RT @conuly

[frandroid]

One of the features I love the most about Twitter is that you can RT, and QT any bit of conversation. One of the most frustrating things I find about Mastodon is the intentional lack of a QT feature. One of the uses of QTs on Twitter is to recruit* people to come and harass the person making the original tweet. That really fucking sucks, but instead of making QTs opt-in or figuring out ways to moderate this type of behaviour better, Mastodon decided that it was too difficult to deal with and decided to not implement it.

Anyway, this is a side-rant to say that I LOL'd at this reply from conuly in one of their threads here on DW:

Never misplace your wallet around an economist. :)

*: I was trying to find the term that's used for such recruitment. Is it brigading? I think that's it. My first guess was "embrigadeer", which I go from French, where "embrigader" is the term for "press-ganged"

Comments

[dewline]

I think you're correct about "brigading".

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/brigading/

[conuly]

I've seen that behavior called brigading elsewhere.

Not being on twitter anytime, ever, I get that RT is retweet, but what's QT?

[frandroid]

QT is Quote Tweet, where you retweet someone but add your commentary on top. You can see me elegantly QT'ing the CBC here: https://twitter.com/francois_v/status/1664709434730336262

One of the main issues with QT'ing, I think, is that your own comment appears before the tweet that's being RT'd. So the person QT'ing gets to frame the other person before the reader has even seen the source material. So one can easily take a tweet out of context and distort its meaning, not leaving other readers a change to make up their own opinion first. If I was implementing QT'ing on Mastodon, I think I would move the commentary below. Or make a feature so that when you RT any tweet, it also (optionally?) RT's the previous tweet in the thread, so instead of a QT, you'd have "RT with context", so to speak.

[conuly]

So... if you wanted to do the same thing on Mastodon you'd basically just RT and then add another comment with your commentary.

It adds a single extra step, which means that people who just want to stir the shit might be discouraged from doing it, and people who want to genuinely share an opinion will have a few more seconds to think of how to do that in a nuanced way instead of an outragey way.

[springheel_jack]

That's not the same behavior, though. The comment you attach to the boost may as well be invisible, as it isn't surfaced in anyone else's feed.

[conuly]

And studies done by social media companies have shown that making this sort of thing easier increases hostile behavior and the spread of misinformation.

[springheel_jack]

I don't think that's at all straightforward. They're also means of useful critique, and of cooperation building.

[conuly]

If critique and cooperation building are important, people can find a way to do it even if it isn't made super simple and easy. Even if it requires a few seconds between thought and action.

[frandroid]

No, it's not that easy. It's that without QT, the platform is very limited in terms of cross-threading, and doesn't do preview of other Mastodon content well. It is actually a hindrance to group communication. The same thing that makes Twitter a great tool for Nazi collaboration also makes it a great tool for radical (or any other, really) cooperation.

Something that would become more evident with use...

[conuly]

Okay. But you can't get just one of the two things. Clearly, Mastodon has chosen to not have as much risk of extremism.

[conuly]

Or, if there's no RT at all, then you'd just have to copy the link in an old-school style.

Retweeting, reblogging, and related features on other social media sites have absolutely been linked to the rise in extremism and antisocial discourse. I can understand why Mastodon wants to make people take an extra second to do it manually.

[ioplokon]

brigading on reddit, dogpile on twitter, discourse on tumblr, wank on lj/dw...

[frandroid]

...wank? :)

[ioplokon]

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fanwank

[frandroid]

Oh okay but brigading is organized abuse... This seems to be fairly removed?

[ioplokon]

I'd say... not all wank is brigading, but some of it definitely is? & the term has been used to cover that behavior. I kind of think a feature of the term wank is to obscure the difference between drama and abuse/harassment...

[frandroid]

Nasty!!

[springheel_jack]

Re"toot" is suppssed to come to mastodon Real Soon Now, which is an indefinite and mysterious period of time.

[frandroid]

We'll see how they'll implement it...

[sabotabby]

I like its absence on DW, because it forces you make a link to another person's post and then you have to write enough about it that someone sees why it is worth a click. But that's a long-form blogging thing; it is an annoying thing that Mastodon doesn't have it, because it interferes with discoverability.

[frandroid]

Exactly.

I gave up on LJ being innovative in 2007 when I realized that they would never react to facebook's UI innovations, (some of which were easy to copy!! A "Like" button that doesn't reload the whole page, please!!) so my hopes for that on DW are in the negative column...