Ok so I think I have some reading to do. I just kind of jumped on here, but I guess this particular instance is supposed to be academics focused? And I'm supposed to use CWs for selfies? And links to other sites? This may not be a good fit for me.

@topologist I too have been using it just like Twitter, and have realised that, no, it's not just like using Twitter but being in a group where people happen to be academics. I prefer an open mix of science and non-science content, so like you may need to find somewhere else. Thanks for mentioning that here.

@aidanbudd do you know what the reasoning is behind asking for CWs for e.g. Twitter or Facebook? And presumably Google, Amazon, and other "tech" companies? The CW framework ia not super clear to me yet. I mean, for certain things it seems like a great idea (e.g. on Twitter I've had people I follow post pics I did not want to see) but I'm not sure I know what its bounds are. And some people seem to use it just to compress posts.

@topologist @aidanbudd I can try to answer the question about the rationale behind CW's

A lot of people came to Masto to escape the toxic culture there, which was really multifaceted

E.g. a big part of Twitter is "outrage culture"—a constant cycle of "omg Trump did X" or something, and so in order to give readers a chance to consent as to whether/when they want to deal with that, we use CW's

@topologist @aidanbudd And for Unlisted posts, I'm not going to police that, as anyone who's seeing your Unlisted posts can just unfollow you, or if they're seeing a post of yours boosted, they can mute you

But for Public posts, those go in the Local Timeline, and the whole point of this instance is to be a non-toxic place for academics (loosely defined) to geek out over the cool stuff they're learning/teaching/researching (loosely defined)