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Correct way to do CW on Friendica?


@Friendica Support

Not that I usually put any warnings on my posts anywhere, or feel I have a reason to, and suspect filtering is far more useful for people who are triggered by certain topics, but I'm a little confused about how to correctly do Content Warning/Notices on Friendica?

The compose editor has a button that says "Content Warning" but it creates an [abstract] BBcode, which when used appears to make that content completely disappear on Friendica (though if you go to "Edit" it will still be there).

The [spoiler] BBcode appears to work like the Content Warnings do on Mastodon, plus you can add to it WHY you are hiding the content. But how do those look on other platforms?

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in reply to Random Penguin

In Settings->Additional Features->Post composition, in the explanation of the "Add an abstract from ActivityPub content warnings" check box, it says, "Abstracts are displayed as content warning on systems like Mastodon or Pleroma."

I have found this to be the case. I have also found that, while the abstract text will not appear at all in the preview while editing, it does appear when I actually publish the post. On Friendica I see the abstract in bold text (and it does not behave like a content warning). In Mastodon it does behave as a content warning. My understanding is that Friendica does not treat it as a content warning because it is assumed that Friendica users will use filters to avoid seeing things. There is much more information about abstracts under Help/UserManual/General Functions - First Steps/BB Code Tag Reference.

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in reply to Jeff

Is it safe for federation's sake to use both abstract and spoiler tags with the same content, to have it be correctly hidden both on Friendica and Mastodon? Maybe even nesting one inside of the other?

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in reply to Random Penguin

I think it's a bit unresolved currently, but there's some discussion about it here:
github.com/friendica/friendica…

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in reply to Marcus

@Marcus @Random Penguin
If I understand correctly, then that's settled. However, the project is initially focusing on the stable release.
@Michael 🇺🇦
in reply to Marcus

Tobias makes a good point in that thread that how am I, as an author, supposed to guess what might "trigger" some random person reading what I wrote? The burden should be on the random person to set up filters so they reduce the likelihood they'll see anything they know might trigger them. Because I can't possibly know that! Which is why I pretty much never use CWs and if someone doesn't like it that's their problem.

I really don't want to join in on that thread, but after reading it I have to wonder why nobody mentioned the idea of using [spoiler] for a CW and leave [abstract] for a summary? Spoiler already collapses on Friendica just like CWs do on Mastodon. It would avoid having to add a network parameter to [abstract] to determine whether it appears as a summary or CW. It seems like an obvious solution to me. Just make spoilers = CW and be done with it?

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin @Marcus
The abstract has a history. It was used to create a summary to send to other networks when they had a character limit. This makes sense when a post is 500 or 1000 characters long.
However, the summary can also be what its meaning implies. Friendica will provide both options with Michael's issues.

CW is extremely controversial. Even on Mastodon. The sender cannot know what might trigger someone. That is something the recipient must filter out.

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in reply to Matthias

Still, the intention of a spoiler and a CW are essentially the same, to hide content from someone that may upset them, and spoiler collapses on Friendica just like CWs collapse on Mastodon.

If abstract's intention is only as a summary then that should be all it does. Just because it has been used for CWs is no reason to keep using it for that if it doesn't make any sense, which IMO it doesn't.

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin
The spoiler works differently

You should not continue reading if you do not want to know the ending of the film beforehand.

Click to open/closeThere is a happy ending.

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in reply to Matthias

How does it work differently? Spoilers on Friendica collapse. CWs on Mastodon collapse. They collapse to prevent the reader from accidentally seeing something they may not wish to see. You have to intentionally expand them to read it. They're totally the same.

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin
The fact that abstracts are now hidden was Friendica's response to the CW implementation in Mastodon. The spoiler was used instead.

Mastodon took the easy route. The projects responded.
You don't have to like it, and it will be fixed by the issues. But that's the story.

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in reply to Matthias

I may have missed something in that issues thread, but it sounded like Mastodon a summary tag converted from a bare [abstract] is now treated as a CW while [abstract=apub] is treated as an actual summary? That's still unnecessarily confusing when the [spoiler] code is right there and literally does exactly the same thing as a CW.

I rarely use CWs even on Mastodon and never use abstracts on Friendica. Anyway, I'm done arguing about it. I really don't care how my posts look on other platforms.

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin
That's a question you should ask those who have misused the feature. Friendica continues to communicate with various networks that have a problem with long texts. I use the summary feature regularly.

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin @Marcus This has always been my stance, over on the Taurnation we post mostly links to content ranging from G-XXX and use content warnings for the latter, as that's generally expected and even often required. On my personal blog however, we only use hash tags, because the collected list of triggers I've been told I should be protecting people from basically would allow me to only post maybe cat pics and nothing else without a content warning, and even that is iffy.

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in reply to Random Penguin

Couldn't agree more. This needs to be tackled on the receiving end with filters / blocks / ... not on the sending end. Not using CWs here due to that reasoning.

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in reply to Random Penguin

@Random Penguin I always use the [abstract][/abstract] tags. The CW gets seen by others. [spoiler][/spoiler] seems to only work with networks that support more types of content formatting than Mastodon, basically. I.e. in Hubzilla it works, in Lemmy it should work (but it's buggy), in Piefed it should also work but I never checked.

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