Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

@toast I think there are a lot of good (and often under-considered) points in here.

But there's one specific thing that I think is important to call into question, and it's the notion that, paraphrasing, "human brains think in terms of transactions".

While this is true in the context of capitalism-driven cultures, this has not been true historically; over the centuries (and even today!), there have been a wide variety of different cultures with a wide variety of different perspectives on trades and exchange, many of them not of a transactional nature.

Thinking in terms of transactional exchanges is very much a cultural thing, not a 'human nature' thing, and it *is* a thing that cannot be overcome; it's just very difficult to do so in the context of a culture that is mired in transactional thinking, and you'll likely have to *build* a different culture within your project to change that.

@elilla @toni Somewhat tangential but related thought: I also feel like fedi and AP being inspired in their model by centralized 'web 2.0 social media' silos was always going to bite us sooner or later, because it's fundamentally a growth model and not a sustainability model.

Even just its nature of being centered around individuals (as a type of 'public performance') rather than communities naturally invites this kind of culture shift and growth pressure, I think.

@elilla @toni The option to hide QTs entirely would probably be a good idea.

The 'culture shift' thing is a bit complicated. Had it been implemented as opt-in the moment it was proposed (years ago), I don't think such a shift would have occurred, simply because of the opt-in culture that it establishes, ie. it would be treated as something to be wary of by default.

Today, I am less certain, exactly *because* it has taken so long and other implementations have already implemented the feature without the opt-in mechanism, and so they have ended up setting a culture of expectation for the feature being there.

The whole 'pressure to maximise growth' thing I certainly agree on, and it's making a lot of these issues a lot more difficult to resolve because this wasn't headed off at the onset 😕 (And again the bad Mastodon governance plays a significant role here too)

@elilla @toni This is one of the things that would be addressed by an opt-in QT mechanism (but probably not by an opt-out mechanism!), as it would mean that QTs would not be available reliably, which is usually the kind of thing that effectively prevents a culture from forming. It's one of the reasons that an opt-in mechanism was originally proposed.