Eubie Drew (QOTO 🦣) @EubieDrew@qoto.org

Having run my own test mastodon server, I can tell you that boosting is REALLY important. That's how posts propagate between servers that are not federated together.

I may get a bit technical, and it can be hard to describe but it's something like this:

Let's say that you have 2 servers, A and B that are not connected. They have their own federated timelines that is vastly different.

let's assume they have their users @a@A and @b@B that are mutuals. If user @a@A sees something interesting on theirs federated timeline and boosts it, user @b@B will see that on their own home page. But more importantly server B will now know about and download that post, and everyone else on B server will be able to see that post on their own federated timeline!

And that's why you boost, guys! It helps posts to spread.

#FediTips

Twitter was never a healthy "public square" for most of us. Let's not rewrite history while eulogizing the hellsite.
Twitter was a frightening battleground where we managed barely to claw out an uneasy existence amidst the worst violent neo-Nazi extremists who constantly published our home addresses, threatened our kids' lives, and sent hordes of racist trolls into our mentions.
The same principles that allowed us to survive uneasily on Twitter will be required here in the #fediverse. Community defense, thoughtful pressure on moderation policies, and eternal vigilance.
There are no safe spaces but those we make safe through constant effort. We keep us safe.

I've covered the US gun issue extensively in the past. I never understood how people blame mental health for a crisis fueled by easy access to #guns. This excellent piece dispels that popular but inane notion. Statistics don't lie. #Journalists need to do a better job forcing politicians to confront these facts. “Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate...Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” @Max_Fisher @joshkellerjosh https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?smid=tw-share @nytimes

Good morning! A post just rolled across my fedi-timeline saying not to post about politics on Mastodon, so I'm here to remind you that:

1 "politics" refers to decision-making about how to live together in groups
2 choosing to not participate in political discussion is saying you support the status quo, and is a political stance
3 abstaining from politics because you feel safe from its impacts is a privilege and a choice to abandon your more vulnerable neighbours

Hilariously, I've discovered the one response that upsets edgelord harassers more than any other, and it's from Toy Story.

"You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity."

What I think happened at Twitter, simply put, is Musk has an authoritarian mindset, and #authoritarianism has been ascendant around the world—especially in the pandemic. So Musk built up an overinflated confidence and a receptive constituency to take over Twitter. But the sheen is now off authoritarianism—which has been demonstrated unpalatable to most and unviable for complex problems (see Russia, Iran, China, the GOP, Brazil…). Yet as we’ve seen, authoritarians never adapt because the role is too heady—they must be unseated through whatever means. At least with Twitter the means are relatively pain-free market forces. But in the meantime we see a self-selecting dynamic where people drawn to authoritarianism are herding onto Twitter—and people repelled by it are drifting to sites like Mastodon.

Hey, as a person who is #VisuallyImpaired - I want to recommend my friends and others coming through the #TwitterMigration - do please follow @alt_text and @PleaseCaption - within 2 minutes of your posting they will remind you that you forgot to add alt text to any image you shared. It really makes a difference for people who are using screen readers or have other visual disabilities to feel included in conversation.

So I've been using Mastodon as a Twitter replacement for almost a week now, and I'm... not optimistic. I want to be, but I'm not. So I'm going to <s>Toot</s> Post my thoughts here so that if I'm wrong (and I hope I am) folks can Boost me to dunk about this bad prediction for years to come.

Alsjeblieft. Nigieriaanse dwerggeitjes.

This means NOT invalidating other people’s experiences, especially Black folk, by comparing it to your experiences even as a marginalised person.

It is so exhausting to constantly have your lived experience being questioned all the damn time.

Don’t assume that people don’t know how Fedi works or that they not trying hard enough to find safe spaces aka better instances.

We shouldn’t need to find “safe spaces” just to exist and be ourselves and not experience abuse.

Think about for a second and how fucked up it is.

I boosted a toot earlier with said we can acknowledge that this is better than the birdsite and yet it’s not enough.

I think that’s exactly where I’m at right now.

Yes, I like this space soooo much more. I feel freer, like I don’t have to constantly stifle my voice for fear of being harassed or trolled for just being who I am.

Yet so many people *are* being abused & harassed for exactly those things on other instances.

I’ve been feeling very conflicted about this bc I don’t want to make it out to be a panacea. It’s not.

We still have so much work to do to make it a better experience for everyone.

We can do that by appreciating the good *while* constantly working to make the bad better.

I do like it here on Mastodon, but the huge influx of people from Twitter means there are far fewer image descriptions than from even a couple of weeks ago. I’d love to tell every one of them about this, but quite frankly there are so many I don’t have the patience. I’d dearly love it if apps could block posts unless an image description was added to every photo, but I suppose that’s too much to hope for. I’m feeling really excluded from so many conversations. It’s getting as bad as Twitter.

@freemo regarding the character limit on #qoto I think it must be WAY MUCH lower. May I ask about his decision of yours? I believe if someone is willing to publish a useful and/or interesting post which is more than 2-3 paragraphs, it must be in a blog and not here. You can host a separate Writefreely instance for that purpose. For myself, if something is useful and long enough, I would write a blog post where it's very easy to find for myself and the others. Also Writefreely does the SEO very good so people could find my useful content easily using search engines.

#mastodon_character_limit