It's more likely a Mastodon limitation. My HYPOTHESIS is that each conversation has a ID on it, which is how it decides on conversation threading and such. Your instance won't allow you to make any changes on other people's posts - for obvious reasons. The mute conversation feature may be working by setting a metadata tag on one of your posts where it suppresses anything with that particular conversation ID on it from appearing on your timeline. But it's still a crappy UI/UX for what should be basic functionality.
jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange the inability to mute someone else's conversation seems to arbitrary. Maybe there's a technical reason behind it but there needn't be...
@julian After a brief dive into the mastodon API documentation, it seems to be a protocol limitation indeed. You (or rather your client program) do not get to see the conversation ID until you join that conversation, so until then, you do not have the correct piece of information to request muting of that conversation.
@julian While in general, I agree, you could implement some sort of heuristics, there is one huge difference - a NodeBB server is centralized and sees everything. With Mastodon, half of the posts in a conversation might not be visible to you, either because of being outright blocked, or the post simply not hitting your instance because of where the participants post from.
Any heuristic based on unrelated metadata would be inaccurate at best, but more often than not outright misleading.
@julian This could theoretically be solved by simply adding the conversation id to each Status object in the timeline (and likely also any other post-like object that your client is receiving), but someone familiar with the entire protocol would need to look at this change, since it might bring compatibility issues. 🤷
@ticho @julian An important thing to remember with AP is that the AP protocol itself is pretty loose. Mastodon is one particular implementation of it, and doesn't even absolutely comply with the spec. Hence why some of the other server softwares have more features or slight incompatibility with Mastodon. So I'd be more inclined to believe that the oddities of conversation threading are in the Mastodon implementation rather than the AP spec itself.
Yes, some pendantry, but it means fixing it is down to one development team, not all Fediverse implementations.
@julian Indeed. I started my earlier dive with AP docs, only to realize that they're too generic for what I'm looking for, and that I'm better off digging through Mastodon docs specifically to find details about timelines and conversations. :)
I still don't understand. I am sorry. If you are annoyed by someone : you block. But if you mute, you can create more anger. A person who is muted doesn't know it.
A friend of mine makes a post with a picture of something awful that's happened
I find that particular picture very upsetting, and don't want to see it in my timeline, but I do still want to be friends with that person and see other posts they make
Rather than having to choose between being able to talk to my friend and seeing this upsetting post, this allows me to mute just the upsetting post, and not block or mute my friend entirety.
Thank you very much. In that case, this new option is very interesting. I have one year of experience on Mastodon. I reached more than 800 followers with my old account. But I am here as an activist for Gaza. Thus, i am posting horrible things all day. I try to alternate with pictures of donkeys, birds, and flowers. But I give mostly extreme bad news. I realised very lately that more than 80% of my old followers have muted me. On top of this, I am naïve and I answer all the messages I receive. I had a breakdown when I realised my old followers muted me. I created this new account. I prefer not be followed than to be muted. I feel much better
I don't necessarily even blame the folks doing it, because so many are hurting... It's hard to exercise meaningful empathy when you're scared just for yourself.
But yeah, we'll never prefigure a real mutual aid economy if all it means is "I need help from you."
@hwll This isn't even specifically about mutual aid folks. It can be anyone for any reason. People shitposting about something you don't care about. People with a really popular political post that keeps getting boosted into your timeline but you don't want to see it. A meme you just hate for whatever reason. It doesn't matter. Your timeline is your own.
For the last 2 problems (memes I hate, or political posts boosted too often) I just use the filter function "individual posts". Nonetheless I appreciate this tip very much and will use it for some cases in the future. 🙂
It's more likely a Mastodon limitation. My HYPOTHESIS is that each conversation has a ID on it, which is how it decides on conversation threading and such. Your instance won't allow you to make any changes on other people's posts - for obvious reasons. The mute conversation feature may be working by setting a metadata tag on one of your posts where it suppresses anything with that particular conversation ID on it from appearing on your timeline. But it's still a crappy UI/UX for what should be basic functionality.
