#fediversemeta — Public Fediverse posts

@Nicolas Mouart noPhD, noMA No. I'm someone who wants to write image descriptions and alt-text not somehow, but the best way I can.

For this, I've been gathering information from a whole lot of sources for more than three years. More recently, I've started compiling it in a wiki so I can share it with others. When the wiki is done, it will have over 30 individual rules and guidelines for describing images and writing alt-texts.

125 characters as a limit are widespread because screen readers used to have a 125-character hard cap at some point in the 2010s or so. They simply couldn't read alt-texts beyond the 125-character mark. A while later, the hard limit was raised to 200 characters.

Nowadays, there is no hard character limit in screen readers to speak of anymore. Mastodon user @Eric Eggert says so, too: https://yatil.net/blog/there-is-no-character-limit-for-alt-text

The lowest actual character limit that must be heeded in the Fediverse is 512 characters. It is imposed by Misskey, a microblogging server application that's part of the Fediverse and fully federated with Mastodon, but more powerful than Mastodon (https://misskey-hub.net/en/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misskey), as well as its various forks and forks of forks such as Calckey (defunct, but servers still exist), Firefish (ditto), Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, Catodon or CherryPick.

By design, Misskey is supposed to truncate alt-texts that are longer than 512 characters at the 512-character mark. However, due to a bug that still isn't fixed, it deletes the alt-text instead. The same applies to all the "Forkeys". If you write a longer alt-text, users on Misskey and the Forkeys will believe you haven't supplied an alt-text to begin with. You take a big effort upon you and write this monster of an alt-text, and regardless, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will think you're another ableist swine who can't be bothered.

The only other thing that speaks against the 1000+-character alt-texts that are so popular on Mastodon is simply useability: A screen reader can navigate normal text, i.e. "rewind" a few words or to the beginning of the sentence of whatever. It can't navigate alt-text in this way, though. So let's suppose you're having a 1000-character alt-text read out to you. Around the 900-character mark, something distracts you. You have to have the last sentence re-read. No dice. The only thing the screen reader can do is jump back to the beginning of the alt-text and re-read the whole thing.

Still, Mastodon, being as Mastodon-centric as it has always been, loves long alt-texts. For one, it loves to use alt-texts to write around the 500-character limit which, by the way, is very bad.

But it also appears to love long and detailed image descriptions. They appear to have become part of Mastodon's culture. I'm actually waiting for Fediverse users being sanctioned in some way for providing alt-texts that adhere to Web accessibility standards, but that are too short for at least some Mastodon users' standards. In fact, I'm waiting for the first Mastodon user sanctioning someone else because they consider an alt-text of 500 characters too short and lacking details.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #IceshrimpJS #Sharkey #Catodon #CherryPick #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Nicolas Mouart noPhD, noMA No. I'm someone who wants to write image descriptions and alt-text not somehow, but the best way I can.

For this, I've been gathering information from a whole lot of sources for more than three years. More recently, I've started compiling it in a wiki so I can share it with others. When the wiki is done, it will have over 30 individual rules and guidelines for describing images and writing alt-texts.

125 characters as a limit are widespread because screen readers used to have a 125-character hard cap at some point in the 2010s or so. They simply couldn't read alt-texts beyond the 125-character mark. A while later, the hard limit was raised to 200 characters.

Nowadays, there is no hard character limit in screen readers to speak of anymore. Mastodon user @Eric Eggert says so, too: https://yatil.net/blog/there-is-no-character-limit-for-alt-text

The lowest actual character limit that must be heeded in the Fediverse is 512 characters. It is imposed by Misskey, a microblogging server application that's part of the Fediverse and fully federated with Mastodon, but more powerful than Mastodon (https://misskey-hub.net/en/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misskey), as well as its various forks and forks of forks such as Calckey (defunct, but servers still exist), Firefish (ditto), Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, Catodon or CherryPick.

By design, Misskey is supposed to truncate alt-texts that are longer than 512 characters at the 512-character mark. However, due to a bug that still isn't fixed, it deletes the alt-text instead. The same applies to all the "Forkeys". If you write a longer alt-text, users on Misskey and the Forkeys will believe you haven't supplied an alt-text to begin with. You take a big effort upon you and write this monster of an alt-text, and regardless, users on Misskey, Sharkey & Co. will think you're another ableist swine who can't be bothered.

The only other thing that speaks against the 1000+-character alt-texts that are so popular on Mastodon is simply useability: A screen reader can navigate normal text, i.e. "rewind" a few words or to the beginning of the sentence of whatever. It can't navigate alt-text in this way, though. So let's suppose you're having a 1000-character alt-text read out to you. Around the 900-character mark, something distracts you. You have to have the last sentence re-read. No dice. The only thing the screen reader can do is jump back to the beginning of the alt-text and re-read the whole thing.

