EDIT: reread this updated toot and reboost it if you agree.

By unbanning Trump (EDIT: and by now countless other trolls and known fascists, as well as banning left wing accounts) Elon Musk is purposefully making Twitter (and by extension the world) an unsafe place for marginalized people all over the world.

We should not simply flee from Twitter, but actively work together to break its power.

Consider your stay on Mastodon a political statement, because that's what it really is. And consider not just focussing on your own comfort, away from the ruckus of hateful tweeters, but also contributing on building a lasting infrastructure were all people can be safe. And you don't need to be technical to do that. Promote using the Fediverse as a political and philosophical necessity.

It should be clear to you by now that media (be it social or otherwise) in corporate hands can never be truly safe. Maybe safe enough for you, but not safe for everyone.

We need decentralized, community owned, non-profit media, with a likewise technical infrastructure.

For safety.
For equality.
For democracy.
For freedom.

For our future.

EDIT: The war for safe social media cannot be won on a billionaire owned for-profit platform. Our battle is fought by creating our own thing. Shaping our own world.

@determinerik while I strongly agree with you (I have reblogged this post) I cannot help wondering how large-scale moderation would work here.
Who is going to decide what is right or wrong? Would Mastodon become a forest of independent instances because rules are different on each one and they “ban” each other?
What is it going to happen if Mastodon really takes off and Governments start getting “interested”? I would rather not see another crackdown!!
@dguerri some instances will block others or defederate, but I think most will be try to avoid that. There really will be no large scale moderation, which I think is a good thing. As soon as you upscale something like moderation, it becomes a position of power, and not only does that corrupt, it will attract the wrong kind of people.
@determinerik fair. But then what would happen if Trump start posting here?
If you have enough supporters spread in many instances, you can get quite a far reach... This is not a problem with ~8M (sharded) users, but it could be a big deal with 100M or 1B

@dguerri most instances have clear TOS and rules. If Trump, or someone of similar ilk, were to come, a lot of servers would block him, shielding off all of their users from his posts. Any server that would still allow him would risk getting defederated, so most won't be too keen.

I really think decentralization, with more and more small servers, will make this problem easier, not harder.

@determinerik I hope so but I am not convinced.

Sorry, I am not trying to downplay Mastodon or the federated model in general.

But Trump is an easy case because he's already "burned".
I am thinking about the new one, or basically just some random racist, or homophobic, or pro-guns, ... getting popular with populism.
It's not an obvious problem and, assuming the platform becomes _really_ popular, the federated nature of this social will make it harder to contain as individual moderators will have individual views.

@dguerri @determinerik more brains and more different ideas of how to run things, trump types wouldn’t pass the test.