@8r3n7 a 3rd party client could probably automate some sort of hidden meta-post, but no idea how fragile that might end up being. And yeah, Mastodon devs could build something to fix it, but I don't think it's on their roadmap anytime soon.
Pitch A mute Button for all Conversations / Threads Motivation There are conversations / threads about topics that do not interest anyone and fill your timeline. It would be great to be able to mut...
@xinit another question - if you mute it in fedilab, is the conversation still muted if you later go into a web UI or another device? Just curious how that's implemented.
I was trying to find the answer in the Mastodon user docs regarding where mutes tend to happen. I believe filters are client based, but can't tell with mutes.
Apparently. I hadn't commented on your thread yet. I am curious if the mute holds over, but my first guess would be it's a client setting. I'd assume (possibly incorrectly) that the web interface is client based? I have never though to check.
> Reply to a post, set the visibility to "Private Mention", remove everyone's username from the post. Post it. Then you can click "mute conversation" on THAT post, and it silently mutes you from the conversation
That's a really smart hack. It never would have occurred to me. I'd never even noticed that you can only Mute Conversation in your own posts!
(To be fair, that might not be the case in the third-party apps I use; Moshidon, FediLab and Enafore.social)
@strypey Just checked Moshidon - you can mute from any post, but only in conversations you've posted in. Go try another post that you've not been in the conversation at all.
> you can mute from any post, but only in conversations you've posted in
Ah, OK, you're talking about making conversations vanish from the Home feed, rather than just your @mentions. I'm guessing our usage habits are very different. My Home feed is such a firehose I don't even notice ongoing conversations in there ; )
I think she means muting as in "hiding a discussion that two people you are following are having for a long time and you don't care too read any of it". This wouldn't show up in your notifications, because you were never mentioned. You're not part of the conversation. It would only show up on the main timeline; which is where you want to hide it from by muting it.
Also, for it to be in your notifications section, you have to have interacted with the conversation first.
The case I'm talking about is:
Say @FediTips writes a (perfectly fine) toot that I don't really care to see for whatever reason. It talks about something I find annoying or triggering or idk, whatever. But the toot goes viral and that and replies to that keeps getting boosted back into my timeline. So I want the conversation to not be on my timeline anymore, but I don't want to comment on the conversation and then have people see I made some inane post just so I could mute it all.
a state that aims to control and dictate what women wear is not a real state, it is a terrorist hostage situation. you can't just enslave people at will, and attempts to do so mandate lethal countermeasures. how could they possibly not.
words have denotative meanings. and I think media trying to stretch those meanings in order to push harmful agendas is disappointing at best and complicit in oppression at worst.
One thing I noticed in Paris (France has a ban on face-coverings that was introduced for the same pretext of "secularism") was quite a number of Muslim women were taking their COVID prevention very seriously and wearing an N95 mask with their hijab.
People find a way to live their life.
The only authority a state has to tell people what to do, is that it's supposedly acting in their and the common interest. When it's acting unjustly or illogically, it forfeits that authority IMO.
@petealexharris I love the clarity and consideration with which you speak your principles. and I love the principles. you contribute a lot here and I am very grateful that you do.
Here's the name of a public school that the head of the province, the same one doing this law right now, visited during Easter celebrations. This is a public school not a private one.
Les enfants d’une école primaire fraîchement rénovée d’Hochelaga-Maisonneuve ont reçu la visite du premier ministre lundi matin, une occasion pour eux de voir Youppi ! et de manger du chocolat.
it’s also discriminatory against Jews who wear head coverings for religious purposes. i know the intent was for islamophobic reasons but the consequences include even more people, too. fuck them.