Still, Mastodon, being as Mastodon-centric as it has always been, loves long alt-texts. For one, it loves to use alt-texts to write around the 500-character limit which, by the way, is very bad.

But it also appears to love long and detailed image descriptions. They appear to have become part of Mastodon's culture. I'm actually waiting for Fediverse users being sanctioned in some way for providing alt-texts that adhere to Web accessibility standards, but that are too short for at least some Mastodon users' standards. In fact, I'm waiting for the first Mastodon user sanctioning someone else because they consider an alt-text of 500 characters too short and lacking details.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #IceshrimpJS #Sharkey #Catodon #CherryPick #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Nicolas Mouart noPhD, noMA As for the character limit, that's because Gemini is sourcing old and outdated information of which it doesn't know that it's old and outdated.

I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse. This is the page about how long alt-text can and should be: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Nicolas Mouart noPhD, noMA As for the character limit, that's because Gemini is sourcing old and outdated information of which it doesn't know that it's old and outdated.

I'm working on an extensive wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse. This is the page about how long alt-text can and should be: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Alexander Goeres 𒀯 @everton137 Whether they've adopted Mastodon's culture. And whether they follow all of Mastodon's largely unwritten rules to a tee.

Regardless of whether or not they're actually on Mastodon after all.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Alexander Goeres 𒀯 @everton137 Whether they've adopted Mastodon's culture. And whether they follow all of Mastodon's largely unwritten rules to a tee.

Regardless of whether or not they're actually on Mastodon after all.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Alexander Goeres 𒀯 @everton137 Whether they've adopted Mastodon's culture. And whether they follow all of Mastodon's largely unwritten rules to a tee.

Regardless of whether or not they're actually on Mastodon after all.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Alexander Goeres 𒀯 @everton137 Whether they've adopted Mastodon's culture. And whether they follow all of Mastodon's largely unwritten rules to a tee.

Regardless of whether or not they're actually on Mastodon after all.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Alexander Goeres 𒀯 @everton137 Whether they've adopted Mastodon's culture. And whether they follow all of Mastodon's largely unwritten rules to a tee.

Regardless of whether or not they're actually on Mastodon after all.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

@Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: By the way, forgot to mention this:

There are already Mastodon servers whose rules explicitly forbid common users policing others. Only a) the actual server rules must be enforced, b) only by actual server personnel and c) only against users on the same server.

This means if you are not a moderator, and/or if you police a rule or "rule" that is not part of the server rules, and/or if you police someone from another server, you may be sanctioned for it.

I dare say the very existence of this rule says a lot, even though it isn't nearly as widespread as I wish it was.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA

@Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: By the way, forgot to mention this:

There are already Mastodon servers whose rules explicitly forbid common users policing others. Only a) the actual server rules must be enforced, b) only by actual server personnel and c) only against users on the same server.

This means if you are not a moderator, and/or if you police a rule or "rule" that is not part of the server rules, and/or if you police someone from another server, you may be sanctioned for it.

I dare say the very existence of this rule says a lot, even though it isn't nearly as widespread as I wish it was.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA

@Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: By the way, forgot to mention this:

There are already Mastodon servers whose rules explicitly forbid common users policing others. Only a) the actual server rules must be enforced, b) only by actual server personnel and c) only against users on the same server.

This means if you are not a moderator, and/or if you police a rule or "rule" that is not part of the server rules, and/or if you police someone from another server, you may be sanctioned for it.

I dare say the very existence of this rule says a lot, even though it isn't nearly as widespread as I wish it was.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA

@Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: By the way, forgot to mention this:

There are already Mastodon servers whose rules explicitly forbid common users policing others. Only a) the actual server rules must be enforced, b) only by actual server personnel and c) only against users on the same server.

This means if you are not a moderator, and/or if you police a rule or "rule" that is not part of the server rules, and/or if you police someone from another server, you may be sanctioned for it.

I dare say the very existence of this rule says a lot, even though it isn't nearly as widespread as I wish it was.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA

@Cassian [main] This matches my observation here in the Fediverse.

Blind or visually-impaired users, those who actually need image descriptions, are happy to have alt-texts or image descriptions at all. Their requirements don't go much beyond that. And they don't personally attack or sanction anyone.

And then there's the alt-text police of Mastodon's HOA. They're sighted, all of them. It's them who attack, ostracise, sanction, block and sometimes even report other users. For missing alt-text, for completely useless alt-text, for inaccurate alt-text, even for alt-text that isn't detailed enough. For whichever definition of "detailed enough" because the alt-text police don't coordinate their standards. They literally don't talk to each other, so they all assume they all think alike.

