So, I quit Twitter this morning. It sucks because I’ve really enjoyed the platform over the years and will miss the folks I followed, some of whom used to participate here but no longer do for whatever reason. For all its many flaws, I’ve found the platform useful for following breaking news, listening to underrepresented voices, finding long-form content, capturing news summaries with links and clips, touching base with friends, following sports with fellow fans, etc.
But this morning, a Musk meme tweet landed in my timeline. It featured Biden’s face photoshopped onto King Theoden from Lord of the Rings and Dr. Fauci’s face on Wormtongue with a caption like, “Just one more lockdown.” Relatively inoffensive by Musk standards since he routinely amplifies antisemites and sundry other vile scumbags, but for me, it was the last straw.
I realized I could no longer contribute, however insignificantly, to boosting engagement stats on a platform owned by a malevolent, far-right oligarch who’s building Info Wars II on a site with limited reach but massive cultural influence. I make absolutely no judgment on folks who are sticking it out there — we all use platforms for our own purposes and draw the line in different places.
I find myself surprisingly depressed by the whole thing. It says something about our present moment that an overhyped conman like Musk could find $44B under his sofa cushions and use it to effect a hard-right takeover of a major communication platform to churn out sewer-grade disinformation. Will keep my account open in case things change, i.e., a literal or figurative meteor takes out Apartheid Clyde and a bumbling, flawed but non-fascist executive team takes the reins. Here’s hoping.
Open thread.
Jerry
Yeah, it’s depressing seeing what’s happening at Twitter. Are you active anywhere else but here?
twbrandt (formerly tom)
I’m with you, Betty. I was on twitter for 14 years and got a lot out of it, but I will not give my time, attention, and eyeballs to it anymore. I downloaded my tweet archive and deleted my account not long after he closed on the deal.
joel hanes
Leaving your account open also prevents someone from appropriating your nym and pretending to be you.
Hitchhiker
It’s like watching a bully arrive at your school. He punches people in the nuts for lulz, makes learning impossible, and gloats about how great everything is, now that he’s here.
Your school was already a bit of a mess, but now it’s just another snake pit.
chrome agnomen
and I decided not to join, again!
MattF
Poisoning the well is a bad thing to do.
oldgold
The M & M Media Menaces, Murdoch and Musk, washing up on our shores to screech about the dangers posed by foreigners to our culture is worse than rain on your wedding day.
joel hanes
Many of the people I used to follow on Twitter are on Mastodon.
It’s a different place, because of the lack of “algorithm”, but if you follow the people you used to follow on twitter, you will see much of the same information.
A bit depressing how much of the current discourse is meta-discussioni of Musk, rather than non-meta news.
Sure Lurkalot
My RWNJ brother railed about Fauci…last year. It was ridiculous then, a grown ass man with multiple comorbidities parroting his news feeds harping about vaccines and precautions that HE WAS (more or less) TAKING. And when he got Covid a couple of months ago, he immediately sought out Paxlovid treatment. But yeah, go ahead and hate science and scientists, freaking hypocrite.
And please tell me what the hell is being locked down in America. In my liberal city, I am one of about 5% of people who still dons a mask indoors.
No doubt the new House will launch an investigation into Fauci and I can’t decide if he should blow off subpoenas like Republicans do or do a Hillary.
WereBear
I’m enjoying Mastodon. It’s better than Twitter.
Hunt around for an interesting server. Or visit me there and sign onto my server, techy folks in Germany who ban any hate speech.
Way of Cats on Mastodon
mrmoshpotato
@Sure Lurkalot:
Do a Hillary. “Look at my bored face. You assholes know you got jack shit and this is all bullshit.”
Anonymous At Work
Only keeping on to view mil-bloggers for Ukrainian situation. Never followed anyone or anything and never posted. May make a quitting post when Putin “falls out a window and stabs himself in the back 23 times” just to have a post but dunno.
Alison Rose
I can’t recall if I shared this one here before, but I saw a tweet recently that said something like, “Musk is what happens when the ghosts of a 16 year old edgelord and an 18th century coal baron try to control the same body”. Sounds about right. Also, both ghosts are jacked up on cocaine.
