FACTS ABOUT MASTODON

If you are curious about leaving the cooked turkey site and going to the elephant site, here are some important tips:

1. It sucks. But then, so does every site.

2. You can still shitpost. Take great glee.

3. Picking your server instance is super important.

Ideally you should start at a large instance, and leave because it's full of white suburban NIMBY reactionaries who joined in November because they were promised 0 uncomfortable experiences in their lives and lash out whenever this turns out not to be the case.

Then you move to a smaller server where suddenly you can't talk to your friends because the admin of your instance is feuding with the admin of their instance. Then you wait a month before you can move again.

In this regard, the feudal structure of Mastodon instances is very like early 2000s message boards, whenever the admin got drunk and deleted the site.

4. You can work around the feudalism by running Mastodon yourself. It's the size of a mastodon and costs a fortune.

You can run Pleroma, which is smaller, and is also favoured by Nazis by unfortunate historical accident. Pleroma is perfectly good software that fulfils a need for something smaller than Mastodon, but also the devs are definitely not Nazis but are the other ten guys at the table.

There was a hilarious moment where the guy behind Spinster was so obnoxious he got kicked out of Pleroma and started his own fork called Soapbox/Rebased. He is now known as Soapbox Terf.

The nice people went to Pleroma fork Akkoma, which Soapbox Terf calls the "tr***y server", a review I understand they were delighted by. Try that.

There's also Misskey, which is a bit weird and Japanese, and supports cat ears right there in the protocol.

5. Any bozo who complains about your posts with assertions about the Fediverse that assume it all runs on the rules of mastodon.social is one of the suburban NIMBYs and invariably joined in November. Block and don't look back.

6. If anyone annoys you about your posting, you can improve their feed for them by blocking them from ever seeing your posts. The blocking tools are marvellous.

7. There are NO QUOTE TWEETS on Mastodon and anyone who wants QUOTE TWEETS is an invader, pollutant and corrupting influence despoiling the suburban vistas of Mastodon who only wants quote tweets so they can wreak EVIL.

So quote-tweeting is well supported in Akkoma and Misskey (and forks thereof), is in the Treehouse fork of Mastodon, and will be coming to more Fediverse software soon.

UPDATE: once enough other fedi software adopted quoting, Mastodon finally put it in, implemented gratuitously differently because fuck you.

8. In Mastodon, Eugen Rochko has achieved the creation of something greater than himself. And he will *never forgive it*.

9. The Fediverse interprets Website Boy as damage and routes around him.

10. Mastodon is yet another demonstration that worse is better. So come onto Mastodon, and *be* that worse.
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EDIT: this post is attracting some very dumb reply guys. Consider *not* posting debate club fatuity.

@davidgerard I was lucky to drop right into a lovely instance
@mechmouse @davidgerard Same here. My one concern is that M* currently doesn't seem to be super-welcoming to BIPOC and I have zero idea how to go about fixing that. (Then again, I am one of those suburban NIMBYs that joined in November, so...up I shut.)
@thelaughingmuse @mechmouse @davidgerard What would "super-welcoming to BIPOC" look like?

@miasmo @mechmouse @davidgerard I have no idea. I've only a) seen few of my #BIPOC mutuals from Birdsite migrate here and thrive, and b) seen comments from BIPOC saying that they don't feel welcome here. I like @hellsop mention of specifically finding BIPOC mods/making sure your modstaff is not all of one mold, but building & maintaining MastoCulture shouldn't just be left up to admins/mods.

All I personally can think to do is, follow tags and boost stuff. And listen more than I speak there.

@thelaughingmuse @mechmouse @davidgerard @hellsop Plenty of white people probably try this site and give up too. I guess I'm a little skeptical that there is a real problem. But I try to stay open-minded.
@miasmo @davidgerard @hellsop @thelaughingmuse @mechmouse Respectfully, because I’m not interested in an argument today, white people replying “I don’t think that’s a real problem” when told there is a problem is part of the problem.
@Infinitefreetime @davidgerard @hellsop @thelaughingmuse @mechmouse I expressed curiosity about something that I don't understand. Would you rather I lie and pretend to agree? Or just shut my mouth?
@miasmo @thelaughingmuse @davidgerard @mechmouse @hellsop You actually should shut your mouth and listen, honestly. White people don’t get a say in whether something is hostile to people of color or not. It’s not up to us.

@Infinitefreetime @miasmo @thelaughingmuse @davidgerard @mechmouse

I have read posts by white people saying they feel unwelcome here and leaving. I have not read any posts by white people saying they are unwelcome here because they are white. I have not read any posts by white people being harassed because of their ethnicity, reporting the harassment posts, and then having their own posts deleted by moderators and being told to be more tolerant of people harassing them.

And that’s not a technical problem, it’s a moderation problem. And the only solution is more diverse moderators and for white moderators to ask for help from the others when they might just be reflecting privilege.

Note: you may substitute heterosexual or cisgendered for white in the above paragraph, but it seems like LBGTQIA+ folks see less harassment here. Probably because at least 2/3 of the people here are trans, gay, furies, or at least two of the above (possibly a biased sample set in the people I follow).

@miasmo @Infinitefreetime @davidgerard @hellsop @mechmouse If you want to actually learn, then stop talking and listen.

People who have been through repeated trauma don't owe it to strangers to teach what they've been through. You can learn by honestly reading/listening. No, it won't be quick. They're people, not reference books or search engines. But if you're interested in learning, the only path open is the slow path that requires regular introspection.

Good luck on the path.

@thelaughingmuse @Infinitefreetime @davidgerard @hellsop @mechmouse I'm not contradicting any of that. But "shut up and listen" in response to a sincere question is not going to move anyone down any path (except perhaps a path to crabby resentment.) I'm listening and not hearing anything concrete beyond "shut up." To be fair, you attempted to earnestly answer, but your answer was very vague. It was however better than nothing, and I appreciate that.
@thelaughingmuse @Infinitefreetime @davidgerard @hellsop @mechmouse As an aside, I'm pretty sure most people don't know what "BIPOC" means. I've seen it before, but had to look it up to remember what each letter stands for. I think assuming everyone knows that term is being in a bubble to some extent. Not that your views are wrong, but a lot of morally good and morally average people just don't know all the jargon.

@miasmo @Infinitefreetime @davidgerard @hellsop @mechmouse It has very little to do with you being a bad person, and a lot to do with all of us learning not-great to bad habits and needing to unlearn them.

If I (or anyone else) could be more concrete about it, we would. That would be a much faster fix for society. But not everyone learns the same less-than-good habits or has the same thought process behind them.

It's work, being part of a society. It's worth it, though.