Mastodon: Support groups (not dup of #139, not using bangtags)

[ThisIsMissEm]

This would be useful for having essentially private lists / toots. The particulate use case mentioned by a user on Switter.at is for a “private group where we can post ugly mugs information”

The idea is to create a list, and then when you toot, you can select “Visibility > Specific List” and then you get a dropdown with all the lists you’re on.

I’m not entirely sure how this would fully work with ActivityPub, but I assume we can just add visibility as something like list:1234 and it’d be fine.

There is the issue of federation: should you be able to post to a list on a different instance to your account? If so, do lists actually have an addressable ID (list:[email protected]) or something.

I see this as akin to the Facebook post visibility of like “Only Family” or similar.

Wanting to start discussion before looking at doing a PR for this.

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• [x] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.

[kaniini]

this should be done with AP groups

groups are AP actors which just boost anything sent to them, the challenge is the group membership dynamics, you would need to be able to approve who is in the group

[ThisIsMissEm]

Hm, I’m not sure that a bot that retoots is as user friendly; in particular, if it gets out that someone has been reported as an ugly mug, then there’s a very real threat to human life, which is why I see this more as a privacy setting on the post.

I’m understanding AP as auto-post, as in a bot that boosts thing’s they’re tagged in to followers, and then making that bot only viewable by followers. But I fear this could easily go wrong and the wrong people gain access to that information.

For more background, we keep lists privately of ugly mugs, i.e., abusive clients, if one of them finds out they’ve been posted as an ugly mug, they either attack the last provider they saw, and/or change details preventing future providers from screening them out using list data.

The problem lies in the chance that you could accidentally publicly post an ugly mug, hence endangering yourself (again).

[Cassolotl]

If it helps, with the private group setting members of the group have to be approved by the person running the group. It's no different from DMing several trusted people.

[ThisIsMissEm]

@Cassolotl that's for the entire instance though, isn't it? I only see "lists" on mastodon, and there doesn't appear to really be a "group" concept. Unless I'm missing something?

[Cassolotl]

@ThisIsMissEm Ahh, no, this is a different thing that exists on GNU Social - support groups using bangtags #139

It's on the roadmap, and you post something to a group by posting a normal toot but putting !groupname in it. If you have permission to post to the group then that toot is pushed to everyone in the group - who can be on many different instances. If the group is private then only pre-approved group members see the toot.

But it doesn't exist on Mastodon yet. And I've only ever seen anything like it on GNU Social, so it was a bit hard to get my head around it at first.

[kaniini]

the use of boosts (well, AP announce) is a boring implementation detail. mastodon would simply handle an announce from a group as a normal message instead of displaying it as a boost.

edit: as for why using an announce: it allows for the authorship information to be properly retained (as child object or IRI to the original activity), since the message sent by a group actor would be in the group context.

[Gargron]

Yep, I think this is the group feature that you want, though I am uneasy with the idea of exchanging life-threatening information over it. Although a tightly-controlled group wouldn't have to even leave your server... I suppose some uneasiness is just simply warranted here no matter what.

[ThisIsMissEm]

I think the bangtag is a bit strange — why not build it just like the lists functionality & add it as a visibility option?

As for it being used for potentially life threatening information, that’s just a use we have on switter. For many I could see it being used as a private group chat type thing.

The main thing I’m concerned about is the UX & making sure that what’s intended for a group doesn’t accidentally get posted publicly (embarrassing at best, life-threatening at worst). I think bangtags would confuse new users, but people already get the idea of “visibility”, and they can understand a “lists” like UI.

On 9. Apr 2018, at 10:56, Eugen Rochko [e-mail] wrote:

Yep, I think this is the group feature that you want, though I am uneasy with the idea of exchanging life-threatening information over it. Although a tightly-controlled group wouldn't have to even leave your server... I suppose some uneasiness is just simply warranted here no matter what.

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[Cassolotl]

why not build it just like the lists functionality & add it as a visibility option?

@ThisIsMissEm Does that mean that I'd have to have a column for each group I'm in?

[ThisIsMissEm]

@Cassolotl no, I'm thinking it'd be sort of menu based — you could pin them as columns, but a "new message in " would be a notification in the "notifications column"

[Cassolotl]

Ahhh I get you! Alright. :)

[Gargron]

I hate bangtags, people just bring them up because that's what GNU social does.

[zcdunn]

Bangtags are also used by Hubzilla/Friendica for forums, which are basically groups

[SoniEx2]

bangtags are a nice convenience but they should have placement restrictions (first/last thing in a toot, toggleable on/off, etc).

without bangtags you can do it the facebook/google+ way, I guess?

but yeah #bangtagsareanaccessibilityfeature (also #nobodycaresaboutaccessibilityfeatures)

[kaniini]

i don't really have any opinion on bangtags, i am just saying that the AP group actor type is what is needed here

i also second @Gargron's view that perhaps sharing life-threatening information inside an activitypub server is not necessarily a good idea. it seems better to use a dedicated tool for that job.

[ThisIsMissEm]

Really it’s a case of working with what we’ve got: currently there were services, but they all shut due to FOSTA-SESTA, then there’s been private groups on Facebook, those too will potentially be shut.

Essentially it’s about what software we can access, and at the moment, one option is Mastodon if it supports better “private” communication.

Of course dedicated tools would be better, but have a greater cost to them: someone has to make them.

Really private groups for ugly mugs is just one use case out of many; everyone has a private circle of people that they want to communicate with sometimes.

On 10. Apr 2018, at 10:30, William Pitcock [e-mail] wrote:

i don't really have any opinion on bangtags, i am just saying that the AP group actor type is what is needed here

i also second @Gargron's view that perhaps sharing life-threatening information inside an activitypub server is not necessarily a good idea. it seems better to use a dedicated tool for that job.

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[ThisIsMissEm]

Bangtags might be accessible in that you can type them, but we can also make select menus and forms accessible too.

A form UI like Facebook/Google+ is simpler for a non-technical user to understand, what the visibility implications are of special tags in your message are harder to understand.

We’ve already seen this cause issues with direct toots, where people were being caught out by them going to all mentioned users & not just the users mentioned at the start of the message.

On 10. Apr 2018, at 04:39, Soni L. [e-mail] wrote:

bangtags are a nice convenience but they should have placement restrictions (first/last thing in a toot, toggleable on/off, etc).

without bangtags you can do it the facebook/google+ way, I guess?

but yeah #bangtagsareanaccessibilityfeature (also #nobodycaresaboutaccessibilityfeatures)

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[gellenburg]

Count me in as wishing Mastodon supported bang-tags like GNU Social.

They're very intuitive.

!-mentions = messaging a group
@-mention = messaging a person
# = hashtags (keywords)
$ = typically referred to stock symbols on Twitter at least

[SoniEx2]

I feel like, if anything, they should be @! and #$ on mastodon. Because they're special cases of @ and # respectively.

[highfellow]

Just regarding good platforms for private group communication, I think you would be better to use something that supports end to end encryption, like Signal. https://signal.org .This does support groups, so should be okay for what you want. Also with Signal and similar platforms, the messages are never seen in clear text by their systems - all the encryption and decryption is done on the end devices, so even if someone hacks their servers or turns up with a warrant, there is still no way they can read your messages. Nothing is totally secure, but something like this is the best bet we have at the moment.

That said, I definitely support the idea of a groups functonality for uses where privacy is not so serious.

[Gargron]

(This totally is a duplicate of #139 though, bangtags or no)