:gunleft: If you're new here STOP SCROLLING :cacogun:


While I'm still in front of my keyboard I guess I should point out that I don't actually care that twitter refugees are coming in. It's not inherently bad.

Thousands of new users are signing up on Mastodon servers, I'm expecting dozens of them to stay, and the remaining thousands to return to twitter or go elsewhere.

Let's review the facts:

- all posts are chronological. This means bloggers, e-celebs, or anybody else that used to qualify for a twitter bluecheckmark will not get the same engagement here as they do for twitter, because their posts are as equal as our posts. They have to make meaningful posts and replies, and actually have a dialogue for their thread's OPs to be seen.

- You can't abuse moderation. What i mean by this is on Twitter this crowd typically would incite arguments in the replies, try to ratio people, and otherwise be insufferable to bait their opponent into posting something that could be interpreted as harassment. Then those accounts get reported and banned. That can't happen here. All you and your admin has the power to do is cut the remote user off from your own sight, and if the admin acts then the sight of the others on your instance. The remote user isn't denied a platform or anything, you can't actually stop them from speaking or even seeing your posts.

- No brands. There's no ad system, or telemetry, or any of the other reasons brands make accounts. There's nothing stopping a brand from making an account and talking to people, but it's high risk and minimal reward. There's no way in-network to validate you're the real account so you are easily impersonated. Could you imagine if someone tried to impersonate @redskins ? What value do brands even add to twitter anyway? You only see them because the wagie behind the keyboard said something funny and an algorithm decided you really needed to see it.


While I'm writing such a long post I'll also point out once again - There is nothing stopping you from running a Mastodon server and not being an asshole. Many of us make fun of Mastodon because many of the worst fedi admins strictly identify as Mastodon users and try to twist the image of what it means to run Mastodon to suit their bad twitter-like behavior - which typically consists of trying to cancel anybody they don't like. In reality the software is just fine. There's a lot of valid technical criticisms but these bad admins don't discuss other options, they probably don't even want you to know there's other server types.

If you are a twitter refugee and think I'm trolling about Mastodon ask yourself how many characters is my post - notice how its over 500? Just wait until you find out about all the emoji reacts, file uploads, and rich text you can't see either! Lurk moar and enjoy your stay lol