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Hello! My name is Jonathan Joseph. I am an Electrical Engineering undergraduate at Michigan Technological University. My main interests are optics, photonics and computer simulation.

@daviding

I have over 27K followers, I follow less than 500 (and usually trim it down to keep it closer to 300). I too try to respond to **everyone** , but I do miss a lot and often just due to the numbers messages get lost in the influx. But I do try.

Thing is, I dont think i need to make what I say private just to avoid the asymetry, that seems silly too.. Besides if anyone engages me and is productive I will often follow anyway...

@timoreilly

@Hyolobrika

While there may be some examples lacking (and in fact im sure there are), its not true to say none of them.

Spinser deals in quite a bit of hate towards males and is specifically an instance designed for a mostly female audience. Yet they are on there.

@sj_zero

@robryk

Depends on the server.. some servers poll, some dont. QOTO has a subscribe feature for example, thats based on polling so if you subscribe rather than follow you will get it even if blocked.

@pganssle @aut@sideslip.social @nova

@Jackuu

No you misunderstood, I am not saying people get mental health issues from fedi.. Im saying some people may not have much mental health to spare and are very sensative to hurtful comments, and they simply dont want to be exposed to it because they donnt want to cry themselves to sleep because something hurtful you or anyone says happened to work... You might call that pathetic, I call that human, and some people have mental health concerns.

@Corfiot @sj_zero

@Corfiot While I agree it isnt a good idea to blindly block based off a list without looking into the reasons for entries being on that list, I disagree on the point that you dont block/curate servers. If a server allows bad actors, and you dont want to see bad actors, blocking the server is onne of the best things about the fediverse, that you dont need to block 100,000 people, you can just block 10 servers.

That said, if seeing vile human beings pop up from time to time and you just ignore them is something your ok with, then sure, dont block servers (I dont).

@Corfiot

There is an element of laziness I suppose. But it also needs to be weighed against how sensative they are to conflict. Many people are not happy if there is constant drama in their life and dont have the mental health to curate that many servers on their own.

@Jackuu @sj_zero

@sj_zero It isnt meant to be exhastive, but its a good start if the goal is to get rid of the bulk of the trolls.

@Jackuu

Its less about thinking for yourself and more about an investment of time.. If you want to avoid the trolls without investing time in figuring out the bad instannces your own, this is one way to get there.

For the record, I dont use the block list. But I understand why someone might.

@sj_zero

@sj_zero If you know an instance on there that moderates against bad actors and therefore shouldnt be on the list feel free to let me know.

@lePetomaneAncien Im the admin of this instance. We are a fork of mastodon with quite a few special features. I did all the coding to bring those features in (though in many cases I pulled the features in from pull requests on core code).... So yea, obviously ive worked with the API and source before.

If you wanna play with our code here its all open source and we have some docker containers to make it easy to play with.

@trinsec

He refered to it as "masterbatedonne" in a tweet seemingly mocking it.

@sean

I refuse to refer to people with the name "Sean" as if it is pronnounced "Shawn".. there is no logical explanation for such a pronunciation... No you are pronounced "seen" and you get no say in it!

A reminder for anyone new to mastodon who might not be happy with some of the racist and bad actors out there on other servers... Just import the fediblock list to your personal blocks and you will be safe from the vast majority of bad actors.

𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑹𝑴⛈️  
I took all the domains from https://fediblock.neocities.org/ block list and put it in a csv file that can be imported so you can block all hateful ...

Okay this might be a long post :blob_grinning_sweat:

One thing that I realised is making harder for people to switch is because the whole concept can feel daunting & overwhelming for non-tech savvy people.

