The person is just incredibly sensitive and, frankly, doesn’t seem to understand what either word in the phrase “social media” means.

That is blatantly just missing the point of the complaint. Mastodon is not "social media" and a bunch of "social media users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon!

How is it not social media? Looking at joinmastodon.org tells me it is. How are people still having to rediscover the fact that posting something publicly means you lose control of it? If you don't want your posts to be publicised, don't post them publicly.

It is a quick comment by me that I didn't spend much effort on. So I'll rephrase it: Mastodon is not "Twitter" and a bunch of "Twitter users" showed up triggering a change in culture of Mastodon to be more like the thing the author opted out of by using Mastodon!

Hope it brings the point across better!

Ok yeah, I see what you're saying. I'd say maybe they didn't opt of of the things they thought they did. Mastodon is still social media, public things are still public, they opted out of the scale of Twitter but not the rest. They found something that wasn't Twitter and were happy until it became like Twitter, what they really wanted was something that can't become Twitter; like hosting a private Mastodon server.

They even actually do host their own server, which they could make private any time if they hate to be seen so much.

I'm sympathetic to the crowd of newcomers image they paint, but weakly. As in I agree it's annoying to have some quiet spot you had found get popular. But if you didn't own that spot and it was only quiet by chance, and it was fully public all along, OH WELL.

I do not understand their complaints about consent to have their voluntarily and actively published things be seen and reshared. They asked to be both seen and reshared by publishing publicly on a public instance, whose publicness they even control themselves on top of the controls for any individual post, on a protocol in which other servers redistribute copies of the original to all other servers and users.

Consent for all that resharing was well and truly given, yes including off platform. The only complaint they have is if any of the resharing stripped their name. Just like this blog post being CC-BY 4.0

Here's the problem, though - from the author's blog post and without being logged in to their Mastodon instance, I was able to see their posts. If they wanted limit interaction, they would do so through the post privacy settings, but seemingly haven't done that. If I go for a walk in a public space, I have to expect my picture may be taken. If I put something on the Internet without authentication or other protection, I may retain copyright, but it's in the public now. I appreciate that the default of the Fediverse is open, but it seems like a lot of people would have preferred be not that way not that others are using it.

The problem is that I read the author's blog post much more charitably than the comment I'm replying too. For me it is not overly sensitive. He used mastodon for other things than bring attention to themself, that is the currency of things what we colloquially name "social media". So when people brought that attention to them which is the norm on "social media" thinking they will appreciate it, but alas the currency on mastodon is not attention. The whole blog post is a lament on the change of currency. It is not solved with a technology like a privacy settings since it is a cultural shift.

Fair point that I hadn't considered - currency. Twitter definitely encouraged things that aren't sought after on Mastodon, some of which I hope don't move over, for what it's worth. They can lament it, of course, and mourn it even, but it isn't fair to tell new people how to use something because "it's always been used this way," which is partially why the Fediverse was built in the first place.

Part of the post is resignation to the fact that the culture shift is permanent. That is the whole connotation "Eternal September" you can't tell the new users how to "Mastodon" to protect the old culture.

Was it a link? The text read to me as if it was a screenshot, but I don't actually know.

I read it as both, one person doing each: Early this week, I realised that some people had cross-posted my Mastodon post into Twitter. Someone else had posted a screenshot of it on Twitter.

I understand being unhappy about screenshot sharing, but my read is that even if only the link sharing piece had happened they would still be upset?

Ah, it does sound that way. At any rate, we agree that it would be pretty silly to be angry about a URL being broadcast, but a screenshot is another matter.

It really is a pity that the general public doesn't understand the difference today (or know what a URL is).

Pasting around screenshots of content posts back/forth across different social networks is not only extremely common it isn't even clear to me why it is a bad thing... unless you are a particularly intense zealot about copyright, of course :/.

Seems like being 'big mad' about this is a total misunderstanding of the social norms around social network usage. You can certainly be it, but it's not productive, it impacts your health and changes nothing about the public perception of your issue (ie 'everyone does this all the time, wtf is your problem') or the behavior.

As in "Anything you do where anyone can sense you might be broadcast further than you thought. So either shut-up and shut-in or get used to it."

Remind me not to friend you :-)

Joking aside, I didn't read OP as "big mad" about this. Just a little wistful. And possibly glad to have good subject matter for a public blog post...

To me it sounded as though the social norms are different in this space. Essentially that’s the culture clash.

True in most cases, but it can be a pretty serious violation of privacy.

For example, let's say you post pictures of your family with your children on Facebook, intending to share to friends, and then someone screenshots that and re-posts publicly.

I've never tried a public-by-default social network like Twitter or Instagram. I'd be quite annoyed if one of my Facebook friends took one of my posts and published it to the whole internet. I realize it's something that can happen, but it would feel like a violation of trust.

I also think that being able to maintain semi-private spaces on the internet makes it a safer place.