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2026-02-08 16:47:13

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

2026-02-08 16:47:18

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

I know content warnings are a pretty divisive topic, and there are all these unwritten rules and expectations around them. They have been a source of many fights and targeted harassment.

I'm sure people will have opinions on this article, and beyond, and I very much welcome constructive feedback, just make sure to please read the actual article first, as I will be blocking and removing posts deliberately.

Thank you!

2026-02-08 16:50:20

Noam Ross

noamross@ecoevo.social

Screenshot of Stefan Bohacek's post, reading: "| had an interesting conversation on here recently that made me realize that maybe not everyone who uses Mastodon knows that you can use filters as a way to add content warning to other people's posts?" The <br />post has an alert box that says: "Matches filter 'content warnings'"

@stefan Heh

2026-02-08 19:27:52

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

2026-02-09 00:11:13

zotheca

zotheca@mementomori.social

@stefan

Using filters as content warnings is actually a great idea. This will be helpful for many people

2026-02-09 00:15:38

Stefan Bohacek

stefan@stefanbohacek.online

@zotheca Thank you!

I didn't really realize that this feature may not be visible enough, and would love to know how many people are not even aware of it.

Looking forward to getting more feedback on this!

2026-02-09 00:34:30

zotheca

zotheca@mementomori.social

2026-02-09 02:19:04

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@zotheca @Stefan Bohacek It isn't the title field. It's the summary field. It has been the summary field since Evan Prodromou added it to Identi.ca in 2008. And it only became a CW field when a Mastodon user for the demo scene submitted a merge request to Mastodon's GitHub repository in 2017 which repurposed this summary field, unused by Mastodon at this point, as a CW field.

My own POV on this is a whole lot different from typical Mastodon POVs. I've joined the Fediverse on Friendica in the early 2010s as opposed to on Mastodon in the 2020s before I moved on to fledgling Hubzilla.

Now, both Friendica and Hubzilla as well as the whole rest of the family (of which (streams) of 2021 and Forte of 2024 still exist) have a nifty optional feature called "NSFW": It's a list of keywords which, if detected in a message, hide the entire message behind a button. Much like the hiding feature in Mastodon's filters, only not built into the actual filters, much more simple and over 12 years older than Mastodon's solution.

In this software family, the NSFW feature is not perceived as a filter, even though it's very similar to the actual channel-wide filters (which, by the way, are among the few things which are more simple even on Hubzilla than on Mastodon because they've only got two keyword lists, an allowlist and a blocklist).

Rather, it's seen as an automated, individual, reader-side CW generator. It's deeply engrained into the culture of these Fediverse server applications which is a great deal different from Mastodon's culture. And it's seen as vastly superior to poster-side CWs that are forced upon all readers all the same.

A takeaway from this software family: If you write a potentially sensitive post, and you have no way of artificially weaving NSFW-triggering keywords into the actual post text, add them to the bottom line as hashtags. I do that all the time, hence the hashtags that start with "CW" to make clear that they're supposed to trigger reader-side CW generators.

By the way, the Friendica and Hubzilla inventor and (streams) developer Mike Macgirvin proposed two catch-all hashtags for sensitive posts to the (streams) users (that was before he forked Forte off the streams repository). One is #sensitive which also has the side-effect that (streams) and potentially also Forte make Mastodon blank out all images in the post. The other one is #⚠️. Or, if your post is really disturbing, #⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️. However, this has yet to find its way into Hubzilla, not to mention Friendica or even Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse.

As for the summary field, if Mastodon actually managed to push its entire community away from fixed poster-side CWs towards automated reader-side CWs, the whole field would be useless. I mean, Mastodon didn't support it at all before it had a CW field because, frankly, you don't need summaries for 500 characters.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Filter #Filters #Mastodon #MastodonCulture #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte

2026-02-09 00:42:53

Der Pepe (Hubzilla) ⁂

pepecyb@hub.hubzilla.hu

2026-02-09 08:41:39

Jon Sullivan

joncounts@mastodon.nz

@stefan That’s handy. I didn’t know that I could use filters to make my own content warnings on Mastodon. Thanks.

2026-02-09 09:39:36

🦄 🅃🅁🄰🄽🅂🄸🄲🄾🅁🄽 🏳️‍⚧️

transicorn@mastodon.social

@stefan HUGE fan and user of filters to mute & drop certain things here.

I've at times seen people talk about just discovering filters but can't recall anyone pointing this out re: CW's. I think it's very helpful and maybe this will help people here who wish to have CW's instead of entirely dropping something with filters.

I personally have my account set to expand anything with a CW and just mute/drop anything i'd rather not have in my feed.

2026-02-09 14:27:20

David Tanner 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

DavidTanner@toot.wales

@stefan I’m probably being incredibly thick but I just can’t work out how this works in practice? For information I have many, many filters setup. How do I apply these to another persons post that I’m boosting?

2026-02-09 15:05:25

Deborah Edwards-Oñoro

redcrew@mstdn.social

@stefan Thank you, Stefan.

Appreciate you publishing this info as a blog post I can share with other people (who may not yet be on Mastodon).

2026-02-09 17:02:54

CubeOfCheese

cubeofcheese@mstdn.social

@stefan filters are great except for some reason they don't work on the explore/trending feed. Which is where I spend at least half of my time

2026-02-09 19:23:41

Cetraria

Cetraria@neurodifferent.me

@stefan honestly, content filtering is the only reason I can still use this as a social media app. I ended up having to mute or block 95% of the people I followed everywhere else, because filtering was so inefficient.