Listen up Mastodonians, because this is important:
Right now we have a unique chance to rise up and hit back against Zuckerberg and Musk. Because italian filmmaker @_elena and her friends have made an OUTSTANDING short film, which explains why people should quit the fascist social networks and come join us in the fediverse.
Hit the fascists where it hurts — make this go viral by watching it and liking it on YouTube, then hit the share button and share it everywhere!
Got news for you. The moderators of your own instance censor anti-fascists who express opposition to Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Palestine. Anyone who is smug about Mastodon’s superiority to other platforms has a false sense of security. The fact that the LLC nonprofit is based in Germany — which does not protect free speech — alone should put all of us here on guard.
Granted, I did not have 16,000 followers and I am not a big fish like you are, but mastodondotsocial took down 8 of my posts (all after Oct 7 2023) before kicking me off and barring me from downloading my content even though they said I could have it. For every person who has told me they haven’t been censored by moderators for political expression ten have told me they or people they know have been censored. Allow me to suggest that the more one is social influencer here, the less likely one is to be censored or suspended. But for many this is not a safe space, and I am not shocked at all that Palestinian and Palestinian-American accounts proliferate on #Bluesky (even with its censorship problems) but not on #Mastodon. I’ve never so much as had a post taken down at either Bluesky (in thousands of posts) or #Twitter (in a hundred thousand posts). My considered experience tells me that any sense of security here is false.
Obviously, I did join another instance. But the fact that one cannot transfer previous instance content to new instances makes switching instances an untenable nuclear option. I spend a lot of effort on my content and it should have moved with me. The moderators barring me from downloading my content is Musk-level misbehavior.
Switching instances should be simpler than switching to a new platform. But it’s not. It’s taken me a long time to get a fraction of the network of follows I had on my mastodondotsocial. Over the same length of time my Bluesky network expanded exponentially while I was skeeting exactly the same way I had tooted. When I tell people on Bluesky about these problems they are astounded.
What I find fascinating is that for months while Twitter was hemorrhaging accounts, Mastodonians discussed how to attract those looking for a new social media home to the Fediverse over Threads and Bluesky.
Barking “Love it or leave it!” at people was not one of the strategies they discussed.
Randahl Fink
micchiato 🎋
ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