hoodieaidakitten

Hey, hoodie here. A few days ago, someone on the fediverse noted in conversation that the content warning feature of mastodon is a bit of a narrow feature, speaking in terms of the possible use-cases. While I am not the entire reason the content warning feature came into existence, I was definitely a part of the fight for it to become part of the featureset.

You might think that would mean I would disagree with them, but actually I don't. My personal image of what content warnings should look like in terms of supporting features is very different from what the current implementation is... So let's talk about that. What would I change? Why?

Firstly, I want to state that I will not be arguing that content warnings should or should not exist. Content warnings needing features to support them will be treated as inarguable fact for the purposes of this article.

So, it's worth noting that when I saw the need for content warning tech, the first thing I thought of was Tumblr. Not because of whatever memetic stereotype you might be imagining, about how Tumblr has more sensitive people on it, but because of the featureset that that software puts forward for the user. Specifically, the ability to set a 'read more' tag partway through a post. This is a much more versatile version of what mastodon has, and I would argue it fits the needs of the content warning use-case a lot better than what we have right now, in mastodon.

Alright, now why the heck might I think that? First off, the content warning feature in it's current implementation acts a bit differently than what Tumblr does, in two major ways. I will now acknowledge that what follows is my personal opinion, because I imagine it will not necessarily sit well with everyone. I will also clarify that the current implementation (for the most part) should remain entirely usable in mastodon, via configurable options in the user's personal settings.

When we compare Tumblr's Keep reading or Read More function to mastodon's C.W. feature, a few things are immediately clear. Tumblr's automatically sets the readmore to have a newline for it to sit on, instead of getting meshed in with the rest of the text in the previous line. Secondly, if we click Tumblr's readmore feature, or just click on the post to bring it up in a detailed view, the read more or keep reading link doesn't appear at all, after all, you already chose to look at the post, you already consented.

This is a bit of a different action in comparison to mastodon's implementation, where you must opt in regardless of whether you view the post in a detailed view or not. Personally, I prefer this, but I can easily see users not preferring this. As such, it should be configurable. Another comparison to make is that you cannot link to things, in mastodon's content warning field, and it feels a little more clunky as a result of it, in addition to it having to jump through some proverbial hoops to ensure that it can show that the post in question is in fact a reply to another post. The read more function of tumblr does not have this issue, and is better off for it. I would argue that mastodon should learn a little, from tumblr, and implement at the very least, configurability to act more like this read-more function.

Thanks for listening,

- hoodie aida kitten.

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