#indieweb 2020-12-01
2020-12-01 UTC
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petermolnar it's you
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[schmarty] trying to delicately bring a vibrant discussion about stories from chat to main!
# [schmarty] so one of the main reasons given for an ephemeral posts feature like most silos implement "stories" is that they "limit risk of exposure" and that they are their own separate feed
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[chrisaldrich] A feature of stories that's missing: The great photo or sub-story that can be moved from the expiring channel into the main channel. If our chat had this, we could move all of the on-topic parts over to the logged channel.
# petermolnar don't forget about the technical aspect: if your "story" shows up in a feed, it's not _really_ ephemeral, given all the feed readers. (Yes, I know, screenshots on silos, record it, etc, but still, in theory, that's a controlled environment). So what if... stories are things that don't get into our feed and only ever show on our sites, in the indieweb context?
# [schmarty] which sounds to me like good reasons to spend energy on friends-only posts (or whatever our terminology on that is, now) when it comes to limiting exposure
# [schmarty] petermolnar: i agree that the idea that stories are _actually_ ephemeral is not something that can be guaranteed.
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# petermolnar re [eddie]: > Most of the Twitter users that I follow that are now using Stories are women. - many years ago: "I asked my wife what she thinks about likes, why she uses them, and I got an unexpected answer: because, unlike with regular, text comments, others will not be able react to it - so no trolling or abuse is possible." ( https://petermolnar.net/article/making-things-private/ ). I'd guess the same goes for stories.
# [schmarty] but i do feel like there is an interesting idea here around hinting that something is ephemeral
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# [schmarty] so a social reader might take a hint that something is ephemeral and only show it if it hasn't expired, or only you're reading in 'catch-up mode' or similar.
# petermolnar what is stories?
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Loqi A story is a singular (one per profile) time stream collection post, that consists of ephemeral photo and video posts that are shown in sequence one at a time and disappear from the collection 24 hours after being added https://indieweb.org/stories
# petermolnar that's the thing: in indieweb context, I would not allow stories to enter the social reader: it would be like /now.
# [chrisaldrich] petermolnar, does this mean that the indieweb conceptualization of likes has a flaw? Because likes appear on my site as a piece of content which one could potentially comment upon or target. I suppose I could turn off comments on them (or other posts) by default...
# petermolnar [chrisaldrich]: could be; yes.
# petermolnar I thought that too, I'm proud of her and her thoughts :)
# petermolnar * admire her thoughts
# [schmarty] anything with a URL can be targeted for shared attacks, if not directly harassment, via something like hypothes.is, for example.
# petermolnar re stories a bit more: from a stricly technical perspective, at the moment, a feed is like and email: once sent, there is no way to revoke, unless the servers all agreed to support such a notion. That makes feed incapable of signalling ephemeralness. Ways I see out of this: thin feeds, with links only, content to be fetched; or, wannabe ephemeral content doesn't enter the feed.
# petermolnar [schmarty]: re targeting: but how would the owner of a random site know that someone if being a dork via hypothes.is?
# [schmarty] it has happened before! http://hackeducation.com/2017/04/26/no-annotations-thanks-bye
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[KevinMarks] well, stories first came from snapchat, which is both private (approval needed to follow) and epehemeral. instagram retains some of this - they are ephemeral, and are only shown to followers, which can be approval only (private accounts) and can be blocked. Also instagram tells you who has viewed your stories
# petermolnar [schmarty]: that needs a browser plugin, and thus, active participation. It will only reach the owner if they are participating in it as well, right?
# [schmarty] aha, thanks, KevinMarks! i was thinking a lot about snapchat as the model for this but wasn't sure on the details about controlling followers. the note about who viewed is also interesting!
# [schmarty] petermolnar: in the hackeducation case the fact that the comments happened outside the site-owner's awareness was also a problem.
# petermolnar yes, but there's not much that can be done about that aspect. If I were to publish a book, a group could take it to a ritual burning, but at least that group requires active participation.
# [schmarty] petermolnar: seems like i took us off track.
# petermolnar there are only 3 threads so far, I'm coping ;)
# petermolnar 1) stories - ephemeralness, private vs free to access, purpose, display/design
# petermolnar 2) should likes/reactions be allowed to be reacted on?
# petermolnar 3) annotation services, or what if someone, in their group says something bad about our site
# [schmarty] it does seem relevant that stories items maybe don't have URLs at all? makes it hard to dogpile onto something you can't quickly link to.
# [schmarty] i only meant to bring up annotation services in the context of should likes/reactions be allowed to be reacted on. indieweb-style likes tend to have URLs and thus can be reacted to or annotated easily.
