@greyor I mean but the fact it's the phrase that comes to mind is telling, I think. Lots of folk don't get to treat the internet as a public forum, because people will go out of their way to over-criticize them because of their identity. (That's harassment in my book, and bigoted.)

@emsenn @greyor I do think the term public forum has been severely hobbled by the Voat/toxic subreddit/chan crowd, but it did at one point have a meaning outside of “I can say whatever I want without consequence”. To me a public forum simply means that it’s public, not private, and that people are conversing - not that it’s an invitation or an excuse to be a jerk or to spew hate. But I expect people may disagree with me on a public forum and (non-hatefully) let me know.

@digicana For what it's worth, I consider replying to a subthread of a thread where you've been pretty explicitly untagged is really poor etiquette and indicative of the sort of behavior that makes people dislike the instance y'all are on.

You should've been able to suss out I didn't tag you for a reason, and while you might not agree with those reasons or even know what they are, you should've respected them. @greyor

@emsenn @greyor Maybe I’m not familiar with Mastodon etiquette? In most other public things I’ve participated in (Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, HN, FARK, Slashdot, mailing lists, web forums, Usenet, Fidonet, BBS groups, etc.) it’s not considered rude to join into public discussions regardless of if you were tagged or invited or whatever. Access to the forum was considered invitation... are Mastodon norms different?

@digicana In my experience:

This is the rule of etiquette for my parts of Twitter and Facebook. Those others I don't really consider equivalent to microblogging, but do agree with you that it's not rude to join into public threads there.

I don't think a lot of people have a part of their culture that is similar to how marginalized communities use these "public forums." They're certainly a place for open dialog, but there tends to be more emphasis on 1/n @greyor

@digicana making sure you've got the proper positioning in coming to a thread. If you don't follow someone, before you reply to them, check their profile. Look at some more of their recent posts. Get to know them a bit, as much as you can. Don't just take the post or thread in isolation and reply to it: that's low-effort, and thus where lots of harassment is. (And yes, people can tell when you're just replying to a solo post, generally.) 2/n @greyor