Post B2R5TPZQi8Mp5f4ZSS by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
(DIR) More posts by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
(DIR) Post #B2R5TPZQi8Mp5f4ZSS by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:18:11Z
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Fascinating morning reads.I stumbled on a thread about ableistic behaviour this morning, which was, let's say, not awesome. In my (unsuccessful) attempt to find the post triggering the thread, I came across a paper on moderation issues on mastodon, which is undoubtedly correct, but... *le sigh*It frames the problem as both technical and social, but it misses - as most such discourses seem to - a simple psychological root cause.I'll explain. I keep explaining this.
(DIR) Post #B2R5TQwraUhpMd2nce by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:28:04Z
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People are social animals. We each have our different needs when it comes to social interaction, but the fundamentals are the same: we all need the safety of groups. And we all need privacy.This seems like two contradictory requirements, and a lot of moderation discussions focus on balancing those two, and for good reason. The underlying commonality here are visibility and control.
(DIR) Post #B2R5TSDYrtenIhreHw by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:35:06Z
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We enjoy visibility, because being visible in an accepting environment is affirmation that it's OK to be who we are. An extreme instance of this, in the sense that it maximalises this affirmation, is intimacy.But being visible in an unaccepting environment conversely is terrifying. I read a paper about torture once (in the wake of 9/11) which highlit that torture is fundamentally about forced exposure without feelings of safety. The specific techniques all aim to achieve this combination.
(DIR) Post #B2R5TTNAZew8snMpu4 by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:40:11Z
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So on the one hand we can build a matrix here and put visibility or exposure on one axis, and perceived safety on the other, and e.g. place intimacy or torture in various corners, and do the same with other social interactions and so forth. Fine.And to reiterate: the specifics of this are highly individual. But we'll all be able to make such a *personalized* matrix, and so can generalize that the extremes on the matrix exist in some form for everyone.So what this comes down to is that we...
(DIR) Post #B2R5TUcnv12MlZgpua by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:45:15Z
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... seek to be able to control where on this matrix we exist.The paper is quite correct in that mastodon's "blocking" as in blocking out what you see of others essentially misses the point; what people need is the ability to control our visibility or exposure, i.e. what others see of us.But this isn't about moderation or that paper or anything else. This is about what I like to nickname "the sofa model".Technical details notwithstanding, all social media fucks with our heads.
(DIR) Post #B2R5TVhRvELa6Gs3n6 by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:49:52Z
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Because we evolved as social animals in the physical world, we expect to control our visibility with methods from the physical world, aka we like doors.We present ourselves differently on our own sofa, hence the nickname, which I use as a symbol for a fully controlled, accepting environment, vs. well, anywhere outside of our home door.As an extreme example of an opposite environment, which we may nonetheless choose to enter, consider stepping on a soap box at speaker's corner.
(DIR) Post #B2R5TWcWV206xHZdke by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T07:57:36Z
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Social media fucks with our heads because here, those two places are the same.And that is not about control. It's about user interface choices. Specifically, when I step on my soap box and announce the contents of this thread loudly to passers-by, your experience of it is me breaking down your door, standing next to your sofa, and shouting this in your face.In other words, you're in a safe, accepting environment, in which you open yourself to affirming interactions, while I'm actively...
(DIR) Post #B2R5TXXx3VwDpORVGS by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T08:16:22Z
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... prepared for non-accepting interactions.This is because the norm for user interfaces for social media makes no distinction between the "places" in which I produce content and you consume it.Contrast this to e.g. blogs. You can consume them on your sofa just fine, via an RSS feed, just like you might subscribe to a physical newspaper. But when you want to react to this, you have to go to the speaker's soap box and comment there. Or you have to step on our own soap box, and phrase your...
(DIR) Post #B2R5TYbB90775gxavw by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T08:20:18Z
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... response to the public.The point isn't to suggest a regression to these modes of interaction is unequivocably better. But it does make *location* part of the decision making on how we interact, and that is of vital importance to our physically evolved ape brains that loves physical locations with barriers between them as a means for signalling what kind of exposure and acceptance we might expect.A whole lot of miscommunication on social media seems to come down to this lack of locality.
(DIR) Post #B2R5Tgh92hdiCVoTLM by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T08:24:32Z
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Interestingly enough, the same applies to the thread I came across, to what I could infer about the post that triggered it, as well as the interactions that form the inspiration for that paper on moderation.I'm also reminded of something in a sense entirely tangential, but actually very much the same: in his book "Designing Virtual Worlds", Dr. Bartle (co-creator of the original MUD) insists that MMORPGs aren't games, but places.They are just places in which people gather to play games.
(DIR) Post #B2R5Tot8ZzzBc1UA9A by jens@social.finkhaeuser.de
2026-01-06T08:29:58Z
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Bartle makes that distinction to differentiate what people expect of games with what MMORPGs offer, and uses this distinction as a launch pad for a better discussion on what constitutes a game. *That* bears less relevance to this thread, but what is relevant is that the different types of interactions virtual worlds offer, due to their presentation as a three dimensional environment, cannot be easily mixed up in the same place.TL;DR we didn't evolve to handle social media as they are today.