I love the distinction between talking with someone and talking about someone.
If we talk about the desire for simpler QT as the desire to make it easier to talk about somebody rather than talking with them, I think that captures rather a lot of the reluctance people feel to just open up the feature.
As a counterpoint to those people who say gosh why are people making such a big deal about it, I would reply gosh if it's so important, having to push a couple of extra buttons to do it doesn't seem like such a big deal either.
I hope we can all manage to listen to each other on the subject.
Fair enough. I'm not sure how we'd measure "just as many". :) But reframing it that way is helpful at least to me.
Talking about a *subject* doesn't really require (or even generally involve) the most important aspects of QTing, really?
I guess I was thinking something like this:
https://bofh.social/objects/301bb2d1-6c6f-4947-9b75-63ea5cd13ff9
Sure :) and various servers do offer QTish functions. It's just not so ubiquitous that everyone uses it constantly. And (as a newcomer who likes this new space VERY much) I'm a little reluctant to see that change.
(Especially, frankly, if it's done because some self-styled elite group comes in and says they will leave again if the change isn't made. I mean, sheesh. The arguments from marginalized communities I'm more sympathetic too, but I don't understand them as well.)
This biggest hurdle is Eugen refuses to add anything like it to Mastodon.
And so far I have no problem with that refusal, myself. :)
I do wish I knew more about the use-cases for non-privileged groups. that might tend to sway my opinion in the other direction.
The lack of QT/QP is the primary reason I don’t run Mastodon.
@gme
And that's fine! :) You also, I'm pretty sure, don't go around speaking for some group of people and claiming that they will leave the Fediverse if Mastodon doesn't add it post haste. 😉
I am unqualified to speak for Journalists since I am not one and I honestly don’t know what a Journalist might want or need in a social media platform.
Let me give you a hypothetical.
I am an Information Security Professional. 23 years in Security come January, so I think I am qualified to speak to what most InfoSec Pros might want or need in a social media platform for example.
And if Mastodon was the only platform that didn’t implement SSL/TLS I would be perfectly fine making a blanket statement that if Mastodon doesn’t implement TLS then InfoSec Pros and other people that care about security are probably going to leave in droves or may simply not sign up to begin with. The lack of TLS support would start to drive more and more people away.
It is with these constraints and understanding that I completely understand what Taylor Lorenz is trying to say here.
@gme
Well, That's a point. I think the two cases are rather different, but then I'm closer to an infosec professional than a journalist myself so... I don't really want to go back and forth forever on it; perhaps I was at least partly just viscerally annoyed by the initial tone.
Do you mean "journalists" when you say "elite group" ?
I don't like calling journalists "elite" their institutions are elite, but there are all kinds of journalists and the work that they do is extremely important and filled with barriers for those who act in good faith.
And such journalists do exist. They are the ones who expose "the elite"
@futurebird
I said "self-styled elite". :) Rather snarky of me, I admit. I just found the "journalists will leave if this change isn't made" thing annoying. Like, okay? I mean, there are less entitled ways of saying that!
There are legitimate reasons to talk with someone, and there are just as many legitimate reasons to talk about someone (or about a subject) too.