i have to say i don't really get the disdain for content warnings, even heavily used, on mastodon. they're used, presumably, because they are helpful to some people. if you don't need them, you can just click through. if you don't want to click, most clients also have an option to expand by default.

I found it annoying because there was no distinction between different types of warnings so if I turn them off because neurotic people are tagging literally any image of food, I’m also turning off warnings for things that actually need one like nudity or gore.

You clearly don't have kids :)

I have never appreciated CWs on food (or at least picture-marked-sensitive, which Masto can do separately) more than when surfing fedi after a *really* bad bout of food poisoning.

I've always assumed food warnings are about sensitivity to eating disorders. A couple of my mutuals use food CW, who I suspect have issues here. OTOH there's woof.group, where the instance rules are that CWs are only needed for hardcore sexual material and certain drugs.

For me (after getting yelled at for not content warning that baked bean and egg pizza image) it's each little fiefdom trying to force their rules onto people on other servers. "Our TOS says you have to CW food". That's nice, I didn't sign up to that on the instance I'm on.

A problem with CWs as used on Mastodon is that the hide/display function is all-or-nothing. One of the expected CWs on there is for insects. I'm an entomologist, and I'm trying to help people appreciate bugs. Turning off CWs for bugs *also* turns off CWs for gore, violence, and porn.