Mastodon has a reputation for a harboring a culture of ‘reply guys’. There is a culture of high engagement and reactions on people’s posts, which further alleviates the level and amount of replies that are annoying, irritating or demeaning. The account Mastodon Migration recently collected some posts by large accounts that all experience this issue, and how it turns them off using the fediverse.
Mastodon announced an update to their Android App, that aims to help alleviate these issues somewhat. In a blog post Mastodon announced that they recognise that Mastodon has issues with unwanted reactions, and that they are experimenting with different features to tackle the issue.
The first part is giving people a reminder for basic courtesy, the first time they are responding to someone they’re not following. It also shows a bit of information about the person they are responding to. Eugen Rochko believes that “by showing a bit of information about the person you’re about to talk to, we can prevent some awkward situations, such as explaining something to an expert in a given field”.
The second part is to give people a reminder when they are about to respond to a post that is over 3 months old. Due to Mastodon’s heavy focus on reverse-chronological feeds, old posts can sometimes be boosted and go viral on the feeds again, months after they originally have been posted.
Both experiments do not prevent replying, and are simple notifications that can be dismissed, with a ‘Don’t remind me again’ option available as well. The update will arrive soon on the Android Mastodon app, with the update for iOS coming later. If the experiment goes well, it might come to the web interface as well.
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