In addition, the alt-text police know nothing about the actual rules and guidelines for good alt-texts and image descriptions. Everything they know, they know from Mastodon's culture and from what's going on on Mastodon. And thanks to Mastodon's culture, the Fediverse is a place where you can post an image with a detailed 1,000+-character alt-text and not only get away with it, but be cheered for it.

Never mind that users on Misskey and the Forkeys won't see alt-texts with over 512 characters due to a nasty bug. But tell that to users who don't even know that Misskey exists.

In order to save yourself and your reach in the Fediverse from the wrath of the alt-text police, you basically have to be constantly ahead of their minimum requirements which at least some of them appear to raise every now and then. This means you have to exceed their current minimum requirements to keep yourself from being sanctioned in four years for image descriptions that you've written today. You have to play by the book, and with that, I mean every book, because you never know who in the alt-text police goes by which alt-text guides.

That is, my current impression is that if an image shows something that's obscure enough, Fediverse users are obliged to deliver explanations as well. I understand that as enough explanations so that nobody will ever have to look anything up to understand the image or its description or any of the explanations.

I myself only rarely post images anymore, especially no original images. All my original images are renderings from very obscure 3-D virtual worlds. Images like these require a humongous amount of work to describe them in a way that keeps you safe from even the most zealous of the alt-text police.

I've once taken two full days, morning to evening, to describe one image. The outcome was an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters plus an additional long description of over 60,000 characters in the post text that also contained all necessary explanations as well as transcripts of every last bit of text within the border of the image, readable or not.

Blind users with screen readers might proverbially be at my throat for their screen reader spending three hours rambling down the description of one measly image. But they probably won't attack or insult or block me for that. They may actually be thankful to have some description.

It's the sighted members of the alt-text police who attack or insult or block other users for less than optimal image descriptions. At the same time, I've yet to see one of them attack or insult or block someone for taking image descriptions to extremes. I guess they'd rather attack or insult or block me for exceeding Mastodon's holy 500-character limit because that long description with over 20 text transcripts and with the various explanations had to go somewhere.

Sad but true: If you want to survive in the Fediverse, you have to pander those who can be dangerous to you and your reach. And not so much to those who really need it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@Stefan Bohacek Another thing where Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte truly shine, by the way.

First of all, Hubzilla distinguishes between a "contact" (someone has sent you a connection request) and an "approved contact" (either you've confirmed the connection request, thus creating what's a mutual follower/followed connection on Mastodon, or you've requested a connection request, and it has been confirmed). It's much like on Facebook. This distinction also exists in permissions: You can give certain permissions to contacts or only to approved contacts.

On (streams) and Forte, the concept of a non-approved contact doesn't exist; unless the connection request is confirmed, it doesn't count as a contact, and it doesn't have the privileges of a contact. This means that nobody can acquire certain permissions simply by following you.

Next, even if someone is a contact of yours, doesn't mean that they're always permitted to send you their posts. You can configure your channel in such a way that you can only allow certain contacts of yours to send you posts. I've actually done that.

Also, on all three, being notified when someone who isn't a contact mentions you is off by default and has to be activated manually. Even then, it only works if their post that mentions you makes it onto the server that you're on. This isn't even a case of "they mention you, your channel receives the message, but you aren't notified". This is a case of "they mention you, but your channel outright rejects the message, and if no other channel on your server accepts it, the whole server rejects it".

This means the whole attack vector does not work, especially not against neatly configured channels. By default, you won't see any non-contact mention you out of the blue. And even if someone requests a connection, and you approve it and thereby establish a full, mutual connection, that doesn't mean that you have to endure what they post.

Oh, by the way: Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte understand Mastodon's "followers only" as "public" because it doesn't come with limited permissions, because Mastodon doesn't have a permissions system. And al three have had quote-posts since their inception. This gives you the power to fight back by quote-posting the offending post in a DM to the admin of the offender's home instance. And on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, the quote in a quote-post is not a reference by link; it's a dumb copy of the original, inserted into the quoting post with a link to the original post and to the original poster, that cannot be altered by the original poster after the fact in any way.

Lastly, you can raise the shields even further, namely against harassment by DM. You don't have to accept DMs from non-contacts. You don't even have to accept DMs from all your contacts. You can literally cherry-pick those contacts from whom you want to receive DMs.

CC: @Mastodon Migration

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Harassment #Permissions #FediverseSafety #FediverseSecurity

@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 4

No can do, at least not support for Black instances. That's because all Black instances are Mastodon instances.

I do not support Mastodon. I hate Mastodon with a burning passion, and I hate the wide-spread notion that Mastodon is absolutely the bee's knees even more. My support for Mastodon is limited to filing bugs on its GitHub repository when it misbehaves in interaction with Hubzilla or (streams).

