Eugen RochkoApr 3, 2024
The fact that you can follow the president of the United States (@[email protected]) from your Mastodon account instead of being forced to have an X or Threads account for it is a huge W in my book. Of course our team is fully available to help if they'd want to set up Mastodon on whitehouse.gov. I believe governments should not rely on 3rd party platforms to connect with their constituents.
Show threadSteve Haroz (@sharoz on 🐤)Apr 3, 2024

@Gargron

I can't figure out how to follow him.

And when I try searching, I see multiple check-marked POTUS accounts, but none are the actual POTUS.

Show threadEugen Rochko
@sharoz Click on the handle in my post. If it doesn't open, then your service provider (scicomm.xyz) is blocking Threads. You can complain to the operator, who can be found on the about page; or move to a Mastodon server that has a different policy (when you move accounts on Mastodon, you keep your followers).
Apr 3, 2024 at 6:01pmWeb
Show threadSteve Haroz (@sharoz on 🐤)Apr 3, 2024

@Gargron

Thanks, but I already moved servers once. I lost my post history and a bunch of followers from servers that require their users to manually approve new followers. Not exactly consequence free :(

Show threadEugen RochkoApr 3, 2024
@sharoz From looking at your server's about page I've found that the operator is @quokka and that the list of blocked servers which would normally provide transparency on such decisions has not been made public.
Show threadQuokkaApr 3, 2024

@Gargron we don't publicise our server blocks because this has resulted in problems in the past. However, local users, such as @sharoz , may view the list when logged in.

However, regarding Threads, we were very open about our decision to block them and our reasons for doing so:

https://scicomm.xyz/@quokka/110607002918560251

Quokka (@[email protected])

Regarding the position of scicomm.xyz on #Meta and in the Fediverse, #FediPact etc. After discussion between myself and the other mods and considering the views expressed by the people on our instance we have decided that pre-emptive blocking of Meta is warranted. There is more detail on the background and explanation of this decision in a post on our companion site, here: https://about.scicomm.xyz/doku.php?id=blog:2023:0625_meta_on_the_fediverse_to_block_or_not_to_block Thanks to our people for their comments and suggestions to help us reach this decision.

A community for scientists and science communicators.