This is unhinged. While Americans struggle to afford groceries, Trump is workshopping cult names like "Trumplicans" and teasing a constitutionally forbidden third term. It's a blatant distraction from his policy failures and a dangerous flirtation with authoritarianism. 1/2
Yep and all of it is a distraction from the fact that the US has 771,000 homeless people but not one person will stand up against terrorism against homeless people
Die Stadt #Gießen hat sich mit einer versammlungsfeindlichen Demoverbotszone im Westen der Stadt durchgesetzt, wo am Samstag die neue AfD-Jugend gegründet werden soll. Durch die Entscheidung wird Protest in Hör- und Sichtweite der Rechtsradikalen deutlich erschwert.
Die Stadt Gießen hat sich mit einer versammlungsfeindlichen Demoverbotszone im gesamten Westteil der Stadt durchgesetzt, wo am Samstag der neue Jugendverband der AfD gegründet werden soll.
Update / Demoverbotszone #Gießen: Der linke Bundestagsabgeordnete Luke Hoß hat nun einen Eilantrag in Karlsruhe beim Bundesverfassungsgericht eingereicht, um doch noch eine Gegendemo in der Nähe der AfD-Veranstaltung zu ermöglichen:
Die Stadt Gießen hat sich mit einer versammlungsfeindlichen Demoverbotszone im gesamten Westteil der Stadt durchgesetzt, wo am Samstag der neue Jugendverband der AfD gegründet werden soll.
AUPE Media Release: Dual health-care system will cripple staffing levels in Alberta
Premier’s obsession with private profit will be paid in pain by Albertans
EDMONTON—Premier Smith’s plan for a dual public-private health system is doomed to fail for one simple reason: There are not enough workers, says the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE).
“There’s a shortage of health-care workers in Alberta, across Canda and around the world,” says Sandra Azocar, president of AUPE, which represents more than 60,000 health-care workers.
“Hospitals and health-care facilities are constantly running without appropriate numbers of staff. Many of them have endured temporary closures because there aren't enough workers to stay open,” she says.
The dual health-care system the provincial government proposes in the Health Statutes Amendment Act would allow physicians to practice in both private and public systems and to charge extra for private care.
“Albertans suffering while waiting for treatment will be forced to spend money they can’t afford to get the treatment they need. For those without that option, wait times will just get longer,” says Azocar.
“There is a finite number of physicians and other health-care workers. They will be pulled from the public system and into the private lane, leaving ordinary Albertans behind.”
Thanks to Smith’s ideological agenda, Albertans will face even longer wait times to get the treatment they need.
“The immense pressure already felt by front-line workers will increase as the staff shortages get worse. They’ll also be the people dealing face-to-face with angry Albertans in unnecessary pain who have waited years to get treatment,” says Azocar.
As treatments are delayed, health conditions will deteriorate. It will become more expensive to treat patients, leading to more Albertans turning up at already overcrowded Emergency Rooms.
“The premier’s obsession with corporate profit will be paid in pain by the people,” says Azocar.
She adds that the dual system is likely to face court challenges as a violation of the Canada Health Act.
“Albertans need to know if the premier will invoke the notwithstanding clause again to impose her vision of a U.S.-style system where people buy their way to the front of the line.”
I just saw an article that described "Gen Z as the first generation to grow up with the internet"
I was born in the 80's and started using email around age 5, but go off. By the time Gen Z was old enough to use the internet, it was already mostly over.
The “wondering why my phone suddenly looks shitty” to “realizing the OS pushed a new preposterous look & feel on to all apps” interval gets briefer every week & I resent that I’m getting this fast at figuring it out again each time.
A short video to talk about the recently-discovered loss of NHS England's various Open Source policies. I'm not sure when this happened, but the last Wayback...
Another 45 FOSS projects have been selected for the #NGI0 Commons Fund. We want to thank the project teams for their contribution to a free and open internet. In a world increasingly in the grip of proprietary technologies and those who control them, we are proud to be supporting people who choose to work on the digital commons: shared digital assets that serve not the few but the many.
Come over to read what each project is working on.