I will so much not support anyone's stay on this utter piece of crud.

Don't get me wrong. The reason why I won't support them is not because they're Black. It's because they're Mastodon.

And besides, you've written yourself that a Black instance is a ghetto. The kind of ghetto that Black people don't want anyone to tell them to move to. Even if they've chosen themselves to have their Fediverse homes there, it's a ghetto all right.

This is also one of the reasons I will no longer suggest (streams) to the Black community, regardless of whether it might actually be a solution for parts of their imminent problems. I'm not going to tell anyone where to move. Even an unsolicited suggestion, even as little as mentioning the existence of a potential Mastodon alternative and its advantages over Mastodon is passive-aggressive.

Even if someone wished "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature that'd greatly improve safety and privacy, and Hubzilla and (streams) had this feature readily available right now (and this has happened in this very thread), I would no longer mention them unless maybe in a purely white cis-het discussion. Mentioning them to Black people would be like trying to nudge them into a ghetto. And supporting ghettos in any way or other is racist.

Seeing as how much damage any attempt by a non-Mastodon user at helping can deal, it's safer for all involved to not do anything and let people continue believing the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

(5/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Safety #FediSafety #FediverseSafety #Privacy #FediPrivacy #FediversePrivacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #Racist #Racism

@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 4

No can do, at least not support for Black instances. That's because all Black instances are Mastodon instances.

I do not support Mastodon. I hate Mastodon with a burning passion, and I hate the wide-spread notion that Mastodon is absolutely the bee's knees even more. My support for Mastodon is limited to filing bugs on its GitHub repository when it misbehaves in interaction with Hubzilla or (streams).

I will so much not support anyone's stay on this utter piece of crud.

Don't get me wrong. The reason why I won't support them is not because they're Black. It's because they're Mastodon.

And besides, you've written yourself that a Black instance is a ghetto. The kind of ghetto that Black people don't want anyone to tell them to move to. Even if they've chosen themselves to have their Fediverse homes there, it's a ghetto all right.

This is also one of the reasons I will no longer suggest (streams) to the Black community, regardless of whether it might actually be a solution for parts of their imminent problems. I'm not going to tell anyone where to move. Even an unsolicited suggestion, even as little as mentioning the existence of a potential Mastodon alternative and its advantages over Mastodon is passive-aggressive.

Even if someone wished "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature that'd greatly improve safety and privacy, and Hubzilla and (streams) had this feature readily available right now (and this has happened in this very thread), I would no longer mention them unless maybe in a purely white cis-het discussion. Mentioning them to Black people would be like trying to nudge them into a ghetto. And supporting ghettos in any way or other is racist.

Seeing as how much damage any attempt by a non-Mastodon user at helping can deal, it's safer for all involved to not do anything and let people continue believing the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

(5/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Safety #FediSafety #FediverseSafety #Privacy #FediPrivacy #FediversePrivacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #Racist #Racism

@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 4

No can do, at least not support for Black instances. That's because all Black instances are Mastodon instances.

I do not support Mastodon. I hate Mastodon with a burning passion, and I hate the wide-spread notion that Mastodon is absolutely the bee's knees even more. My support for Mastodon is limited to filing bugs on its GitHub repository when it misbehaves in interaction with Hubzilla or (streams).

I will so much not support anyone's stay on this utter piece of crud.

Don't get me wrong. The reason why I won't support them is not because they're Black. It's because they're Mastodon.

And besides, you've written yourself that a Black instance is a ghetto. The kind of ghetto that Black people don't want anyone to tell them to move to. Even if they've chosen themselves to have their Fediverse homes there, it's a ghetto all right.

This is also one of the reasons I will no longer suggest (streams) to the Black community, regardless of whether it might actually be a solution for parts of their imminent problems. I'm not going to tell anyone where to move. Even an unsolicited suggestion, even as little as mentioning the existence of a potential Mastodon alternative and its advantages over Mastodon is passive-aggressive.

Even if someone wished "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature that'd greatly improve safety and privacy, and Hubzilla and (streams) had this feature readily available right now (and this has happened in this very thread), I would no longer mention them unless maybe in a purely white cis-het discussion. Mentioning them to Black people would be like trying to nudge them into a ghetto. And supporting ghettos in any way or other is racist.

Seeing as how much damage any attempt by a non-Mastodon user at helping can deal, it's safer for all involved to not do anything and let people continue believing the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

(5/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Safety #FediSafety #FediverseSafety #Privacy #FediPrivacy #FediversePrivacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #Racist #Racism

@The Nexus of Privacy

About point 4

No can do, at least not support for Black instances. That's because all Black instances are Mastodon instances.

