, you're strongly in favor of content labeling (especially as a form of positive engagement) but you don't think it will help with call-outs for not following the rules? If so, I agree, but as you say, it could take a significant sting out of it if a moderator labels the victims post with something supportive and positive.I assume there are FEPs on this already in progress?
@thisismissem -
@jdp23
Excellent points, thank you for replying so thoughtfully. So if I understand you correctly, you're strongly in favor of content labeling (especially as a form of positive engagement) but you don't think it will help with call-outs for not following the rules? If so, I agree, but as you say, it could take a significant sting out of it if a moderator labels the victims post with something supportive and positive.I assume there are FEPs on this already in progress?
@thisismissemI'm strongly in favor of investigating approaches to content labeling and think that a well-done system could be helpful in general (and not just for positive engagement). There are also a lot of complexities here (including abuse potential, and how labels should fit in with a more general content note system) so I don't think the right answer is just to clone the Bluesky implementation. On the other hand it would be great to have something like @aendra's XBlock Screenshot Labeler here in fedi!
My intuitions are that content labels won't help much with tensions around tone policing or CWs -- they'll just displace the tensions to be about tone policing and labels. Of course I could be wrong on that front, maybe there are design approaches leading to positive impacts I haven't thought about and/or a way to use the existence new functionality to get awareness and adoption of (non-technology) best practices. So it might well be worth exploring!
In general though I feel like figuring out approaches for cultural interventions is the key question -- not jsut on this front, but also on making progress on accessibility best practices (and avoiding tensions around alt-text usage), anti-Blackness, reply-guyism, etc etc etc. So if resources are limited (and I assume they are!) my intuition is that may well be a better place to focus efforts. One of Fedi's strengths is context-aware moderation on small-to-medium size instances. How to leverage that here? How to expand to deal with cross-instance differences in norms, and larger instances where scalability problems start to kick in?
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I'm strongly in favor of investigating approaches to content labeling and think that a well-done system could be helpful in general (and not just for positive engagement). There are also a lot of complexities here (including abuse potential, and how labels should fit in with a more general content note system) so I don't think the right answer is just to clone the Bluesky implementation. On the other hand it would be great to have something like @aendra's XBlock Screenshot Labeler here in fedi!
My intuitions are that content labels won't help much with tensions around tone policing or CWs -- they'll just displace the tensions to be about tone policing and labels. Of course I could be wrong on that front, maybe there are design approaches leading to positive impacts I haven't thought about and/or a way to use the existence new functionality to get awareness and adoption of (non-technology) best practices. So it might well be worth exploring!
In general though I feel like figuring out approaches for cultural interventions is the key question -- not jsut on this front, but also on making progress on accessibility best practices (and avoiding tensions around alt-text usage), anti-Blackness, reply-guyism, etc etc etc. So if resources are limited (and I assume they are!) my intuition is that may well be a better place to focus efforts. One of Fedi's strengths is context-aware moderation on small-to-medium size instances. How to leverage that here? How to expand to deal with cross-instance differences in norms, and larger instances where scalability problems start to kick in?
jdp23@neuromatch.social said in We need to talk more about reducing "tone policing" here.:
> My intuitions are that content labels won't help much with tensions around tone policing or CWs -- they'll just displace the tensions to be about tone policing and labels.Yeah, this is definitely a concern, which is why AP T&S is designing labelling with third-party labelers in mind. That way people could "follow" a labeler that they like, and moderators can also setup default labelers for their instance, perhaps providing content via a FASP protocol.
Though, the initial content labelling FEP will focus just on self-labelling and what labels are.
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We need to talk more about reducing "tone policing" here. I understand you want people to use content warnings, but guess what? They don't have to! If they don't do it, just unfollow them.
But please, don't harass them. That's what drove away our last big wave.
Do whatever you need to feel safe, but harassing people to your standards doesn't make THEM feel safe. Stop it.
The other thing here is that an instance could itself also be a labelling service, so a larger instance could have mods labelling content and smaller instances could subscribe to their labels.
