Microblogging's core design is inherently bad
I grew up with forums. Forums were focused on an overarching topic, split into categories with threads about more specific topics. If you were interested in participating in a forum, you registered. If you were interested in reading about certain topics, you visited the right threads and checked them out. You could subscribe to threads, too.
It's a design centered around topics -- and it's absolutely nothing like modern platforms such as Twitter, Bluesky, or the microblogging side of the fediverse. They put the focus on individual people by establishing profiles as everyone's own space where they can express themselves and interact with others as they wish. This freedom doesn't exist on other kinds of platforms where you are bound by an overarching theme, a context, rules, and so on.
The main mechanism these platforms have in common is a personal feed comprised of posts by people you're following. You're given some possibilities to curate it, such as lists, tag filters, keyword filters and muting/blocking. Usually, there's support for private communication via direct messages, but apart from that, everything takes place in one global space.
This design disregards everything about how relationships and interactions normally work.
People only share certain aspects of themselves with others, depending on their relationship with everyone involved in an interaction. For instance, you're probably willing to share personal information in a conversation among friends, but not so much on a public medium such as a podcast. The context of our interactions plays an important role.
On microblogging platforms, conversations are usually displayed as a structured view separated from the global context. Your replies will typically not show up in the feeds of people who aren't directly involved, and usually there are DMs as a truly private channel. This makes these local contexts a well-supported use-case.
Communities don't get this privilege. They do form implicitly through everyone's connections, but there's no external structure to support them. You can't enforce community rules and they aren't separated from the global context. Sure, there are hashtags, lists and other features, but these are just filters over the global context that won't establish new, isolated contexts. The consequence:
- As a follower, you'll be exposed to every interaction in communities you aren't part of and may even dislike. Options to curate your feed are there, but not reliable or too severe.
- As a poster, you're lead to believe that all interactions work like outside of microblogging. You make posts intended for specific audiences while acting within the global context, allowing your posts to "escape containent". This leads to responses that feel intrusive and inappropriate. As I said above, reality doesn't work like that at all. It's extremely rare for you to know every single aspect of someone and likewise to share all of your aspects with someone. On microblogging platforms, however, it's an all-or-nothing deal.
This results in conflicts following the same pattern over and over again. Followers are annoyed because they keep seeing posts bothering them with no good means to fix it, and posters are annoyed because strangers keep barging in and telling them what to do. Once you know about this pattern, you will notice it all the time.
For example, on the fediverse, a user from an insect-themed instance once expressed his frustration at people telling them to put photographs behind a content warning. From their perspective, this doesn't make sense because they specifically joined this instance to be among like-minded people. It would be absurd to hide photographs primarily intended for other enthusiasts. And why care about outsiders you didn't invite in the first place? However, it's true that these posts can easily reach people with a phobia of insects. Just one repost by someone they follow is enough.
Needless to say that no side in these conflicts is objectively wrong. Each community has a different set of rules and conventions so that certain behaviors can be acceptable in some places, but not in others. This works fine outside of the microblogging sphere, but here, communities are just a vague construct living in the global context where all of these rules and conventions clash. And because a "correct use" can't even be determined, it's impossible to come up with consistent social measures.
This situation is a complete mess.
Appendix 1: Feed curation features and their flaws
Lists are subfeeds capturing posts by specific people. unfortunately, lists ingest all posts by their members, so they share all of the same problems as the main feed, limiting their use.
Tag filters require appropriate and consistent use of tags by others. On a platform where tags are optional and nobody enforces their proper use, this is simply not happening.
Keyword filters can match posts that are actually fine while also missing posts that aren't. Sometimes it's outright impossible to find useful keywords, and they won't work for media-only posts either.
Muting or blocking is the nuclear option. It's the most reliable in terms of getting rid of unwanted content, but it also isolates you from people and conversations you may care about. It's like cutting friends out of your life over the smallest of disagreements.