Royce Williams@tychotithonus@infosec.exchange
Whoever created the Mastodon filtering feature set that allows a "This post was filtered by these five filters, click here to show the post anyway" approach was a genius.
Any platform that doesn't have this functionality no longer interests me. It has permanently altered my perspective on input triage.
It's not perfect - I have spent a lot of time sampling filtered messages to reduce false positives. And some clients can't handle 6000¹ filter keywords(!).
There's also a very real danger of sticking your head in the sand - constructing your own de-facto social media bubble. So it's important to make a habit of sampling posts on important filtered topics.
And all that work is also at risk - there's currently no in-app Mastodon way to export filters or back them up (without backend database access or API calls).
But even if my filters vanished today, I would immediately start reconstructing them.
Mastodon filters are like TiVo - now that I've experienced the world with them, I'll never go back. And any platform that lacks this feature set is ... broken.
¹As of 2024-10:
Filters: 802; Keywords: 25036