# [KevinMarks] and there is a dunking issue with fleets I think too
# [schmarty] oooh so insta and twitter stories both allow reactions to particular stories?
# [schmarty] (as built-in feature, not counting screenshotting)
# petermolnar stories can be shared on IG? o.O
# [schmarty] ... or that they've moved more and more _kinds_ of content under the 24-hour disappearing novelty umbrella
# petermolnar think about it: content on IG is visual. Single, multiple, moving, but visual. So in order to cramp in anything else, they put all of that into stories.
# [KevinMarks] the other part of it there is an extra notification channel. The main posts vanish into the algorithmic feed, never to be seen again, except once tantalisingly when you reopen the app before it refreshes, whereas stories sit at the top with faces in circles like they're peering though portholes in your submarine
# petermolnar we should re-word the stories def: we don't know what a story is, because it differs from silo to silo. The only shared property is they are somewhat ephemeral.
# [KevinMarks] the joke implementations replicate the faces in circles things too
# [schmarty] KevinMarks: that is an interesting observation.
# petermolnar so how long until one of the silos makes their ephemeral channel algorithmical?
# [KevinMarks] they are already choosing who to put in the circles and in that order afaik
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alex11 once the book of faces decided to just copy stories (one of fb's internal mottos is 'don't be too proud to copy') it just... made the landscape in general feel really bad
# alex11 oh ok you can just copy other features onto your own site which already wants to destroy everything that isn't facebook
# alex11 never mind innovation
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# [KevinMarks] Does https://heydonworks.com/ belong in js;dr or is there somewhere else to document this social experiment?
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[tantek] nah I disagree with that equivalence. stories *could* be about what is happening now, or are often about what happened recently, or what happened a year (n years) ago, or what is coming up soon (e.g. the story link I shared above about an upcoming class schedule), or what is coming up in days (IG has countdown timers for many days in advance)
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# [tantek] also as I noted previously, the "story reader" is "default reading time" + "autoplay" enabled as compared to every other reader which is "keep showing the thing forever" + "never autoplay/navigate". There's a variant in silo readers where it's "auto show new stuff at the top when posted" but most silos have switched to making that semi-automatic, i.e. you have to click a button to "Show New Posts" or "View newer tweets"
# Loqi Expiring content is content that is only temporarily (ephemerally) relevant, and also part of a larger post, that can and should be (preferably automatically) removed once a particular datetime has passed (the expiration date) https://indieweb.org/expiring
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[jgmac1106] what if you each blogged about this and read it about in each others readers. I would write a stroy about that
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# [jgmac1106] anytime but this discussion of old snapchat features has been super informative
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# petermolnar [tantek]: the reason why story => now came up was because that is a way to somewhat control/enforce ephemeralness
# petermolnar if it enters a feed and readers, you'd need all participants to respect that
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# petermolnar which, given our culture, won't ever happen
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# petermolnar jacky: did you mean story == now as in the very same thing, or did you mean like me, that story should/could be a page like /now, as in not in feeds, still somewhat controlled?
# petermolnar btw I still believe stories are being glorified; we have websites, we could present content any way we want. If dates don't matter; don't show it. The whole notion of indieweb-stories feels incredibly forced to me.
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# [Raphael_Luckom] you can compare the challenge of "enforcing ephemeralness" with the challenge (from the perspective of corporate social networks) of preventing POSSE from working (since it uses resources without providing eyes for ads). The challenges are both of trying to prevent access to something except to human eyes
# [KevinMarks] we already have a protocol for deleting posts and propogating deletions in webmention
# [KevinMarks] I think that would apply to websub too
# [Raphael_Luckom] it sounds like people are still talking about something like "verifiablly-respected deletion"
# [Raphael_Luckom] oh ok. then why not just stick some ttl on it? No matter what you do, you're just asking someone to respect a limit
# [Raphael_Luckom] lol "just"--I hate that
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# [Raphael_Luckom] right--so _allowing_ that ttls are complicated (because everything with time is complicated) and allowing that coming up with a standard is complicated, and making clients and servers are complicated--allowing all that, I don't see what the important design decisions are besides "there is a syndication format, and it carries media, and it has a ttl." Are there still points of disagreement in that?
# [Raphael_Luckom] lol
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# [Raphael_Luckom] so part of the question is: what makes the feature "story-y" rather than something like a blog post that disappears after a bit?
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# [KevinMarks] stories are to tweets as tweets were to blog posts
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# [KevinMarks] so, worth doing outreach to https://spacehey.com/ about indieweb things?
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