Seeing some posts talking about fediblocking turning Mastodon into a "filter bubble." No. We absolutely do not need abusive or fascist views to have a high level of intellectual diversity. Full stop. That hate can fester somewhere else.

After 20 years of social media, the experiment has been run. Hateful people are unconvinced by rational argument, so there's no point engaging with them.

This is a rotten, disingenuous, meritless argument, from A to Z.

Fascism is to be defeated, not debated.

Images are borked rn, so let’s share a great #protip thread by my late friend & colleague, #JesseHamm. (lightly edited to fit.)
—-
“There's a type of person who is smart and gifted, and learns from early childhood to aim for the stars, because "nothing is impossible."

When life's constraints prove otherwise, this person is crushed. Unable to bend and accept flaws, they break.

#Comics attract this person.” (Cont)

As folks hunt for available #mastodon instances–with many now having closed their signups–it’s particularly important to use a unique password.

I haven’t heard of any malicious servers yet, but anyone can set up and promote an instance, so don’t give the potentially unknown person running yours the same password you use for your email and bank accounts!

#infosec #security #passwordreuse

https://xkcd.com/792/

I have a request.

Bad actors will soon figure out - if they haven't already - that setting up impersonations of important organizations now will allow them to set off an explosion of chaos and confusion at a time of their choosing.

So if you run an account for an organization (especially #LGBTQ), please set up link verification between your Mastodon account profile and your organization's website.

If not, please boost.

Instructions are here under "Link Verification":
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/

As a blind individual, I have to say that #Caturday on #Mastodon is far far more enjoyable then at #Twitter, where the vast majority of cat photos are not described.

It is also been fascinating for me to hear descriptions written by those who sent the image, immediately followed by Apple image recognition’s attempts to describe the same image. Only rarely does that add anything to the ALT, & often directly contradicts it.

There is no auto magical solution to image description. It is something best done by a human, for only that human can explain the “why” of the image: the reason that image was chosen to speak so eloquently without words for those who can see it. ALT allows you to provide those words.

The German word "wählen" can mean
- to pick, to choose
- to elect
- to dial
The German word "Null" can mean
- zero
- loser, jerk

So, someone saying "Ich habe die Null gewählt" either means
- "I've dialed zero."
Or
- "I voted for that idiot."

Enjoy our language!

#TheGermanWord

I'm going to post this again, as I really think it's important (who the f am I though).

If you're new here - I recommend randomly following the first 4 people you see on your instance and the first 4 on your federated tl. Now so many Textitters are here I admit those might not be old time Mastodonians- but do try to find some people who were here before last week.

Read them, get to know the place a bit. ✌️