I do not support Mastodon. I hate Mastodon with a burning passion, and I hate the wide-spread notion that Mastodon is absolutely the bee's knees even more. My support for Mastodon is limited to filing bugs on its GitHub repository when it misbehaves in interaction with Hubzilla or (streams).

I will so much not support anyone's stay on this utter piece of crud.

Don't get me wrong. The reason why I won't support them is not because they're Black. It's because they're Mastodon.

And besides, you've written yourself that a Black instance is a ghetto. The kind of ghetto that Black people don't want anyone to tell them to move to. Even if they've chosen themselves to have their Fediverse homes there, it's a ghetto all right.

This is also one of the reasons I will no longer suggest (streams) to the Black community, regardless of whether it might actually be a solution for parts of their imminent problems. I'm not going to tell anyone where to move. Even an unsolicited suggestion, even as little as mentioning the existence of a potential Mastodon alternative and its advantages over Mastodon is passive-aggressive.

Even if someone wished "the Fediverse", read, Mastodon to have a certain feature that'd greatly improve safety and privacy, and Hubzilla and (streams) had this feature readily available right now (and this has happened in this very thread), I would no longer mention them unless maybe in a purely white cis-het discussion. Mentioning them to Black people would be like trying to nudge them into a ghetto. And supporting ghettos in any way or other is racist.

Seeing as how much damage any attempt by a non-Mastodon user at helping can deal, it's safer for all involved to not do anything and let people continue believing the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

(5/7)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Safety #FediSafety #FediverseSafety #Privacy #FediPrivacy #FediversePrivacy #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse #Racist #Racism

@Paul Cantrell So you've asked for solutions. Hope you don't want Mastodon-only solutions.

- Reply controls already, like yesterday

How about being able to give general permission to reply to your posts?

How about being able to disable replies to any one of your posts?

How about being able to allow specific followers to reply to your posts?

How about being able to separately allow people to send you posts and to send you DMs?

Science-fiction? Wishful thinking? No, reality. Right now.

Available in the Fediverse (just not Mastodon and not via ActivityPub) for over a decade. Not just yesterday. Since 2012. Invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️, creator of three federated protocols as well as several Fediverse server apps including but not limited to Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) and inventor of nomadic identity and the most advanced permissions systems in the Fediverse.

Available on Hubzilla since its inception in 2015.

Available in the streams repository (which he is working on now) since its inception in 2021.

AFAIK, ActivityPub implementation being worked on right now. This means that any ActivityPub project can introduce (streams)' powerful permission settings. These permissions would be understood all over the Fediverse, even between different projects. And they'll go well beyond the above.

Inb4 "The Mastodon devs will be quicker if they whip up something proprietary": No, they won't. Mike is blazing fast, and he has a head-start.

Once he's done, and I hope it's this year, the Mastodon devs must be pressured into implementing it. Even though they didn't invent it.

A Mastodon-exclusive, non-standard, proprietary solution (like quote-toot opt-in) can and will be ignored by the majority of the Fediverse projects because the majority of the Fediverse projects won't implement it, especially if the Mastodon devs can't be bothered to document it for others to implement. Wouldn't be the first time that other Fediverse devs have to reverse-engineer a Mastodon feature.

- Default to allowlisting for new/unknown instances instead of denylisting

Good idea only if the Fediverse was only Mastodon.

Very bad for new or small and obscure projects that won't have a chance to get a foothold in the Fediverse if just about all of Mastodon blocks them by default.

(Okay peeps, now go block me for suggesting something not-Mastodon-exclusive.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety

@Stefan Bohacek @Jon Such safety improvements cannot and must not come from within Mastodon.

For if they did, it would be non-standard, proprietary, undocumented, Mastodon-exclusive solutions that anything that isn't vanilla Mastodon or a soft fork would hardly be able to adopt themselves and oftentimes not willing either. Fediverse devs are turning away from allowing Mastodon to take control over the development of the Fediverse by introducing more and more non-standard, Mastodon-exclusive stuff.

Even worse: If these were Mastodon-only solutions, they might lead to two possible outcomes. One, since the rest of the Fediverse won't support them, the rest of the Fediverse would easily be able to circumvent them. Routinely even. See "quote-toot opt-in". Remember that almost everything in the Fediverse that's an alternative to Twitter and/or Facebook has quote-posts readily available and can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now.

Two, an unbridgeable rift through the Fediverse as Mastodon splits everything that isn't Mastodon itself off. This could be because Mastodon makes itself incompatible with everything else in the Fediverse by introducing new mandatory features that everything else doesn't support. Or it could be because new rules come with new features that demand the use of these features at instance level, and instances that don't use these features will be Fediblocked. Only that nothing that isn't vanilla Mastodon is even able to use these features.

For these reasons, such safety advancements must never be Mastodon developments.