WereBear
@joel hanes: As a dutiful digital citizen I have 2 factor security on my Twitter account. What I hear is that’s been dismantled. If I’m logged out I can’t get back in.
I’m out and it doesn’t matter but I wonder how that will go…
Tom Levenson
I’m following Werebear on Mastodon (and anyone else from here I can find) and I can be found there myself (which follows, I guess, from the first thing I said, doesn’t it?).
I’m @[email protected] — come up and see me sometime!
(Unlike more careful and savvy folks, I just grabbed a spot on the first instance that would have me, but I’m pretty happy with mastondon.online, fwiw.)
Betty Cracker
Mastodon and Post won’t have me for whatever reason. (Tried multiple times to sign up; no joy.) I’m on Instagram using the same nym I used on Twitter (@BettyCrackerFL).
@Hitchhiker: Great analogy!
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: He’s retiring, at the end of the year I think, so he doesn’t have need to be even minimally polite to them. Just flat out call them dishonest morons to their faces.
Miss Bianca
Oh, Betty – I finally broke down and got a Twitter account around the time that you started posting Pete pics and videos, just so I could follow you (and Albatrossity, and Cole, and Omnes, among others). I never tweeted, per se, was never active in that forum, but I did enjoy others’ twitterings, yours most of all. And yes – I am angry and sad that Musk has destroyed Twitter, the soft, selfish, stupid manbaby. I hope everyone leaves it except the fascists so that they are left joylessly circle-jerking and wondering aloud “WHERE ALL THE LIBTARDS AT?”
Mike in NC
I know pretty much nothing about Twitter, but evidently the Fat Orange Clown of Mar-A-Lago — a sociopath with lots of time on his hands — spent eight years trolling and demeaning President Obama for his own amusement. Musk is yet another rich fascist who wants to rule our world.
oldster
@Anonymous At Work:
This is my position as well. I have never had an account, but I get a lot out of reading the twitter-collection that Josh Marshall curated for the Ukrainian crisis.
Some people say, “good riddance, twitter.” I cannot say that. It has done a lot of good for the Ukrainians, for the Iranians.
If you think it is just a gossip corner for bored Ivy media types, then of course you’ll hate it. But the world is much bigger than that, and some parts of the world need to get their voices and messages out.
I hope there will be new ways for them to do that, after twitter sinks beneath the waves.
joel hanes
because of the commenters here praising it,
I’ve just submitted a waitlist request for Post
Ksmiami
Twitter is dangerous for liberals and pOCs etc. Everyone needs to abandon it and let it die.
Barbara
Yeah, the wheat is showing up in a field increasingly filled with weeds or worse. Lots of people have clearly left, and many who remain talk all the time about Musk. The corny musing of others is harder and harder to take as well. Just less and less reason to participate. I also don’t see its influence being able to sustain the loss of those who actually have anything interesting to say. Maybe Musk’s biggest weakness is being unable to get out from inside his own head. I was bored within 24 hours and I am definitely not getting more interested anytime soon.
OzarkHillbilly
I still go there and will continue to as long as certain folks still post there and I can continue to read them (without interacting in any way shape or form) and can continue to do so w/o being assaulted by ads or nazis. If the muskrat ever figures out what a freeloader I am and tries to monetize me in some way or other, I will be gone in a NY second.
Barbara
@oldster: If you find Twitter useful, then by all means keep using it. But for the casual news gatherer like me it’s increasingly a waste of time.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: That describes what happened when a bunch of them left for one of the other RW cesspools. They declared that they hated Twitter and were leaving because it was too full of libs, then didn’t go away but kept posting at we libs to come over to Getter or Gab or whatever because it was fun, while in reality it was boring because there was no one to fight with except themselves.
Rileys Enabler
Funny, but not ha-ha funny: today seems to be a day for many on the birdsite to say “enough”. I also quit today (left the nym ongoing so no one can use it as a hedge towards better days), as have several from my feed.
I’m at my same nym on Mastodon and Post. I find Post to be quite similar to Twitter, minus the Nazis; Mastodon is like a warm comfy knitting circle with coffee and cat pics.
