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People are asking me to implement webmentions, and since I don't have a strong opinion on it (it would not be hard to implement), here's another poll: strawpoll.me/15428538

Webmentions are like blog pingbacks, essentially, if you remember those.

@gargron I'm curious why some people are opposed in the straw poll, since to me it seems like a great way to add interoperability and increase the visibility of Mastodon instances. Is there a GitHub issues where this is being discussed?

@npd @Gargron why would a normal user like me want to expose their account to a blog site if I link something from there? What use is it to those people?

Nick Doty @npd

@esp @gargron thanks for the reply, I hadn't realized the concern.

To your question, I think an average user who toots publicly about someone's blog post would benefit from notifying them so that there can be a better chance of a conversation with the author, or with other people reading the blog post.

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@npd @Gargron tbh 99% of the time if I were to post a link I don't want to "start a conversation" with the author.

Simply not interested. I'd share links because I want my followers to see something or to give my own isolated opinion on something, I don't care for that to become an argument between me and the author if they disagree. I feel like that could be abused too.

I'm a bit too concerned about the privacy for this. I don't want to expose my account to blogs

Maybe that's just me.

@npd @Gargron oh and regarding other people reading the post: I personally most certainly don't want to expose my account to them.

I feel like this is a privacy issue and thus if anything it should be optional.

@esp @gargron yeah, I see how it's a privacy issue, even for toots that are explicitly public.

I was just providing the positive use in case you weren't aware of it. I'd like to be able to reply to bloggers or micro.blog folks from my account here and have some chance of their seeing it. Maybe if it were framed as a reply (like with an @ preceding the link), that would be more consistent with user expectations.

@npd @Gargron I get that this is awesome for blog owners, that's what the feature seems to be geared at. But tbh, this has no pro for users.

@esp @gargron well, I think it's awesome for people on either (sending/receiving) side that *want* to engage in conversation.

Bloggers that don't want a conversation won't have any interest in that functionality either, although the side-effects for them are pretty miniscule.