Millions of people, particularly in African countries, have lost access to drug treatments, prevention and testing putting the idea of ending the Aids pandemic by 2030 out of reach
Religions and billionaires cause the reduction in medical help around the world. If the billionaires want to be the new world government, they should take care of their people then.
Meta allegedly buried research showing its products are harming users
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-allegedly-buried-research-showing-its-products-are-harming-users-152236073.html
Gosh. Who'd have thought that...
"...
... and if you'd like to know how I like your app, may I suggest you make it do what I came to ask it to do BEFORE you shove that request in my face? 🙄
I'm unschooled in economics, including Jevons Paradox, but I've become convinced that there's a "law of computer science" to the effect that Moore's Law is more than canceled out by losses in signal-to-noise ratio. I've generally blamed the SNR losses on capitalism, via a belief that all business models eventually lose their innocence, but innocence seems too normative a concept for analytical use.
I'm reminded of some 15 years ago when Ford was using the advertising slogan (for their so-called "Eco Boost" engine) "the thrust of a V8 with the thirst of a V6." At the time, my first thought was, if they can do that, why can't they do the thrust of a V6 with the thirst of a 4 cylinder engine? Or better yet, the thrust of a 4 with the thirst of a lawn mower engine? I wondered, is the reason an engineering reason, perhaps the 6 vs. 4 part of the thirst/thrust curve is a less opportune tradeoff, or is it more of a marketing reason?
I think the one innovation that could change everything would be to make it illegal to “deliberately or recklessly mislead the public”. There are too many half-truths and outright lies in both politics and the media. Democracy cannot survive that onslaught; if the electorate is fed misinformation their votes are meaningless, and democracy is dead. We have to start being honest with everyone!
only way to know what it means to clean a toilet is to clean a fucking toilet. government might not be any different. "the public won't preserve what it has no means of perceiving, understanding, and evaluating" -- maybe a system we can all take a shift in -- participate -- would do that. legislative work as jury duty.
@artlung I’m a fan of citizen’s assemblies as done in, for example, Ireland: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens… It’s a formal structure for involving citizens in legislative work.
ABC journalist pressures Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to admit that killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a mistake that must never happen again.
Trump is losing it! He thought this could just be swept under the rug, and then ABC has the audacity to bring reality into The Fake Office!
Journos can overlook ordinary people being targeted, oppressed and killed, but they get very upset if a journalist is subject to the same treatment. Hopefully, they will never let this atrocity be forgotten. MBS should be asked this question everywhere he goes.
This is why you should subscribe to 404media.co if you can afford to. This journalism collective makes a huge difference and puts out more investigative journalism per week than anyone else. infosec.exchange/@josephcox/11…
New: the airlines (Delta, United, American, etc) will shut down a program in which it sold hundreds of millions of your flight records to government agencies, including ICE, FBI, ATF, more. Comes after intense lawmaker-pressure and 404 Media's months-long reporting 404media.co/airlines-will-shut…
The narrative I’ve not seen yet from our storied commentariat? The idea that many GOPers are voting for Epstein files because it’s a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. It might rid them of Trump (who most never liked) and they can escape with minimal damage with their MAGAt base.
Mastodon friends I have a question. I had a business reason for opening an Instagram account on my phone. I checked the "no" box when it asked permission to access my contacts. When it loaded up I saw absolutely blood chilling suggested follows. An old friend I rarely correspond with. A Gee's Bend quilter I engaged to make a quilt 3 years ago. Creepy af. Can I just uninstall? Or should I delete the account? I seriously feel like lighting this phone on fire. #Mastodon #Instagram
You might be in *their* contact lists, which is how IG can connect the two of you. There's a lesson there, which is that a company can know all about who you've been connected with without even seeing your contact list.
Anyway, all these companies are evil. I wouldn't have their apps on my phone.
