Iron Ree
African Astronaut
[my flyspeck near-blind refund]
It's official folks I just saw it on twitter. Lanny and fralala are unplugging the servers this month and we are to archive our own posts and find new homes. Let's all swap contact info here before the #THE BIG PLUG
it's been a good ride folx see you on newtotse
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Iron Ree
African Astronaut
[my flyspeck near-blind refund]
Mastodon had some good ideas but it was quickly ruined by power tripping instance owners and the prevalence of universal block lists which will block entire instances and everyone part of them if they are associated with hot button topics, i.e censorship self imposed by communities upon themselves
it's pretty disgusting
PLEASE READ BEFORE JOINING:
mastodon.art is a safe space instance. We have strict federation policies that protect our most vulnerable members first and foremost, which means we block any instances that host or platform hate (racism, transphobia, etc.).
Blocked instances?
I waited for a while to join Mastodon, but the twitter got way too toxic. I finally joined an instance that seemed nice (mastodon.art) and went through the multi-hour process of trying to find the folks I was following on Tw. It had to be done manually now that Tw blocks APIs.
Well, I realized that many of the people I follow are on the kolektiva.social/ and journa.host instanced, but I am blocked from being able to follow them. I'm not sure whether they've blocked my instance or vice versa. Can anyone advise the best way to follow these folks? Do I need to make yet another account?
Looking at mastodon.art, the admins seem to have blocked/muted hundreds of instances, including mastodon.social, mastodon.online, qoto.org, all of which are moderate instances with a clear policy against racism, harassment, etc., I don't see how this is good for artists, who probably need engagement. I think mastodon.art admins are trying to push their agenda by pressuring other instances to adopt stricter restrictions and limit users' freedom, instead of simply protecting their users (which is not achieved by restricting users from interacting with moderated instances).
Since my post yesterday, loads of you have chimed in with your opinions on what should happen between .art and .social/.online (just to clarify - they are sister-instances that both come under the 'joinmastodon' banner and are owned / managed by Gargron). The responses were almost unanimously in favour of 'silencing'.
One of the concerns I mentioned in my post yesterday was that .social federates with instances that in turn federate with fascist instances.
Today, I was looking at .social's 'about' page (for impressum reasons) and thought, 'Hey, while I'm here, let's look at their block list'. I was looking for one specific instance - mstdn.io - and that instance is NOT on their block list.
We've had mstdn.io blocked for around a year or more, along with our instance 'friends' who share our block values, because they host fascist content. One of their users in particular is a member of Italian neo-fascist group Casa Pound. I know that that user has been reported several times from .art and *must* have been reported from other instances too. That user is still active on mstdn.io as of this week.
And .social/.online federate with that instance.
In light of that, and given the feedback I've received that you would all be happy to have a 'silence' put in place for .social / .online , I'm going to enable that silence.
What does this mean for your interactions with .social/.online?
Anyone you already follow there, you will still follow.
Anyone who follows you, will still follow you.
You will be able to see the public posts of anyone you follow appear in the 'federated' timeline.
You will be able to see *all* posts of someone you follow in your home timeline.
If someone you follow boosts a post from those instances, you will see it in your home timeline, whether you follow them or not.
You will be able to use the 'search' feature to find profiles on .social/.online. The profile contents will be hidden and you can click 'Show profile anyway' to interact with and follow that person.
The above also works in reverse; people on .social and .online can still search for your profiles and follow you.
Hashtag searches will only include results from people you follow on .social/.online (and vice versa).
In order to assuage your fears over reach and discoverability, I want to share insight of my experience of having been on Mastodon since 2016, and having been through several big user influxes over the years.
Most people who start on .social/.online, who align with the kind of values we promote at .art and who are the kind of people who are more likely (generally, not absolutely) to see the value of supporting artists, don't stay on those instances. They move to smaller ones that better fit their interests and moderation values. Silencing these instances from .art might encourage this to happen sooner. Those two instances have always served as a springboard to other instances rather than permanent homes.
A lot of smaller instances already have .social/.online blocked and have had them blocked for a long while.
The fediverse is huge. It is far, far more than just .social and .online. We already have instances blocked that have 200k+ users because they host lolicon/pedophilia, and they're just a drop in the ocean of the total number of users spread across the fediverse.
I am, of course, hoping that maybe by us silencing them, we can initiate some kind of change in the moderation there. What I shared in yesterday's post was just the tip of the iceberg; there is a five year history of .social/.online not listening to its mods and devs and acting in the best interests of the community. Gargron fired his mods in back in *July*. This is a pattern of behaviour that those of us have been here since 2016-2017 are familiar enough with to know that it probably won't change.
The following users say it would be alright if the author of this
post didn't die in a fire!
Iron Ree
African Astronaut
[my flyspeck near-blind refund]
rs9cf2x confirms this is 100% truth, i'm not trolling. You can ask lanny in discord yourself, he just got hired full time on that bandcamp project and is moving to Europe with fralala, check his github portfolio the kids making 6 figures a year now and doesn't need this headache and potential lawsuit ruining his budding new career in software development for a fortune 500 company
