: opens can of fediverse worms, shouts into it : can someone explain the difference between mentions and DMs to me bc i have things in my DMs tab on tusky that look like mentions to me
@aramsinn how does something become a DM and not a mention? like your reply is a mention for some reason, even tho other replies in other threaded conversations seem to be DMs
@oddletters maybe if it's not part of a thread and it starts with an @ ..?
@oddletters of course that wouldn't explain why my reply to you was a DM. I dunno technology is weird
@aramsinn dibs on calling my next grad STS seminar "i dunno technology is weird"
@oddletters Yes, it is actually pretty simple: There is no such thing as DMs on Mastodon. It is not a feature. What there is is "posts only visible to people @-mentioned". Nobody has a good catchy name for this and the box used to be named "Direct Message" so we're all calling it DM by habit.
Tusky is kind of lagging Mastodon here in Mastodon has switched its wording to "Mentioned people only" and an @ icon. Tusky uses the envelope and the possibly misleading word "Direct".
@oddletters (We have had discussions about this in the Tusky contributors Matrix; the project lead has said he'd prefer not to replace the envelope with an @ because he finds the @ ambiguous, which I can't entirely disagree with. I am unhappy that the current UI is probably misleading people, but I can't think of a way to fix it.)
@oddletters …Hm, I've just realized the Direct Messages tab, the one that shows "mentioned people only" threads exclusively, in Tusky is still named "Direct Messages". This also seems potentially misleading, but also I am not completely sure how to fix it D:
@mcc this is very helpful, thank you! i switched to tusky bc it let me mute conversations/specific threads. are there other android apps that let me mute conversations?
@oddletters Soooo
1. I would expect every client to support this because it is in the Mastodon Client API. However, the Mastodon official Android client is often far behind in implementing features, and since it is had to contribute to I don't expect this to change. (This is why I contribute to Tusky instead.)
2. The best way I know to track that sort of thing is this spreadsheet https://mastodon.social/@mcc/109655265898326714
But it doesn't track that one feature :(
(contd)
@oddletters I did install (then delete) all these apps while contributing to the spreasheet, so what I can say is - Mastodon and Tusky you've used - Tooot and Megalodon are forks of Mastodon Android Official, sometimes they have additional features but are usually quite close - Fedilab is the odd duck, it's aggressively featureful and has a slightly experimental (to me weird looking, but defs interesting) UI. It also costs $3. If it would help I can redownload and check for that one feature.
@oddletters (Oh and Twidere is a dead project, I recommend against it.)
3. Mute Conversation is a server-side feature. Technically no client supports it, they only support (or don't) the switch to turn it on. So you COULD use whichever client you like, and to mute conversations, use the "open in browser" feature (every client supports this) and select Mute Conversation in the mobile web client (which is super featureful).
Sorry I don't have a less messy answer for you! >_>
@mcc this is all super helpful, thank you! it doesnt surprise me that its all a bit messy and it means a lot that you took the time to walk me through it. ☺️
@oddletters Mastodon's web frontend doesn't call them DMs anymore, they're "mentioned only" posts. That's more accurate to how they work -- regular posts that just aren't shown to anyone but the sender and any @'ed people
@oddletters they're technosocial homonyms. The difference is entirely contextual.