I will miss the local breaking news (kept us going after hurricanes) but hope that some local news outlets and city folk will migrate eventually.
I’m bummed and want to roll around screaming UNFAIR! SUCKS! But will instead channel my deep loathing for all things stupid towards making the other places a good change.
We still have BJ. I’m counting that as a huge blessing.
BR
I haven’t commented in a while but I’d caution against Post; they’re backed by some questionable folks and could pivot in the direction of twitter in the not so distant future.
Mastodon has been surprisingly great. I was initially skeptical. If you tried to sign up during the first big wave and it didn’t work, definitely try now: there are lots of good servers, such as the ones folks posted upthread.
It would be great to see embeds from Mastodon on FP posts instead of so much from twitter…
ian
The way these people handle a request to wear face masks in public makes me terrified for when we have our next national health emergency.
Alison Rose
@joel hanes: LOL I just did too, even though I don’t really care. I’m #10220. So I guess I’ll get on there in about eight years?
Also, I am still totally baffled by the multiple server thing on Mastodon. I clicked on create account and it took me to a server list, but they all look fucking weird. How do you just join like, the main one?
feebog
I just signed up on POST. I got the initial email, but the invite went to my spam folder. If you got on the wait list and have not received your invite, check you spam, apparently this is happening to a lot of folks on the wait list. Hope to see you there Betty.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Fauci retired and the lock down were during the Trump admin lol
More proof that Phony Stark there is just some movie fan boi in the middle of a LARP.
Most likely the real story is Tesla’ stock is crashing and Musk has decided it’s all Fauic’s fault because of the 2020 shut down.
Miss Bianca
@opiejeanne: That’s exactly what happens with ANY social media forum the Nazis establish/take over. First it’s all, “YAY, a safe space for Nazis!” and then it turns into, “WAAHH, safe space for Nazis is BORING, there are no hippies to punch here!” Then they go stink up another joint. Lather, rinse, repeat.
@Barbara: Frankly, I depended on front-pagers here (and commenters like rikyrah) to curate Twitter for me – point me to interesting accounts and stories. Looks like that’s all going to go by the wayside, sadly.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev:
I hope he does.
Josie
I hope that, at some point, we could have a thread dedicated to everyone’s handles who have signed up elsewhere. I have signed up on Mastodon and Post both but have not done anything with them. I’m sort of internet averse, and it takes me a while to get accustomed to a new way of operating. Having a list of people I could follow would be helpful.
ETA: Betty, I signed up to get on Post some time ago and just yesterday got an email clearing me to join. Don’t give up on them. They are just slow in responding.
BR
@Alison Rose:
Try the one Tom Levenson is on, which is one of the bigger ones:
https://mastodon.online/auth/sign_up
Mastodon is like email. You get an account from one server but can communicate with anyone on any server. No different from twitter except that a user’s handle is like an email address so it includes their name and the server.
brendancalling
I left that hellsite a long time ago. Social media sucks.
mrmoshpotato
@Barbara:
This is the nicest phrasing of “unable to get his head out of his ass” that I’ve ever heard.
David_C
@mrmoshpotato: If summoned Fauci will appear and will patiently explain as if talking to a ranting toddler. People will get bored soon.
Betty, we’ll need to get the butter lamb stories in this place!
CaseyL
I did likewise, just now.
The only reason I kept my Twitter account active this long was to avoid someone taking it over an posting as me. But my feed has dwindled so much, with most of the people I followed going to Mastodon or Post; and the trending topics are increasingly RW pile-on garbage, that I just don’t care at this point if someone else decides to steal my account. Fuck’em.
Out. Gone. Feeling relief.
PsiFighter37
I’m still on Twitter, but I blocked Musk and anyone who showed up on my feed as being remotely positive towards him. The experience has been far more enjoyable, but I’m not excited to hear about what I am missing. It’s pretty surprising how quickly that clown redpilled himself. He’ll be in for a rude surprise when current Tesla owners, the vast majority who have to be wealthy liberals, choose not to ever buy another one of his products again. At this point, it’s the equivalent of wearing one of those stupid red hats. The DoD and NASA would also be wise to figure out credible alternatives to relying too heavily on SpaceX for their needs.
