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when the bsky exodus happens, please remember these things:
- dont be the fucking mastodon hoa. everyone hates those people. nobody cares if you think someone should be using a platform "your way". it drives people away. fucking stop it.
- dont shame them for going to bsky. do not mock them, do not give them grief. they made a mistake, and if they come back here, dont shit on them for it.
- make them feel better by coming here, not worse.
- i cannot overemphasize this: dont be the motherfucking mastodon hoa. the entire reason bsky has been as successful as it was, is because too many people here told people "how to behave" on their first day, or shamed them because "they werent doing it right"
if you want mastodon to thrive, you have to make it "worth it to come here". nobody likes being shamed by rando strangers.
@VanessaNightshade@beige.party@Viss
My headmate, Alyx, rarely shares photos on Fedi because of anxiety around alt-text. Most of the time it's not an issue, but sometimes our disabilities make it too much.
Then, the pile-on comes. Either it's outright anger or passive aggressive hashtags meant to be helpful but are often a form of public shaming.
Alyx used to share all kinds of photos in passing. They would take a photo of something they found interesting and share it immediately, sometimes with no text of any kind. With ADHD, it's "share now or never." Alyx opts for never.
A disabled person not wanting to share photos because it sometimes requires too many spoons for alt-text, a feature meant to help disabled people, is a disappointing but natural reaction. Disabled people don't need more labor added to their lives.
Alt-text is the one area where we believe LLMs and AI tools could actually be beneficial.
@TheZeldaZone
@VanessaNightshade I'd mute "alt text" and related terms if it's an issue, mutes are great I'm glad you can access Muted Words directly from the homepage on mastodon. I don't usually get messages about alt text though I pretty rarely post without it I suppose.
I'd def say not to over-work oneself on alt text, if it's a throaway image a throwaway description is fine, "screenshot of (game)" is often plenty
It is one area where AI might actually be useful for once. Describing and summarizing stuf
@VanessaNightshade it can be okay it. I was mildly impressed when I asked youtube's AI "does sniper wolf die in this video" and it answered correctly on my MGS video, though I'm not sure exactly how it comes to that conclusion, could easily be because I marked it up "sniper wolf battle", comparing to screenshots of boss fights idk
@VanessaNightshade @Viss @TheZeldaZone Yeah, dueling disabilities has kinda defined my life for the last decade or so, like faceplanting on the concrete when I fell over a curb meant to protect someone in a wheelchair. This is just a hard reality of being disabled: what works for one can be difficult for another.
I wonder how many of the folks who shame other folks for “not recognizing the needs of disabled users” are actually disabled?
@alameth @VanessaNightshade @TheZeldaZone this post has resulted in probably a dozen people straight up calling me an asshole for telling people how to behave, and a couple of them telling me to get off mastodon and go back to bsky, or trying to change the topic to alt text despite me not even mentioning it.
i subscribe to what i call "reaver math". about a tenth of a percent of people are just vile, and with a big enough audience, you are guaranteed to encounter them.
@alameth @VanessaNightshade @TheZeldaZone they are few in number, but aggressive, loud and persistent. considerably louder than regular people who tend to be either neutral or polite. these people will look for practically any excuse to make someone feel miserable, shame them, or tell them that somehow they are wrong and so there have been overwhelming numbers of people running around masto screaming at people about this stuff who fit this trope
@alameth @VanessaNightshade @TheZeldaZone so far as i can tell, they believe that they will somehow be percieved as 'white knights' or 'the good guys' for slamming 'the terrible user who didnt use hashtags or alttext or content warnings' and they think that they're gonna get praise for it.
but really they're just bullies.
and they're bullies in person too.
if youre familiar with firefly/serenity, same reavers. same math.
@alameth @VanessaNightshade @TheZeldaZone oh, and carl, to answer your question about how many of these people beligerently screaming at folks on behalf of disabled folks? its next to zero. ive seen HUNDREDS of people screaming about it, and ive seen .. maybe 3 actual disabled people making comments about what they would actually prefer. possibly four.
i dont mean to diminish their needs, but its not anywhere near congruent to all the screaming and fighting done by their 'unrequested proxies'
@Viss @VanessaNightshade @TheZeldaZone The term I remember hearing early on was “tone police.” And yeah, it's a meta problem: how do you tell people not to tell other people what to do, without telling them what to do? 
But I do know a number of people who left Mastodon because of it: they perceived Mastodon as being unfriendly. It's also why I only accept followers I either know IRL or which whom I've developed trust.
@VanessaNightshade @Viss @TheZeldaZone
There's an alt text bot iirc
Starkimarm The one constructive answer to missing alt text is to provide it (especially since here in fedi it's possible to edit the post and add it).