Shibaprasad Bhattacharya @shibaprasad@qoto.org

It's so beautiful to see masses of people switch to Mastodon / the fediverse. Big hope feels.

@stux perfect timing. I just reached my hometown for a couple of days.

Kollam, Kerala.

Let's unlearn! I am no expert. Was reading a lot of your toots about fears, apprehensions, plans and anxiety about this, so I thought I should also put my thoughts up. Let's talk about it.

And let's make Mastodon what we want to.

4/n

#socialNetworks #fediverse #alternative

@shibaprasad There is a risk, although the fediverse has the advantage you can chose to be in a more sheltered, more actively moderated place and not exposed to any random insult from barbarians like in twitter.
However, there are yucky people in different instances too, and you might see their content in the "federated" feed.

I was dismayed to see a mirror bot with all the posts from the current US president. Woot.

Still, much nicer and civilized here. I like that communities are smaller and it's easier to get to know someone too.

I promised you flowers.
I took this in Kataragama in April. I kept it for so long, thinking there'd be a day when I'd share it with a thought, a quote, a caption.
But words aren't always necessary.
I also promised you poetry. It too will come.

@yantrajaal

Sadly the fediverse like anywhere else has plenty of extremists, both left and right wing extremists. However thankfully due to the federated structure, as you said, that sort of protects you.

We are a STEM instance so generally we dont have many extremists locally, they all tend to be on other servers. But that makes them easy to block as you can block an entire server from your account not just people.

@shibaprasad

@shibaprasad Are you asking about QOTO or the fediverse as a whole.

The fediverse as a whole has lots of interests and politics is among them.

At QOTO we are STEM based but not topic-enforced. So our users sometimes discuss politics like anyone else might. But generally in the past it wasnt really the most popular topic except when a significant political event takes place.

Based on past influxes (this is far from the first) we will see the political talk die down in about a week and go back to the usual topics we see (personal updates, and a lot of STEM stuff).

Basically people who post **only** or mostly politicial stuff just dont get many followers over time. So usually after a week or so they disapear to another server or just stop talking politics and move on to more interesting topics.

I'd say give it 2 weeks and should be back to normal around here with a few new faces.