Instead, they must come from the ActivityPub side. And there are things in development right now which, if actually implemented, will increase security in the Fediverse tremendously.

Specifically, what I mean is what @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ is working on right now, the guy who invented Friendica, nomadic identity and Hubzilla, and who has created and is maintaining [#^https://codeberg.org/streams/streams]the streams repository[/url] which contains the probably most advanced Fediverse server application of all.

He wants to bring not only nomadic identity to native ActivityPub, but also (streams)' extensive, fine-grained, powerful system of permissions which would then be understood not only amongst (streams) and Hubzilla, but all across the Fediverse amongst those projects that implement them.

Imagine being able to post only to the members of a specific list. Imagine these posts being unable to ever leave the list, save for copy-pasting or screenshots.

Imagine being able to choose which ones of your connections shall be allowed to see your posts. Or send you posts. Or reply to your posts. Or send you DMs. Or see your followers and followeds.

Imagine being able to define permission roles, pre-configured sets of permissions, and assign one of these to each one of your connections.

Imagine being able to set your entire account to post only to your followers by default.

Imagine being able to deny everyone the permission to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to only allow your connections to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to limit the timespan within which a post of yours can be replied to. Only if that post isn't a reply itself, but still.

Imagine being able to wall up your account, but without walling it up against everyone by only walling it up against certain people.

Sounds like utter science-fiction. But all this is available on (streams) right now.

Granted, it does not provide absolute, 100% water-tight safety against everything. Like comparable with a shielding that wouldn't even let one neutrino through in ten billion years. But as much such perfect security is desired, as impossible it is. Not unless e.g. the Black community creates an exclusive, walled-garden safe space whose aspiring members must be validated by meeting an admin or moderator in real life, eye to eye, to prove that they're actually Black. Sorry, but everything else can and will be circumvented to attack and harass them.

Also, yes, this permission system is not as easy-peasy to handle as the official Twitter mobile app. And it currently comes with a fairly cumbersome UI. That's because, as of now, it only works with (streams)' Nomad protocol and, within certain limitations, the Zot6 protocol used by Hubzilla which has a similar set of permission controls.

I mean, I'd love to see a "Black (streams)" come into existence with a bunch of instances of its own and flourish. For one, (streams) has better chances to be a (fairly) safe haven than Mastodon. Besides, this would give (streams) the publicity it so much needs, especially if Black (streams) started thriving after Black Mastodon has failed so spectacularly.

But let's face it, it's more cumbersome to use in comparison with Mastodon than Mastodon is in comparison with Twitter, also because (streams) is the descendant of a Facebook alternative rather than a Twitter clone. And if you're on a phone, it's either a PWA or a Web browser because there's no (streams) app.

Good news, however: As far as I can see, Mike's goal is to implement all this in ActivityPub with FEPs so that any pure ActivityPub project can adopt it. Friendica can adopt it, fairly easily even because Friendica is (streams)' earliest predecessor. Misskey and its forks can adopt it, and these projects are chock-full of LGBTQIA+ people. Everything can adopt it.

Unfortunately, implementing it in ActivityPub so it works nearly the same as on (streams) will be easier than pressuring Mastodon into implementing that stuff.

Lastly, there's one feature of Hubzilla and (streams) that won't make it to ActivityPub because it can't. And that's the ability to turn ActivityPub support off altogether, both for users at channel level and for admins at instance level.

One flick of a switch, and the entirety of Mastodon is blocked. All of it. As is Threads. As are the various Mastodon forks, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, the various Misskey forks, Mitra, micro.blog, Socialhome, Pixelfed, the entire Threadiverse etc. etc., and if you're on (streams), even Friendica and GoToSocial.

But if you are on ActivityPub, that wouldn't make any sense to be able to do.

CC, FYI because you've participated in the thread: @Ericka Simone @Stu @Leon Cowle

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety

@Stefan Bohacek @Jon Such safety improvements cannot and must not come from within Mastodon.

For if they did, it would be non-standard, proprietary, undocumented, Mastodon-exclusive solutions that anything that isn't vanilla Mastodon or a soft fork would hardly be able to adopt themselves and oftentimes not willing either. Fediverse devs are turning away from allowing Mastodon to take control over the development of the Fediverse by introducing more and more non-standard, Mastodon-exclusive stuff.

Even worse: If these were Mastodon-only solutions, they might lead to two possible outcomes. One, since the rest of the Fediverse won't support them, the rest of the Fediverse would easily be able to circumvent them. Routinely even. See "quote-toot opt-in". Remember that almost everything in the Fediverse that's an alternative to Twitter and/or Facebook has quote-posts readily available and can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now.

