When I talk about the importance of going all in on the Fediverse, I speak based on experience.

At Opera we built a massive user community. When I quit, we had something like 35 million registered users and 35 million monthly visitors.

The new Opera management did not see the value of that. They believed it was cheaper and better to just use Facebook and that investing in your own community was a waste of money. So they closed down MyOpera and built a following on Facebook and Twitter instead. Then they got caught by the bait and switch when Facebook changed and you would no longer reach your audience, without paying. Later on Twitter changed as well.

This is important to explain to companies and institutions as they go shopping for social media sites to invest in. The best investment is clearly in your own site, being part of the Fediverse. It is not even all that expensive to do. It may take longer to build, but at least it is your own.

Not saying you cannot build a following on those other sites, but your long term strategy should be the Fediverse with your own server.

We try to lead the way here and thus we build Vivaldi Social. Not just for our selves, but to make a point and support the Fediverse.

#fediverse #Mastodon #Twitter #Threads #BlueSky #Vivaldi

Someone called me 'pro death of Ukrainian citizens' because I dared to call Clare Daly and Mick Wallace pro-Putin, because they are 'pro peace' according to this person.

I typed a response, but then this person seems to have removed their response to my post, so I can't respond directly to them now. So, I'm going to post my reponse anyway, but now as a new post.

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Calling Daly and Wallace pro-peace is disingenuous. The only way for there to be peace in Ukraine is for Russia to withdraw its forces from the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine. And not for Ukraine to stop fighting and cede territory, as we know what happens already: taking a 3rd of the Donbas region and the whole of Crimea wasn't enough for Russia. Now they want even more, because their war is an expansionist war and nothing else.

To say that Ukraine needs to give up fighting to 'save lives' and for 'peace' means that Russia will take more in the future. They took in 2014, they try to take now and they will try it again. Appeasing an aggressive force by forcing Ukraine to cede 20% of their territory will not work, it never does, Sudetenland being a prime example.

And, most importantly, the Ukrainians know full well what Russia is like. Their bombings of residential buildings, the murdering of civilians and the attempts to eradicate the Ukrainian language and culture from the territories they occupy, not to mention the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia, tells you all you need to know.

That is why Ukrainians are fighting so hard to liberate the land currently occupied by Russia and that is why they will not relent. They have the right to defend themselves, and that is not being 'pro-war' or 'pro death of themselves'.

I can't imagine Daly and Wallace to apply their way of arguing to Hamas, telling them to stop fighting Israel and just cede the Gaza Strip in order to stop the fighting and the dying, for 'peace'.

If Daly and Wallace are genuinely pro-peace, they'd call on Russia to immediately retreat, as that is when the killing and dying would really stop.

#Ukraine #Russia #Putin #Israel #Hamas #Gaza