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From GNU social to Mastodon

thomask.sdf.org

1–10 of 155 posts

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#2
I've become more and more annoyed with Twitter (the company) and Twitter (the things people are tweeting) and I've been looking for a replacement. I really like the way that the Fediverse has all kinds of different groups/instances/neighborhoods. For example, I joined https://ruby.social this week and I've had some interesting discussions about Ruby programming. Twitter is a mess of everything because anything and everything is a topic.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#3
With all of its faults, I'll take Twitter and its almost free speech over Mastodon any day. Many people say they are quitting Twitter because of the algorithmic timeline and so on, and they are going to Mastodon where a cabal of people choose to ban opinions that are perfectly legal.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#5

With all of its faults, I'll take Twitter and its almost free speech over Mastodon any day. Many people say they are quitting Twitter because of the algorithmic timeline and so on, and they are going to Mastodon where a cabal of people choose to ban opinions that are perfectly legal.

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#6
post #5

With all of its faults, I'll take Twitter and its almost free speech over Mastodon any day. Many people say they are quitting Twitter because of the algorithmic timeline and so on, and they are going to Mastodon where a cabal of people choose to ban opinions that are perfectly legal.

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I already use IRC every day, I don't need another IRC.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I al…

I'm willing to bet most of the instances that a large group of instances have blocked federate with each other. There's definitely kinda a split among Mastodon instances, between free speech instances and fairly moderated instances. I wonder if you could find an instance which plays well with both sides.

There is no overarching authority on these instances, so there's a lot of options, it may just be hard to find the one that meets your needs.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I al…

I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see. That's censorship in my book.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#9

With all of its faults, I'll take Twitter and its almost free speech over Mastodon any day. Many people say they are quitting Twitter because of the algorithmic timeline and so on, and they are going to Mastodon where a cabal of people choose to ban opinions that are perfectly legal.

there's definitely instances that serve as a DMZ between "opinions-banned-social" and the pleroma free speech "almost-everything-goes" types.

or just make your own and associate as you please.

Re: From GNU social to Mastodon

#10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I al…

I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see…

people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it. You don't curse in a church, yet plenty of people find them pleasant to visit.

People definitely should have the ability to put restrictive rules in place in place if the association with that community is voluntary, and nobody forces you to use mastodon.

I find strictly moderated communities very pleasant because I have no interest in debating trolls, nazis or whatever else crops up on the internet, and many mastodon instances as a result of this, especially the smaller ones are a lot more pleasant and feel more like a community than twitter.

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