Two, an unbridgeable rift through the Fediverse as Mastodon splits everything that isn't Mastodon itself off. This could be because Mastodon makes itself incompatible with everything else in the Fediverse by introducing new mandatory features that everything else doesn't support. Or it could be because new rules come with new features that demand the use of these features at instance level, and instances that don't use these features will be Fediblocked. Only that nothing that isn't vanilla Mastodon is even able to use these features.

For these reasons, such safety advancements must never be Mastodon developments.

Instead, they must come from the ActivityPub side. And there are things in development right now which, if actually implemented, will increase security in the Fediverse tremendously.

Specifically, what I mean is what @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ is working on right now, the guy who invented Friendica, nomadic identity and Hubzilla, and who has created and is maintaining [#^https://codeberg.org/streams/streams]the streams repository[/url] which contains the probably most advanced Fediverse server application of all.

He wants to bring not only nomadic identity to native ActivityPub, but also (streams)' extensive, fine-grained, powerful system of permissions which would then be understood not only amongst (streams) and Hubzilla, but all across the Fediverse amongst those projects that implement them.

Imagine being able to post only to the members of a specific list. Imagine these posts being unable to ever leave the list, save for copy-pasting or screenshots.

Imagine being able to choose which ones of your connections shall be allowed to see your posts. Or send you posts. Or reply to your posts. Or send you DMs. Or see your followers and followeds.

Imagine being able to define permission roles, pre-configured sets of permissions, and assign one of these to each one of your connections.

Imagine being able to set your entire account to post only to your followers by default.

Imagine being able to deny everyone the permission to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to only allow your connections to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to limit the timespan within which a post of yours can be replied to. Only if that post isn't a reply itself, but still.

Imagine being able to wall up your account, but without walling it up against everyone by only walling it up against certain people.

Sounds like utter science-fiction. But all this is available on (streams) right now.

Granted, it does not provide absolute, 100% water-tight safety against everything. Like comparable with a shielding that wouldn't even let one neutrino through in ten billion years. But as much such perfect security is desired, as impossible it is. Not unless e.g. the Black community creates an exclusive, walled-garden safe space whose aspiring members must be validated by meeting an admin or moderator in real life, eye to eye, to prove that they're actually Black. Sorry, but everything else can and will be circumvented to attack and harass them.

Also, yes, this permission system is not as easy-peasy to handle as the official Twitter mobile app. And it currently comes with a fairly cumbersome UI. That's because, as of now, it only works with (streams)' Nomad protocol and, within certain limitations, the Zot6 protocol used by Hubzilla which has a similar set of permission controls.

I mean, I'd love to see a "Black (streams)" come into existence with a bunch of instances of its own and flourish. For one, (streams) has better chances to be a (fairly) safe haven than Mastodon. Besides, this would give (streams) the publicity it so much needs, especially if Black (streams) started thriving after Black Mastodon has failed so spectacularly.

But let's face it, it's more cumbersome to use in comparison with Mastodon than Mastodon is in comparison with Twitter, also because (streams) is the descendant of a Facebook alternative rather than a Twitter clone. And if you're on a phone, it's either a PWA or a Web browser because there's no (streams) app.

Good news, however: As far as I can see, Mike's goal is to implement all this in ActivityPub with FEPs so that any pure ActivityPub project can adopt it. Friendica can adopt it, fairly easily even because Friendica is (streams)' earliest predecessor. Misskey and its forks can adopt it, and these projects are chock-full of LGBTQIA+ people. Everything can adopt it.

Unfortunately, implementing it in ActivityPub so it works nearly the same as on (streams) will be easier than pressuring Mastodon into implementing that stuff.

Lastly, there's one feature of Hubzilla and (streams) that won't make it to ActivityPub because it can't. And that's the ability to turn ActivityPub support off altogether, both for users at channel level and for admins at instance level.

One flick of a switch, and the entirety of Mastodon is blocked. All of it. As is Threads. As are the various Mastodon forks, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, the various Misskey forks, Mitra, micro.blog, Socialhome, Pixelfed, the entire Threadiverse etc. etc., and if you're on (streams), even Friendica and GoToSocial.

But if you are on ActivityPub, that wouldn't make any sense to be able to do.

CC, FYI because you've participated in the thread: @Ericka Simone @Stu @Leon Cowle

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety

@Stefan Bohacek @Jon Such safety improvements cannot and must not come from within Mastodon.

For if they did, it would be non-standard, proprietary, undocumented, Mastodon-exclusive solutions that anything that isn't vanilla Mastodon or a soft fork would hardly be able to adopt themselves and oftentimes not willing either. Fediverse devs are turning away from allowing Mastodon to take control over the development of the Fediverse by introducing more and more non-standard, Mastodon-exclusive stuff.

