tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008817907674571160.post2527031062047059217..comments2023-11-08T05:17:31.521-08:00Comments on Flayland: Samaritans Radar - good or bad?Flayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07389779350824751473noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2008817907674571160.post-42274722200677230772014-11-07T04:08:34.117-08:002014-11-07T04:08:34.117-08:00Someone on Twitter who is currently unable to comm...Someone on Twitter who is currently unable to comment had some questions for me regarding the points I made about muted accounts. We seem to agree, but she felt that I could have made it clearer. I will try.<br /><br />Mute can be used as a sort of soft block option when you don't want someone to get riled up about the fact that you are now free to ignore them. In order to make this work, the account that is muted can have no idea that this has happened (though they might suspect it). There is nothing visible to the muted account in the state of Twitter that will tell them they have definitely been muted. A use of the Twitter API authorised with the muted account's credentials will not know about the muted state, and so the Samaritans app will certainly send alerts if that account is a follower and a subscriber and a tweet from the account that muted them is caught by the app.<br /><br />The problem with this should be fairly obvious. First, if I'm the sort of person who doesn't like to block (I am in fact), then I will tend to use Mute as a way to make people appear to go away. This gives a false sense of security. I know they can still follow and even if not following, can view my public tweets from within their logged in context. Generally I don't care. I certainly do care knowing that such a person could now be receiving email alerts about my tweets that have been identified as potentially suicidal. Muting someone that I do not follow is a clear indicator of my intention that I want nothing to do with them. I don't want them to be in a position of trying to intervene over my state of mental health. Quite the opposite. They would not actually be able to intervene directly anyway, so it's pointless. They could however be disruptive in other ways, like sharing it around. This is not a friend in any sense, and no one will be happy at the thought of making it easier for such a person to be a menace or to collect signs of vulnerability like trophies. I hope this clarifies anything that might not have been clear already.Flayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07389779350824751473noreply@blogger.com