Patricia Aas 🐢  

The way to subtle difference between a DM and a public post still makes me nervous 😬

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Adam

@patricia There shouldn't be DM/private messages on the Fediverse at all in my opinion! Just add a contact link to your profile metadata fields. Nobody needs more messaging apps: bookofadamz.com/the-smartest-m

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Patricia Aas 🐢  

@adam I have been a big user of Twitter DMs 🤷🏻‍♀️

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ltning  
@adam @patricia I understand the sentiment but there are some downsides - if you publish contact info it means giving away more information than necessary to stay on-platform. And moderation of DMs (or whatever you want to call it) has to happen elsewhere with no platform-native protections. I am not comfy listing email or phone on my profile. Twitter DMs we're subject to the same blocks and whatnot as I had in my account and did not force me to reveal anything else.
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Adam  

@ltning
Ah, that's a good point. Maybe some integration with Matrix. My contact metadata here is a link to a form on my website which I can process any way I choose to and doesn't give anything away other than my already public website URL. Personally, I'd much rather process private messaging from all electronic sources in a single place.
@patricia

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Patricia Aas 🐢  

@adam @ltning I have a form on my website, it’s 90% harassment

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Adam  

@patricia
My form has some extra clever human verification programming to keep the bots out and I can process messages based on senders, keywords, etc. & sort them into categories with scheduled reminders or auto-replies. None of that is possible with Twitter DMs.
@ltning

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ltning  
@adam @patricia But while this works for you, it may not work for others. You have one set of needs, wishes, workflows, what have you - others have very different ones.

I'm OCD enough that I'd also love to have everything in one place, and matrix is certainly something to look at. But I wouldn't dream of forcing that upon my mother-in-law or colleagues or whoever else is asking my advice.

Building a safe DM mechanism - which at the very least solves the problem @patricia so elegantly laid out - should not be a difficult or controversial thing. If it is, then it is clear that the whole foundation is broken and failing to take actual people needs into account.

Anyone who's spent years learning how to avoid (to the extent possible) harrassment, stalking, bullying and outright abuse online will want to know that whichever measures they've put in place on platform A can be replicated on platform B without having to start from zero.
I have never been subjected to any of the above so my understanding of the pains involved is extremely superficial, at best. But I have no problem seeing they're very, very real.

Being idealistic in ones approach to this - while tempting and Star Trek-like in appearance - fails to recognise that humans of all kinds are involved; good and bad. There is no contradiction between advocating and creating open, distributed and federated platforms on the one side, and protecting individuals on the other.
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Adam  

@ltning @patricia Yes, I totally agree. That's an advantage of the Fediverse. The instance I'm on removed the DM feature completely (along with local/public timelines), and I love not having to deal with DMs in yet another app. On here, anyone can add any communications options to their profile, and that's great.

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