meta, quote boosts
@Quinnae_Moon@wandering.shop @jdp23 Quite an informative article, thanks - that's clarified a few of the claims for me that I've heard thrown around but never fully understood.
One aspect I'm missing in that article, though: the distinction between toxicity as in "someone deliberately using it for toxic purposes" and toxicity as in "driving people towards ambient toxic interaction patterns without realizing it".
The article seems to only address the former (and makes good points as to why that's not a particularly big concern!), but my concern would be more with the latter - particularly when used by (white) folks who do not have an existing concept of "playing the dozens".
In that case, you very quickly end up at behaviour patterns along the lines of "QT someone with a snarky comment for personal clout", with none of the understanding or context of a call-and-response culture - driving focus towards clout-chasing rather than genuine conversation.
(Also the related problem of "QTing problematic toots to point them out just helps them spread, and so people start deliberately saying shitty things to get more exposure", which is the same problem but from the other side of the QT)
TL;DR: I don't think the problem is Black folks using the feature, as there's clearly a cultural context for it there to make it work. I'm worried about how it'd be used by other folks who *don't* have that context, and what kind of behaviour that drives on a fedi-wide scale.
I have no idea how to address this. I hope this comment even made any sense at all, as I'm not in the best brainspace right now...
meta, quote boosts
@joepie91 @Quinnae_Moon Yes, your comment makes sense.
Agreed that people who are into snarkiness and chasing clout will use quoting that way if it's effective - which depends on what the audience responds to, the details of how quoting works, and what the visibility algorithms rewards.
The same's true with replies; in fact back in the day Tumblr's CEO talked about how reflagging (their form of quoting) was an antidote to the toxicity of replies!
meta, quote boosts
@joepie91 @Quinnae_Moon It's not clear to me that there's anything inherent about quoting that contributes to this. Does quoting tend to be snarkier than replies? Do snarky quotes get more visibility than snarky replies or tweets? Do snarky QTs get more visibility than snarky screenshots-and-links?
In general I think the norms and algorithms have the biggest influence on this, but I certainly agree that the specifics of the quoting mechanism are a factor as well.
re: meta, quote boosts
@jdp23 @Quinnae_Moon@wandering.shop Huh, thanks! I wasn't aware of the Tumblr thing at all. I'll have to look into that more deeply.