I deleted the account and uninstalled the app. The episode reminds me of a time my son was browsing on the family room computer and jumped like a scalded cat - a site he had navigated to had turned our camera on him and there were three guys there, just laughing at him. Same reaction I had on Instagram yesterday. God help us we have to get these monsters under control somehow. #Instagram
@CaliCarol Asking for your contacts is the easy way Facebook/Instagram can kickstart your follows when you sign up, but Meta can use several other data sources and cross-reference the email or phone number you used to register. If any of these people shared their contact list and you're in it, then it will be an easy match for Instagram's follow suggestions.
GinevraCat
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Carbon Carrot
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Carbon Carrot • • •Jess👾
in reply to Jess👾 • • •(Continued)
Jess👾
in reply to Jess👾 • • •julian
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Re: A lesser known Mastodon pro tip:
ticho
in reply to julian • • •@julian After a brief dive into the mastodon API documentation, it seems to be a protocol limitation indeed. You (or rather your client program) do not get to see the conversation ID until you join that conversation, so until then, you do not have the correct piece of information to request muting of that conversation.
Some references:
docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/…
docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/…
conversations API methods - Mastodon documentation
docs.joinmastodon.orgjulian
in reply to ticho • • •Re: A lesser known Mastodon pro tip:
ticho@mas.to hey, I sort of disagree. While the protocol itself doesn't contain topic level information, it can be inferred from context.
This is how NodeBB achieves it. It also sends contextual information so it's explicitly available as well.
ticho
in reply to julian • • •@julian While in general, I agree, you could implement some sort of heuristics, there is one huge difference - a NodeBB server is centralized and sees everything. With Mastodon, half of the posts in a conversation might not be visible to you, either because of being outright blocked, or the post simply not hitting your instance because of where the participants post from.
Any heuristic based on unrelated metadata would be inaccurate at best, but more often than not outright misleading.
ticho
in reply to ticho • • •Jess👾
in reply to ticho • • •@ticho @julian An important thing to remember with AP is that the AP protocol itself is pretty loose. Mastodon is one particular implementation of it, and doesn't even absolutely comply with the spec. Hence why some of the other server softwares have more features or slight incompatibility with Mastodon. So I'd be more inclined to believe that the oddities of conversation threading are in the Mastodon implementation rather than the AP spec itself.
Yes, some pendantry, but it means fixing it is down to one development team, not all Fediverse implementations.
ticho
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Free Gardenia 🇲🇲💚 🇵🇸🫏
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Free Gardenia 🇲🇲💚 🇵🇸🫏 • • •Free Gardenia 🇲🇲💚 🇵🇸🫏
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Free Gardenia 🇲🇲💚 🇵🇸🫏 • • •@Gardenia
For an example:
A friend of mine makes a post with a picture of something awful that's happened
I find that particular picture very upsetting, and don't want to see it in my timeline, but I do still want to be friends with that person and see other posts they make
Rather than having to choose between being able to talk to my friend and seeing this upsetting post, this allows me to mute just the upsetting post, and not block or mute my friend entirety.
Free Gardenia 🇲🇲💚 🇵🇸🫏
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Loohoosaher
in reply to Jess👾 • • •I don't necessarily even blame the folks doing it, because so many are hurting... It's hard to exercise meaningful empathy when you're scared just for yourself.
But yeah, we'll never prefigure a real mutual aid economy if all it means is "I need help from you."
Good point.
Jess👾
in reply to Loohoosaher • • •catflyhigh
in reply to Jess👾 • • •For the last 2 problems (memes I hate, or political posts boosted too often) I just use the filter function "individual posts".
Nonetheless I appreciate this tip very much and will use it for some cases in the future. 🙂
@hwll
Agnieszka R. Turczyńska
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Lorraine Lee likes this.