With Twitter to them it was straight forward and easy to find topics they enjoy but with mastodon its a bit different.
So if you're new to mastodon or you want to introduce someone to mastodon here are some tips, useful sites & tools:
### Tips:
- Choosing a home instance isn't as importance as it seems, don't overthink it. Yes moderation rules & policies may differ but they all have one thing in common: Be a decent human. You **always** have the option to migrate your account to a new instance.
- Toots (or posts if you think toots are cringe :sad_cat:) are what we call micro-blogging instead of tweets
- You’re supposed to "boost" AKA "reblog" toots that you like.Since Mastodon does not have an algorithm that surfaces toots that have been liked a lot, boosting is the best way to help spread stuff that you like, and to show appreciation. (credit to @orsvarn for this comment)
- Another way to fill your timeline with content you enjoy is to: Find other people with similar interests, follow them, favourite their posts, boost their posts, use hashtags. rinse, repeat. (credit to @garry)
- If you ever feel yourself getting sucked into arguments on the , you might want to take advantage of the instance mute/block feature!
Instances tend to foster a culture, so if you find people from a specific site tend to be bothering you, muting/blocking that instance will keep other members of that community from bothering you as well.
- Finally do not share private/sensitive information via DMs on Mastodon. Direct Messages are not E2E. **Keep it in mind**

### Useful tools & resources:
[Twitodon](twitodon.com/) - Find your Twitter friends on Mastodon
[FediFinder](fedifinder.glitch.me/)- Similar to Twitodon
[Fedi Tips](fedi.tips/) - an informal, unofficial guide for non-technical people who want to use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse
[Fedi Directory](fedi.directory) - A human-curated small selection of accounts to spice up your timeline.
[Trunk](communitywiki.org/trunk) -Trunk allows you to mass-follow a bunch of people in order to get started with Mastodon or any other platform on the Fediverse
[Fediverse.info](fediverse.info/explore/people) -growing list of people and topics can help you discover mutual interests with people around the world
**Mobile Apps:**
[Metatext for iOS :apple_inc:](apps.apple.com/us/app/metatext)
[Tusky for Android :android:](play.google.com/store/apps/det)

Lastly if you are interested in setting up your own instance you can learn via learnfoss.org/ its completely free and its made by the wonderful @stux

I apologize for the long post lol, just hope this helps anyones transition over :ablobsmilehappy:

@mssunshine I have enjoyed hearing your take on it too, its a great convo. I appreciate that we can talk about such difficult topics maturely. I always found it was one of my favorite things about QOTO, the level of maturity we have when conducting these conversations.

@vwbusguy luckily QOTO is hanndling the load quite well, we have pretty heft servers and a much smaller group of people. So we are one of few servers handling the influx smoothly.

That said dont blame the M.O guys either. They can only afford what they can afford. Donating is always one way to solve it :)

@mssunshine The truth is, they didnt overturn roe because it goes against their biased principles. They had legitimate legal reasons to do so.. im not saying its a good thing, we NEED to protect abortions. But the truth is Roe v Wade was **never** the proper way to protect abortions because its legal foundations were highly questionable and weak and was overthrown onn legitimate legal grounds.

That said what we need, what we always needed, was actual explicit federal legal protection of abortion. A supreme court case is not the proper place for that. Id go so far as saying we need an amendment to protect it.

we can be upset that abortions arent federally protected anymore, and we **should** be upset at that. But we have to recognize what we are really upset with, Roa v Wade was a cheat to get that protection, what is upsetting is that we cant agree enough as a nation to manage to pass it as a amendment as it should be. We should be upset that there is division on the topic at all. But lets not attack the judges for making the decision that legally speaking is the way the system is designed to work. The supreme court does NOT and should not make laws, it was never their job in the first place.

@daeyoung

I cant in good conscious vote republican either, nor can i equally in good conscious vote democrat. So either I pick two evils that balance eachother out, or i pick a third party that isnt evil... luckily third party is always an option.

@mssunshine

@daeyoung

Thats the problem, the evil left will always paint the picture of "yea we are evil but you have to vote for us because look how evil the other side is!" and then the right does the same...

There is no doubt the republicans are extremist and its "very bad" on many points. I will not defend republicans... The democrats are no better, its just their tactics, lies, and extremism manifest differently. I will say this, the democrats are much better at making their extremist immoral acts less obvious. Most people dont read the bills or do their own due dilligence, they just read whatever left or right leaning rag they want and get their info from there. When you actually follow the meetings of congress and read the text of the bills and see how the back and forth goes it becomes very obvious that the left is just as bad as the right... you are supporting evil in its extreme if you support either side.

@mssunshine

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Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.