Mastodawn

m4jrt0m Jul 2, 2023

Jerry 🦙💝🦙

For people new to the fediverse/mastodon: there are some strong customs and strong personalities. I can make a few important quality of life recommendations to give you a more pleasant experience:

In your account settings, go to filters and add a filter to block the following words:
Nazi
Fash
Fascism
Fascist
Twitter
Reddit
Elon
Musk
Defederate
Fediblock

There’s a lot of name-calling and protracted and unproductive discussions using these words. Certainly it’s up to you, but this is my recommendation.

We strongly encourage you to add alt text to any images you post, and if for some reason you do not, you’ll likely be met with many replies all reminding you, with varying levels of intensity, that you forgot. I recommend blocking any account who is rude about it.

Some times you may post something important to you that causes others to be uncomfortable without a content warning. Similarly, you can expect replies of varying politeness asking you to “add a CW”. Things that are patently offensive or not safe for work definitely should have a content warning for obvious reasons, but other than that, use your discretion. Again, I recommend simply blocking people who are too aggressive in their replies related to CWs.

Follow your instance’s rules.

You will rightly be bounced for expressing hate, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or unwanted harassment. There is no place for that - don’t do it here. I can’t tell you what to think, but if you want to post hateful or harassing content, you should find another platform somewhere else. It isn’t hard to be kind. Or at least not an ass.

The fediverse is all about delegating control to instances and end users. We have many tools available, like muting and blocking accounts, and blocking entire instances, as well as muting conversations. These are very useful to have a good time on the fedi.

Be well and be kind.

Secure, in Style 👞🗝️Jul 2, 2023

@jerry Great tips and suggestions

Compuguy 🐱Jul 2, 2023

The sad thing is some of the discussion on Meta's bird-clone P92 is concerning. I still want to see the actual product launch before I make the ultimate decision on de-federating them...

fuomag9 Jul 2, 2023

@compuguy @jerry That's my opinion on it as well. I don't like meta, but I want to at least see if they're trying to do things right or not before defederating from them

Steven Roose Jul 2, 2023

@jerry I am confused. Like, I follow a few hundred people, arguably probably less than half active, and I've never seen posts about this. Isn't the whole point that if people start talking about things you don't like to hear, you stop following them? Or do people really use this "everything that exists" timeline?

edgecase Jul 2, 2023

Thanks for the suggestions, though the idea of blocking "Twitter" and "Reddit" seem a bit odd unless you really don't want to hear about those topics - but I guess I'm not familiar with the content here.

One question (for anyone) as someone who just got here today - why do stars (which seem equivalent to likes / thumbs up on the T-word to avoid) seem to be so.. unused? I have seen posts with 70 reposts and 3 or 4 likes. Usually the repost number is much higher than the like number. Is there some cultural reason?

Also am I using the wrong term for post / repost?
Thanks in advance.

fuomag9 Jul 2, 2023

@edgecase @jerry stars/hearts are usually used to signal the poster that you liked it, but since there's no algorithm (by default, there are some aggregators that might take that into consideration though), if you want to make something more known a boost/repost is what it's used.

I agree on the twitter/reddit block avoidance (for now) since important information/news could still be present under those words

Kris Samsel Jul 2, 2023

@jerry I’ll be fair. I’ll be kind…the kind billionaires loathe.

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Jul 2, 2023

@humansriseup billionaires are not a protected class 😏

Peter Relph Jul 2, 2023

@jerry

Beyond the obvious, just following my instances' rules, I try ignore people who feel the need to suggest what I should do.

Sometimes however I am unsuccessful in this.

Iain MacLean Jul 2, 2023

@jerry I've found adding the acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States has cleared my timeline remarkably well in the past few hours.

Carl F. T. Harris Jul 2, 2023

@jerry. sounds good. Can you please explain the "Boost" vs " Favorite" buttons?

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Jul 2, 2023

@carlftharrid you bet. Boosts are like retweets, if you are familiar with them. It takes a post from someone and sends it to all on your followers. A favorite is basically just an indicator to the author of the post that you liked their post. There is a counter for favorites, which can help tell how popular a post was, but it doesn’t really do much else.

Net: boosts spreads a post out to a larger audience, likes tells the author they did a good job.

Carl F. T. Harris Jul 2, 2023

@jerry
Thanks!

The Nexus of Privacy Jul 2, 2023

@jerry "How to use filtering and muting to hear less discussion of odious people on Mastodon and Twitter" has screenshots on how to set up the filters -- I just updated. Interestingly enough, one of the examples I use is the "Elmo" filter, which covers two of the terms in your list!

https://privacy.thenexus.today/how-to-filter-out-mentions-of-unpalatable-people-on-twitter-and-mastodon/

In terms of your specific recommendations, newcomers may want to hold off on filtering the ones related to Fediverse and Mastodon culture -- like blocking and the first four in your list (which I won't mention by name just in case you're filtering them). Understanding instances and blocking is vital for people to know how to navigate the fediverse; and, a lot of people came to #mastodon in 2017 in response to an article called "Mastodon is like Twitter without _____" ... that is a huge part of what's shaped and continues to shape Mastodon. Of course there are _____ here as well as anywhere else, but well-moderated instances block them proactively and that's a new experience to many people.

Of course the great thing about filters is that everybody makes their own decisions ... if people don't want to see that stuff they don't have to.

How to use filtering and muting to hear less discussion of odious people on Mastodon (UPDATED)

It's not a perfect solution, but it's helpful.

The Nexus Of Privacy

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jul 2, 2023

(2/2

...going online w/o anti-virus protection.(1)

Therefore, I can only urge everyone to follow these discussions.
You can always mute a topic temporarily.

The nice thing about the #Fediverse is that we can engage in civil discourse and disagree without resorting to foul language and name-calling. 😀
And if not, you can always block.

Jerry 🦙💝🦙Jul 2, 2023

@HistoPol we will have to disagree here. Too much of the fediverse is spent talking about the fediverse and other instances. We are missing the point. If someone really wants to see and participate in twitter, Reddit, and Musk bashing, then that’s fine - don’t filter those out. Likewise, if you like watching people endlessly call each other fascists and Nazis to a point where the words have lost all meaning, don’t filter those either.

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jul 2, 2023

"if you like watching people endlessly call each other fascists and Nazis to a point where the words have lost all meaning,"*

I don't think we disagree on the methods all too much, just on the reason for it. 😉

*
The person doing what you mention above would get blocked by me for name-calling/insults/foul language.

HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴Jul 2, 2023

I agree with almost everything you say, @jerry,
Except for the 2nd half of your block list. Reporting and then blocking extremists is a duty of every #Fedizen.

What happens on the #BirdSite, Meta sites, and on #Reddit, however, directly impacts the #Fediverse.

I have had a lot of discussions, but here, I never had to block s.o. discussing these issues.

Regarding Meta's #Project92, less than a day's exposure can do a lot of damage, almost like...
(1)
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110605855977219140

Doctor Memory Jul 2, 2023

@jerry @SecurityWriter IMO (YMMV and other amusing acronyms) the problem with muting fediblock/defederate is that while I agree that 99.44% of the conversations that go on around that are empty wanking, you do kinda want to find out if in fact _your_ server has become a topic for discussion there. :(

jakob Jul 3, 2023

@jerry i.imgur.com/A0YL7z0.png