I haven't read a whole lot of the relevant discussions, but it seems to me that a lot of the differing opinions appear to be based on people's different ideas of what social media should be like? As in... well, if I post something publicly (on Twitter, Tumblr, DW, Mastodon, etc.), I do so knowing that potentially anyone could wind up reading it (though realistically only a few people actually will.) But I guess some people post things expecting that only their followers/subscribers will look at it and talk about it, and they feel their privacy has been invaded if a whole lot of people from outside their circle start looking at it and commenting on it?
So in general I think that if someone has posted meta on a site that has good privacy controls, like Dreamwidth or Mastodon, and they've posted it *publicly*, I think that means it's fine to link without asking. Because those two sites have great privacy controls for if you only want your access list/followers to be able to see a certain post. So if you're posting it public, that means you should be okay with it being publicly discussed; if you're not okay with that, maybe make it access-locked instead?
I'm less certain about Tumblr and Twitter, because you can't privacy lock a given post, you can only privacy lock your entire tumblr/twitter. And also for Tumblr, the commenting tools are horrible -- replies get lost easily, but reblogs necessarily also spread the original post. At least on Twitter you can reply to a post and your reply won't be as easily lost, & there's threaded reply chains. But Twitter also has one of Tumblr's problems of making it very easy to dogpile on people for the crime of having Bad(TM) Opinions.
So I guess I am more uncertain about Tumblr/Twitter because of the bad privacy options on those sites. So maybe asking permission first for those would make sense? But my underlying ethos is still "if you're posting something online, *publicly,* you should Be Aware it is in fact *public* and may become the subject of public discussion." (Side note: This is part of why I like DW and Mastodon a lot! Better privacy controls! Yay!)
(Also, like... it's not like the point of this comm is to link to *Bad* (TM) stuff, or to link to stuff just to ridicule it? Because those were/are some of the more flagrant issues on Twitter/Tumblr/etc -- retweeting/reblogging ignorant people, Terrible Takes, and so forth, so that people can dunk on them and whatnot. Those were situations where lack of privacy controls led to a post being spread like wildfire with the OP having no way out except to delete their blog. That shit sucked, but... we're not doing that? So I don't see as much of an issue with linking without permission.)
no subject
So in general I think that if someone has posted meta on a site that has good privacy controls, like Dreamwidth or Mastodon, and they've posted it *publicly*, I think that means it's fine to link without asking. Because those two sites have great privacy controls for if you only want your access list/followers to be able to see a certain post. So if you're posting it public, that means you should be okay with it being publicly discussed; if you're not okay with that, maybe make it access-locked instead?
I'm less certain about Tumblr and Twitter, because you can't privacy lock a given post, you can only privacy lock your entire tumblr/twitter. And also for Tumblr, the commenting tools are horrible -- replies get lost easily, but reblogs necessarily also spread the original post. At least on Twitter you can reply to a post and your reply won't be as easily lost, & there's threaded reply chains. But Twitter also has one of Tumblr's problems of making it very easy to dogpile on people for the crime of having Bad(TM) Opinions.
So I guess I am more uncertain about Tumblr/Twitter because of the bad privacy options on those sites. So maybe asking permission first for those would make sense? But my underlying ethos is still "if you're posting something online, *publicly,* you should Be Aware it is in fact *public* and may become the subject of public discussion." (Side note: This is part of why I like DW and Mastodon a lot! Better privacy controls! Yay!)
(Also, like... it's not like the point of this comm is to link to *Bad* (TM) stuff, or to link to stuff just to ridicule it? Because those were/are some of the more flagrant issues on Twitter/Tumblr/etc -- retweeting/reblogging ignorant people, Terrible Takes, and so forth, so that people can dunk on them and whatnot. Those were situations where lack of privacy controls led to a post being spread like wildfire with the OP having no way out except to delete their blog. That shit sucked, but... we're not doing that? So I don't see as much of an issue with linking without permission.)