On the new Mastodon Content Warning design
The system is what it does and the design is what it does.
In this case, the new Mastodon content warning design is explicitly designed to discourage use of the content warning functionality.
It puts big glaring warning colours on what most of the time is a tag or descriptor of the post itself. Like it is in this thread.
I'm not warning about anything, its just a tag/subject line.
The phrase/terminology "Content Warning" has always been flawed.
As per Merriam-Webster:
the act of warning : the state of being warned
something that warns or serves to warn
especially : a notice or bulletin that alerts the public to an imminent hazard (such as a tornado, thunderstorm, or flood)"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/warning
A lot of the time, a so called Content Warning is not a warning at all.
So functionally what this terminology and design does is discourage its own use.
People using Mastodon especially newcomers are unlikely to use it because they think "well I'm not warning people of anything, why would I use a Content Warning for this post?" and they are not incorrect in thinking that.
On the new Mastodon Content Warning design
@packetcat so I'm not going to argue that the new design is over the top or problematic bacause I don't necessarily disagree.
Something I want to talk about though is this:
I don't like and don't want to use content warnings as a subject line.
I want people to be exposed to my thoughts or interests, even if they don't share them. Especially if what I have to say might pique their curiosity whereas they wouldn't have clicked on the CW.
If people don't like to hear about so and so (unless of course it's a subject recognized as heavy or triggering) they have the agency to filter, mute and unfollow me.
I know that "cw field as subject line" is a common practice in fedi circles but it's really not that universal. And I'm also not the only one who feels like that. I would heavily dislike if that feature was reworked into something that would push making it a social expectation in this space.
re: On the new Mastodon Content Warning design
@Siph @packetcat I wish Mastodon could take a page out of cohost's book where CWs were special tags and you could auto-open/ filter them selectively (and also filter normal tags)
re: On the new Mastodon Content Warning design
@noiob @Siph @packetcat would also help if tags were “out of band” on Mastodon. Like, yeah the UI shows them “out” of the text but they’re still in the message body and count toward the character limit.
If tags were another field entirely/didn’t count towards the limit people would be more incentivized to have more accurate tagging and they (tags) could be used for filtering on top of CWs.