Reach for the Stars @antares@qoto.org

It looks like you run your own instance. Can you check your server logs and see if the GoogleBot or Facebook are scraping your posts?

@freemo do you know if Google and Facebook are honoring the robots.txt on Qoto?

@PieterPeach @Lxtruong

When you hit post the text goes off to your local instance that has to decide what to do with it. If it is Public it will be sent to every instance where someone follows your account as well as the instances of account you have tagged (e.g. if you respond to a post). Your post will also be added to your local feed and the Federated feed of each instance.

Unlisted is a request not to put a post in the news feeds. It goes to all the same placed as public, but doesn't end up places like Home, Local, or Federated (a nice thing to do for posts that only make sense as part of the thread they are in)

Followers asks that servers only make the post available to people who follow you. In conjunction with locked accounts this gives some measure of control, but you are dependent on the good faith of other instances for this privacy.

Direct is just like any other post, but it is sent only to the server of the recipient(s) with instructions to share it only with those users. Again you are totally dependent on the good faith of the instances to honor this request.

Some instances like mine also have a Local option which not let the post go beyond your local instance. If you have a local instance that is a safe space for you, you can use Local visibility and know that only people on your own safe instance will ever see it.

@boazbaraktcs Perhaps it would be, but right now such an instance would likely fine itself broadly defederated.

There is history here. A message board called Kiwi Farms developed search tools for the fediverse with the stated intent of finding and harassing LGBT people. Prior to the twitter migration it was probably the most impactful thing to occur in the fediverse. Any instance found to be using Kiwi Farms indexing tools was quickly and aggressively defederated and even instances that federated with those instances were targeted. (Full disclosure: the instance this account uses Qoto.org falls into the latter category and is still on a lot of default block lists)

I'm not saying it will never happen. The project is open source and if there is enough demand someone will write the code. Given the recent history, I would not expect the large legacy instances to change in the near future.

@taylorlorenz Remember the history of Mastodon. It was not built in the face of Musk buying twitter. It was built by people who could not be on Twitter safely even when Jack was in charge. Decisions like no text search and no reblogging were in specific responses to the abusive behavior that led Mastodon's creators to do the hard work of setting up an alternative in the first place.

These pre-April 2022 users who still own the majority of large instances and are the active developers of the software did not want a place for Journalists - many would have found the prying and data aggregation journalist do on social media exceedingly distasteful.

unless things change Mastodon will never have the broadcast vibes of Twitter which emphasized views and interactions. This social network emphasizes the building of direct relationships and to use it successfully you need to be ready to spend far more social capital developing trust and reputation then the equivalent Twitter account.

Twitter under Jack Dorsey really catered to journalists and politicians because they brought in lots of views, and it became a great place to not only put out a story, but to develop one as well. Mastodon was designed by people who didn't want their social media interactions on the front page of the New York Times. For that reason, I suspect that journalists, news makers, and politicians will remain on Twitter in spite of Elon Musk. They are to Twitter what live sports has become to cable TV - the one use that a new technology cannot easily disrupt.

@garyackerman I suggest we also need to ask questions about which students really need to learn certain subjects. I'm suggesting that students have the chance to specialize there education earlier and that we take an honest look at what subjects are included in the curriculum.

@peterdrake Have you played Elite Dangerous?

@Popehat please be sure to include how murder or suicide play into it. I'll take 2 pays 3 that he is not alive by the time his trial is due to start.

@Popehat 3) limiting free speech is required to protect minorities. Y'all did a bang up "Make no law" podcast on this one.

@Popehat

1) all the popular variations on government regulations of private companies.

2) that's not how it works outside the USA.

@hankg my money is that he goes the way of Jeffrey Epstein

@barefootstache Having visited a few countries where it is not the law, I can say with some surety that no they would not. Also it is possible to fit 16 college students in the bed of a Ford Ranger.

Today I used the **Hammer of Regret** and neither regretted it nor did I break anything. Today was a #GoodDay.

@phil **A Song of Wraiths and Ruin** by Roseanne A. Brown.