Eh, I didn’t want to link it but I was previously impacted by server level grudges which ultimately left me feeling like the problem would get worse if Mastodon adoption grew. I didn’t want to have multiple accounts with various servers. I’ll tactfully avoid labeling the below post with either of your descriptors.
Is the feature largely used as you stated? Yes, but in my opinion seems that it can be abused.
Perhaps this is akin to when someone is banned from a centralized platform like X, but I can’t readily say I’ve had that issue.
Edit: I’m actually going to remove my link, but the summary is that a popular mobile OS platform blocked several instances of Mastodon I was familiar with and I linked 1 example. This gave me the impression users of those instances would no longer see posts by the mobile OS maintainer. I would consider neither of these instances untoward and admin teams from both instances are well known on this forum.
The old Twitter was co-opted by ex members of the “Intelligence Community” (it’s how they call themselves, but others call it “the deep state”) working for self-proclaimed “fact-checkers”. This resulted in a lot of shadowbanning, deplatforming/cancellation, censorship, etc. This was revealed in The Twitter Files, largely under-reported or ignored altogether by the mass media, which happens to hire the same self-proclaimed “fact-checkers”.
Elon censored some voices like CrimethInc and (temporarily) Micah Lee. But on net, there is much less censorship than before. Although I do miss people like Micah Lee and the EFF.
I think people engaged with opinions they dislike, which makes the algorithm feed you more of those opinions, which makes people hate X/Twitter and ultimately leave.
The problem of Mastodon or Nostr is the lack of discovery. Bluesky has a decent “For you:” feed, but I still get better news from X.
Bluesky, Nostr and Lemmy are decent. Check them out.
You can find the account on all servers as long as those servers are federated with each other. The main Mastodon do defederate some other instances sometimes, which results in deplatforming/cancellation for the whole Mastodon instance. For example, the Bitcoin Hackers instance was defederated.
X also does have a lot of privacy discussion. I left personally because it is a terrible site, but it is where the main public Monero conversation happens. And there is a lot of sentiment against the overreaching European laws on there.
Well, I’m in the US. Also, speaking of apps other countries use that I don’t…WhatsApp. Just because other countries depend on it doesn’t make it a secure platform that everyone should use. Just because they depend on it doesn’t mean we all should depend on it, or use it.
there is a legitimate and serious concern over privacy using both X and WhatsApp. Period.
I don’t get why they are using twitter stats in a vacuum. Surely if their position is that their twitter numbers “aren’t working out”, it would have to be in comparison to their other social media numbers, no? Yet they provide none.
The other position they hold is
The people who need us most are often the ones most embedded in the walled gardens of the mainstream platforms and subjected to their corporate surveillance.
(They literally link to an article framing twitter as a walled garden lol)
We stay [on other social media] because the people on those platforms deserve access to information, too.
Clearly this position doesn’t single out twitter at all.. It’s kind of stupid for an organization, whose goal is to reach as many people as possible, not to use one of the biggest social media platforms. It’s just blatantly contrary to their goals, and the reasons they provide dont add up at all. Either way, it’s a total nothing burger to me. In fact, I agree in their leaving twitter, and I really wish others would do the same.
I’ve had account for years, but it’s only when I joined PG that I started following more people. I believe I’m already at 1000+. I’m really enjoying it. I wish there was a way to easily follow all the people an account follows. I wish this existed for Mastodon, Twitter, and BlueSky.
