Mastodon wants to limit harassment on its network with a new feature

X.com’s competitor (formerly Twitter) will display warning messages to deter certain unpleasant behaviors.

Mastodon briefly established itself as a serious challenger to the social network taken over by Elon Musk. If the ” serious » still has a place here, although the platform also faces its own difficulties, the rest is not entirely relevant at the moment. X.com is still alive and well, and Bluesky has emerged as an equally exciting platform in recent weeks.

Mastodon, however, remains a social network you can rely on, and it is experimenting with some improvements to keep bad behavior at bay.

Watchwords: prevention is better than cure

Dear readers, you must know: the atmosphere on the internet is never very positive. Insults, violent criticism, harassment: toxic behavior is legion when Internet users are behind their screen. If these are behaviors that they have been confronted with for more than two decades, the work of moderation never stops. It is even one of the most monitored aspects of social networks, which are nothing other than platforms for exchanges between human beings.

But, as you’ve probably heard (a little too often), prevention is better than cure. A prevention or information message generally does not cost much, if anything at all, and this is even the approach adopted by the social network Mastodon. He has, in fact, just announced the upcoming appearance of small inserts in certain very specific cases, with the aim of “ reduce unnecessary negativity that arises from internet use “.

For example, when you respond to the post of a person with whom you have no connection, a message will give you some information about them and remind you of some rules of civility and open-mindedness. For Mastodon, this functionality could make it possible to avoid having to “ explain something to an expert in a given field ”, to cite just one case among many others.

An experiment that is not lacking in interest

Users wishing to react to somewhat dated conversations will also be entitled to a small reminder. Indeed, as soon as a publication is more than three months old, the platform will display a message specifying this, in order to avoid reactions that “ usually occur by mistake “. However, these are only reminders and will not limit the sending of messages.

Will this have a beneficial effect on the atmosphere within Mastodon and the multiple bodies that make it up? For now, the platform considers this an experiment, which will soon be deployed on its Android and iOS applications. If the results are convincing, the functionality could also arrive on its web interface. It remains to be seen whether other social networks will try this in the coming months.

Source : Mastodon