Even worse: If these were Mastodon-only solutions, they might lead to two possible outcomes. One, since the rest of the Fediverse won't support them, the rest of the Fediverse would easily be able to circumvent them. Routinely even. See "quote-toot opt-in". Remember that almost everything in the Fediverse that's an alternative to Twitter and/or Facebook has quote-posts readily available and can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now.

Two, an unbridgeable rift through the Fediverse as Mastodon splits everything that isn't Mastodon itself off. This could be because Mastodon makes itself incompatible with everything else in the Fediverse by introducing new mandatory features that everything else doesn't support. Or it could be because new rules come with new features that demand the use of these features at instance level, and instances that don't use these features will be Fediblocked. Only that nothing that isn't vanilla Mastodon is even able to use these features.

For these reasons, such safety advancements must never be Mastodon developments.

Instead, they must come from the ActivityPub side. And there are things in development right now which, if actually implemented, will increase security in the Fediverse tremendously.

Specifically, what I mean is what @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ is working on right now, the guy who invented Friendica, nomadic identity and Hubzilla, and who has created and is maintaining [#^https://codeberg.org/streams/streams]the streams repository[/url] which contains the probably most advanced Fediverse server application of all.

He wants to bring not only nomadic identity to native ActivityPub, but also (streams)' extensive, fine-grained, powerful system of permissions which would then be understood not only amongst (streams) and Hubzilla, but all across the Fediverse amongst those projects that implement them.

Imagine being able to post only to the members of a specific list. Imagine these posts being unable to ever leave the list, save for copy-pasting or screenshots.

Imagine being able to choose which ones of your connections shall be allowed to see your posts. Or send you posts. Or reply to your posts. Or send you DMs. Or see your followers and followeds.

Imagine being able to define permission roles, pre-configured sets of permissions, and assign one of these to each one of your connections.

Imagine being able to set your entire account to post only to your followers by default.

Imagine being able to deny everyone the permission to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to only allow your connections to reply to a certain post of yours. Imagine being able to limit the timespan within which a post of yours can be replied to. Only if that post isn't a reply itself, but still.

Imagine being able to wall up your account, but without walling it up against everyone by only walling it up against certain people.

Sounds like utter science-fiction. But all this is available on (streams) right now.

Granted, it does not provide absolute, 100% water-tight safety against everything. Like comparable with a shielding that wouldn't even let one neutrino through in ten billion years. But as much such perfect security is desired, as impossible it is. Not unless e.g. the Black community creates an exclusive, walled-garden safe space whose aspiring members must be validated by meeting an admin or moderator in real life, eye to eye, to prove that they're actually Black. Sorry, but everything else can and will be circumvented to attack and harass them.

Also, yes, this permission system is not as easy-peasy to handle as the official Twitter mobile app. And it currently comes with a fairly cumbersome UI. That's because, as of now, it only works with (streams)' Nomad protocol and, within certain limitations, the Zot6 protocol used by Hubzilla which has a similar set of permission controls.

I mean, I'd love to see a "Black (streams)" come into existence with a bunch of instances of its own and flourish. For one, (streams) has better chances to be a (fairly) safe haven than Mastodon. Besides, this would give (streams) the publicity it so much needs, especially if Black (streams) started thriving after Black Mastodon has failed so spectacularly.

But let's face it, it's more cumbersome to use in comparison with Mastodon than Mastodon is in comparison with Twitter, also because (streams) is the descendant of a Facebook alternative rather than a Twitter clone. And if you're on a phone, it's either a PWA or a Web browser because there's no (streams) app.

Good news, however: As far as I can see, Mike's goal is to implement all this in ActivityPub with FEPs so that any pure ActivityPub project can adopt it. Friendica can adopt it, fairly easily even because Friendica is (streams)' earliest predecessor. Misskey and its forks can adopt it, and these projects are chock-full of LGBTQIA+ people. Everything can adopt it.

Unfortunately, implementing it in ActivityPub so it works nearly the same as on (streams) will be easier than pressuring Mastodon into implementing that stuff.

Lastly, there's one feature of Hubzilla and (streams) that won't make it to ActivityPub because it can't. And that's the ability to turn ActivityPub support off altogether, both for users at channel level and for admins at instance level.

One flick of a switch, and the entirety of Mastodon is blocked. All of it. As is Threads. As are the various Mastodon forks, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, the various Misskey forks, Mitra, micro.blog, Socialhome, Pixelfed, the entire Threadiverse etc. etc., and if you're on (streams), even Friendica and GoToSocial.

But if you are on ActivityPub, that wouldn't make any sense to be able to do.

CC, FYI because you've participated in the thread: @Ericka Simone @Stu @Leon Cowle

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ActivityPub #Permissions #FediverseSafety