Jess👾
in reply to Agnieszka R. Turczyńska • • •@agturcz Yeah ... This is my hypothesis of why, but it's still a crappy UI/UX
infosec.exchange/@JessTheUnsti…
Jess👾
2025-11-29 13:37:53
xanna
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to xanna • • •xanna
in reply to Jess👾 • • •webhat🔜#39c3
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to webhat🔜#39c3 • • •webhat🔜#39c3
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Poligofsky 🇨🇦
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Poligofsky 🇨🇦 • • •El Pamplina 🇺🇦 🇵🇸
in reply to Jess👾 • • •github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…
Mute Conversation which I am not involved.
nyansen (GitHub)klara_tag
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️⚧️🏳️
in reply to Jess👾 • • •xinit ☕
in reply to Jess👾 • • •I know you're talking about the default web client, but for what it's worth, some clients do include this mute option.
#fedilab
Jess👾
in reply to xinit ☕ • • •Jess👾
in reply to Jess👾 • • •xinit ☕
in reply to Jess👾 • • •xinit ☕
in reply to Jess👾 • • •May Likes Toronto
in reply to Jess👾 • • •nicolas ⁂
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Great tip to bypass a missing feature, thanks!
In the same vein, you can delete individual notifications with a custom filter.
Create a new empty filter with no keywords or phrase, that applies to Notifications and has the “Hide completely” action.
It will not act until you choose “Filter this post” on an individual reply or mention, and then choose the filter in question.
Still Nmyownworld
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Sensitive content
TIL there is a Mute Conversation button, and when it is an option.
Thanks for this information!
Oblomov
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Carolyn
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Strypey
in reply to Jess👾 • • •> Reply to a post, set the visibility to "Private Mention", remove everyone's username from the post. Post it. Then you can click "mute conversation" on THAT post, and it silently mutes you from the conversation
That's a really smart hack. It never would have occurred to me. I'd never even noticed that you can only Mute Conversation in your own posts!
(To be fair, that might not be the case in the third-party apps I use; Moshidon, FediLab and Enafore.social)
#FediTips
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •Jess👾
in reply to Strypey • • •Strypey
in reply to Jess👾 • • •> you can mute from any post, but only in conversations you've posted in
Ah, OK, you're talking about making conversations vanish from the Home feed, rather than just your @mentions. I'm guessing our usage habits are very different. My Home feed is such a firehose I don't even notice ongoing conversations in there ; )
Fedi.Tips
in reply to Jess👾 • • •There are "Mute Conversation" buttons on other people's posts, but you have to view those posts within your "Notitications" section.
(Apologies if I'm being stupid and missing something? 🙂 )
sodiboo
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Fedi.Tips
in reply to sodiboo • • •@sodiboo
Ahhh okay, gotcha! Thank you 🙏
Jess, is it okay if I list this tip on the mute conversation guide at fedi.tips?
Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.tipsJess👾
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Jess👾
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Also, for it to be in your notifications section, you have to have interacted with the conversation first.
The case I'm talking about is:
Say @FediTips writes a (perfectly fine) toot that I don't really care to see for whatever reason. It talks about something I find annoying or triggering or idk, whatever. But the toot goes viral and that and replies to that keeps getting boosted back into my timeline. So I want the conversation to not be on my timeline anymore, but I don't want to comment on the conversation and then have people see I made some inane post just so I could mute it all.
@sodiboo
Fedi.Tips
in reply to Jess👾 • • •I wonder if your tip could be used to permanently hide specific boosts you keep seeing too? 🤔
It's a popular feature request.
Jess👾
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Fedi.Tips
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Lee from Colorado
in reply to Jess👾 • • •JoJaSciPo
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄
in reply to Jess👾 • • •Jess👾
in reply to Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄 • • •Radgryd
in reply to Jess👾 • • •João Tiago Rebelo (NAFO J-121)
in reply to Jess👾 • • •@JessTheUnstill , that @FediTips would love to divulge, I bet.
🇨🇦️Dracula🍁
in reply to Jess👾 • • •This is worth bookmarking.
Hint for those who don't know: Click on the icon between the star and 3 dots at the bottom of the toot you want to bookmark.
sknob
in reply to Jess👾 • • •@TheOtterDragon
Adrian Morales
in reply to Jess👾 • • •