The craziest things out of all of this post-2015 environment is this…if you were to ask someone the simple question of whether or not the behavior from Musk, Trump, or any of these morons would be condoned at their own workplace, the answer would be a clear-cut no. But social interactions online have all of a sudden allowed for veritably awful behavior to become acceptable.
CaseyL
@Tom Levenson: Excellent! I’m following BJers as soon as I know their Mastodon nym, and have now added you. Thanks!
opiejeanne
@ian: That’s right now. WA has requested that people mask indoors again, but I didn’t see any masks at the indoor mini golf place/pub last night. Los Angeles noticed a large uptick in Covid over the past couple of weeks.
Last night I spent three hours in the ER because I fell at the mini golf place and hit my head on a concrete curb, and I hadn’t been drinking. Got my toe hooked under the edge of the putting green and down I went. The curb is part of the hazards on the course. CT scans showed nothing broken, head, jaw, shoulder, ribs, and no brain bleeding so I count myself lucky to come away with a bunch of bruises and a scraped forearm. I’m just really sore today, and finding new muscles that I was unaware of before now.
But I digress, as usual. where I was going with this is that as I was leaving I noticed the negative pressure rooms. In use. This is the hospital that saw the very first covid patients, and this ER and all of the others in the Seattle area are insanely busy right now. I was lucky in that I was the only patient when I got there, and the staff remarked that it was eerily quiet last night. They told me waiting to be seen by a doctor took an average of 3-8 hours, all the time now, not just after 10 on Saturday nights, and I’m pretty sure a lot of that is Covid-related.
HinTN
Once again Ms Cracker delivers le mot juste.
opiejeanne
@Miss Bianca: I am still on Twitter, but watching the train wreck isn’t as much fun the past week. It’s just leaving a bad taste in my mouth despite the accounts I really like to read.
Going to check out both Post and Mastodon but not quite ready to shake the dust from my sandals, so to speak.
Tony G
@Sure Lurkalot: Jesus, I feel bad for you. I have a couple of young men in my extended family (Millennials who are the sons of two of my first cousins) who are right-wing anti-vaxxers, but my immediate family (and most of my extended family) all have their heads screwed on properly.
Bupalos
The way twitter really grew (and this is prior to Musk) is not by providing anything new or different but offering convenience, via algorithmic filtering and boosting. This was already a problematic trade off, because of the forces in control of that filtering and boosting, and because the desire that it flatters (to see the world you want to see) has its own inherent downsides. Now that the force in control of the filtering and boosting is an open fan of anti-democracy, it’s an increasingly bad equation.
The world will likely be a little messier and harder but ultimately better off if twitter withers and dies… and if what takes its place is more multifaceted and less centrally controlled. Hopefully that’s what will happen, but never bet too hard against lazy convenience and flattery.
cain
@mrmoshpotato:
Sadly, that might be the safest course. We have Elon Musk out there who can amplify his voice and get folks to show up at his door and actually take action. This country is not safe for folks who are high visibility. You can bet that Obama probably still get death threats.
Sister Golden Bear
I’m torn.
OTOH, Twitter is clearly becoming $8chan.
OTOH, Using lists, muting keywords, blocking early and often, and blocking all advertisers (no revenue for you!) means my experience hasn’t changed that much. Most importantly, Trans Twitter remains the best way to find out about the threats against us, and I’m OK with using the masters’ tools against them.
I’ll have to check back on Mastodon and Post.news more extensively to see how many people I follow have migrated there and are actively posting. (I’m on both with my same nym, but have given them limited time and attention.) But on both platforms I miss the serendipity aspect of Twitter that one of the main draws — I ended up following a bunch of people who I’d never heard of otherwise.
BTW, if you quit Twitter, don’t close your account because if you do so, after a period of time (30 days?), someone else can claim your user name, and pose as you.
