Content warnings on replies should apply to the original post.

Created by: Amelia

Summary

When a reply appears in your timeline or when viewing someone's profile, the original post is showed faded out for context. If the reply has a content warning, then the content warning should also hide the original post if you are focused on the reply.

Purpose

Suppose you don't want to see non-CW'd posts about Topic X. If you are a Mastodon user, you could accomplish this by unfollowing everyone who posts or boosts about X without a content warning.

With Sharkey (and other Misskey variants), though, it's more complicated, due to the fact that, when a reply appears in a timeline or profile, Sharkey shows the original post along with the reply.

Consider the situation shown in the screenshot.

One user (in this case, my alt account on mastodon.social) makes a post without a content warning about something that really should have a CW. A second user (in this case, my main account) replies with a content-warning, and then renotes their own reply. The screenshot shows what it looks like to view my profile.

Now suppose you follow the second user but not the first user. If you are using mastodon, you will see the boosted reply with a content warning, and you can choose whether to click on it to see the text. But if you are using Sharkey (or another Misskey fork), then you see not only my renoted reply, but the original post without a content warning!

Thus, to avoid seeing Topic X, it's not enough to unfollow anyone who posts about Topic X without a CW: you also have to unfollow anyone who replies to a post about Topic X if the original doesn't have a CW.

The trouble is that many Mastodon users don't know this, as they are unaware of the fediverse outside of Mastodon. Hence, trying to avoid seeing Topic X severely limits who you can follow.

I believe there is a straightforward solution: if the only reason you are seeing a post is as context to a reply, any content warnings on the reply should also cover up the original post.

The issue I see here is the fact that some people might(and actually do) CW their reply to a post which actually doesn't need a CW and you can't differentiate from that which is why this has never been implemented anywhere.

Created by: 183231bcb

Thanks for your prompt reply.

If you are seeing the original un-CW'd post because you follow the author or because you deliberately click on the original post, then I agree it should not be hidden by a content warning automatically. But if the only reason you see a post is as the background context for a reply, then I think it makes sense to hide the original post until you open the reply.

Essentially, my stance is that I can trust the folks that I follow to use CWs appropriately, but I can't automatically trust everyone they reply to.

Essentially, my stance is that I can trust the folks that I follow to use CWs appropriately

This is a split situation since while I do follow a few people I rarely keep up with anything they do. Some also do the thing I mentioned on GH.

There is like I said a clear reason as to why this stuff doesn't get handled differently and that is cause a lot of the solutions would either affect people negatively or positively as they see it and if it is suppose to be good then it is is only possible via an algorithm which obviously is very frowned upon.

I will close this issue as It is obvious that this is something not really possible with the way the Fediverse works without making yourself look like a huge target board.