Ella in New Mexico
Like I posted down below, I’m trying to wrap my head around what ever benefit that–now those– Tweets were on Fauci. It was like a magnet drawing all the anti-vaxers and COVID deniers to the cesspool of comments underneath…
At 1:09 am he Tweeted: “The bots are in for a surprise tomorrow”
2 hours later he posted the” Just one more lockdown” meme
1 hour later the “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci”
The vast majority of reponse Tweets are from supporters and people then pushing even more disinformation and conspiracy–which seems a little to ironic, doncha think?
Anyway, I’m nobody. I’m not famous like Betty (I’ve got like 89 followers and I really don’t know who most are so I’m probably being trolled and botted, TBH). I don’t need to protect a professional reputation, I can lurk safely I think until he finally bans me from making shitty comments.
I had tried Twitter around 2013 on advice of my brother, but really never got the big deal until late 2017-early 2018 when the Trump reign of terror began. It proved to be an incredible information tool, and has since then a daily staple. I notice that as many good folks are leaving there is going to be much less use to be logging in for much more than to watch the flames finally go out.
I’m not totally out yet because there are still some great science accounts I really depend on, but there will be a time when it becomes what Facebook has for me–something I may look at from time to time but not a daily stop in the news feed
It’s so fucking sad to watch a really useful social square now will be destroyed to support MTG and Jim Jordan’s swan songs of crazy, conspiratorial bullshit for the next few months.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s me too.
UncleEbeneezer
It is depressing. As always: people are the problem. Any space that doesn’t have strict moderation in favor of tolerance and creating a safe/friendly place for minorities, will ultimately become a cesspool of Isms and Phobias. This is why the Public Square concept that allows everyone in can never really work. We will always need to silo ourselves off, to some extent, from Nazis, Transphobes etc. It sucks but it’s not our fault. It is the fault of the bigoted trolls.
pacem appellant
One cannot ethically consume Twitter anymore. It’s well on track to be culturally relevant by April (though taking the under is a safe bet).
My nym should link to my Mastodon account. I hope to follow you there.
zhena gogolia
@HinTN: Yeah, I love that one.
JaySinWA
I am @[email protected] I am changing my website link here from twitter to my profile url.
Following takes some work, you need to be in the instance (the name after the @) you are on to follow someone and then paste their id or their profile URL to find someone outside your instance and follow from there.
My Twitter feed has been a mess for the last few days. While some big names have been seeing a bunch of bad actors in their feeds, I haven’t. What I do see is a bunch of navel gazing and repetitious Twitter files debunking. It’s getting boring, not as much breaking news anymore.
A little word of caution, from Teri Kanefield changing instances when having a large following can be hard on the followers. So the “if you don’t like what your instance is doing, it’s easy to change” is a little misleading.
cain
@opiejeanne: please take care and rest. My wife was washing a knife and it slipped and hit her knuckle – had to have 4 stitches. She’s still feelign the pain and she’s keeps pushing herself to use her hands (because she has work to do) that they aren’t healing as fast as they should. So take a break and allow for things to heal :)
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker: Both Mastodon and Post.news will let you change your display name, even though you can’t change your user name, aka “handle.”
So one —admittedly sucky — alternative would be to select a more innocuous user name, e.g. “BCracker” or a variant spelling, e.g. “Betty Crackr” and see if that’ll pass muster. I doubt humans are actually checking the user names, so “cracker” is probably being flagged by an algorithm.
You might also need to create a new Gmail address, if you’ve got “cracker” in your email address. But it’s easy to set up Gmail to forward to your regular email address.
FWIW, Post.news still have a waiting list, since they’re still trying to scale, but you at least should get a notice you’re on the list.
Michael Bersin
I used the platform the way you did, and to post links to Show Me Progress content. The thing is, over a dozen years or so it never amounted to much for traffic. Facebook and other sites did more.
I quit (permanently) when the sale was final. After that I realized what a useless time suck it was for me. I can still lurk at different pols’ accounts for content, but the waste of my time is minimal.
I don’t miss it.
Another Scott
I’ve never tweeted. I’ve got accounts on Counter.Social and Mastodon but have not done anything with them.
There are lots of good lists of various accounts. ResearchBuzz.me seems to have a decent list of links to live spreadsheets of various groups of accounts. It might be a good place to start poking around for accounts to follow (but I haven’t yet done so myself).
Cheers,
Scott.
cain
@Sister Golden Bear:
I think you have to build up your follows for that to happen. I’m following people I likely wouldn’t have followed because of the algorithms. In fact, the algorithms would show me the same set of active people I follow but not all the people I follow – so I tend to find out about what people I follow from other people I follow. So much follow politics!
🎝 Here’s to the people I follow, fa la la la, la la la, la. 🎝
Betty
@Betty Cracker: I was hoping to see you on Post. I just was admitted and am looking for my old follows. I hate what Musk, thanks to Twitter’s previous owners, have done to destroy a place that was easy to navigate and both educated and entertained me. I had very few negative experiences there.
Sister Golden Bear
@UncleEbeneezer:
Unfortunately it cuts both ways. I’ve heard numerous complaints from Black/LGBTQ+ Twitter that Mastodon moderators have been doing a lot of tone policing in the name of civility (apparently there’s more than a bit of cis-het white fragility on some of the bigger Mastodon instances (servers)).
And before anyone starts, yes, yes I know that one can always create a new instance, and that will probably happen. But the trade-off is that it also can isolate minority groups from being able to talk to the people who need to hear from them. (I’ve learned a hella lot from listening to folks on Black Twitter, Disability Twitter, etc.)
pika
Musk’s going to get Yoel Roth killed, I fear–I can’t believe (and yet can) that someone like Roth who conducted himself with such integrity and refused to badmouth Musk in the interview with Kara Swisher is having his life destroyed by this menace
cain
Ya’lls can follow me on mastodon at @[email protected] (yes, amazing that I get ‘sri’ on mastodon.social, that’s how early i joined haha) I also have it on libera.chat irc server. sri will alawys be MINE, MINE!! bwahaha ::evil gubbar sigh laugh::
I’ve changed my profile to havea link to my mastodon.social.
I think mastodon is going to go through some interesting changes. What is remarkable is that it is being driven by underrepresented communities. Ultimately, I think that is what is going to put Mastodon on top over say Post. It’s not often that underrepresented minorities get to influence and drive how a platform works independent of the person who started mastodon. ActivityPub will grow, and I suspect that another form of Mastdon/ActivityPub will arise – Mastodon is only v1.
MisterForkbeard
I saw your “I’m leaving” post and it’s inspiring me to do the same. My father asked me last night “How is that whole thing with Twitter going” and I realized it’s just awful.
The platform is full of emboldened racist and sexists trolls who are aggressively and knowingly wrong and just out there to hurt people. Usually minorities or protected classes, and failing that Democrats for trying to help those groups.
And then the content right now seems like it’s 90% Musk being a radical asshole, trolls amplifying his radical assholishness, decent people being horrified, misguided people trying to explain why Musk is wrong/hypocritical/insane, and these people are just in a giant endlessly repeating cycle. Finding other content is really difficult, and for some reason right-wing content keeps forcing itself into my timeline for no reason I can see.
Frankly, Twitter moved from “interesting but problematic” to “exhausting and an ethical horrorshow”. So I’m out too. I’m never surprised at how quickly conservative can ruin things, but they really outdid themselves here.
Sister Golden Bear
@cain:
Agreed. I see people with large number of followers complaining about problems with seeing fascist shit showing up in their feeds, people they’ve blocked showing in their feeds, etc. But I haven’t seen any of that, probably because I’m small potatoes.
cain
@Sister Golden Bear:
That was about a month ago. Lot of things are happening behind the scenes. See my last comment. I follow some of the black activists – but when a surge of new people come in and ostensibly the safe space of a different under represented minority – clashes are inevitable.
I think the underlying technology – activitypub is where things are going to happen. There might even be new software to replace Mastodon as Eugen is not exactly being prolific about how to manage the growth or the various factions.
Speaking of alternatives, activitypub based stuff is everywhere – you can have replacements for goodreads and instagram/flickr as well. HIghly recommend and they distinctly different – eg it isn’t mastodon interface on these servers.
https://fedi.tips/the-fediverse-beyond-mastodon/
pixelfed is wehre I go to post photos and you can actually follow the account from your mastodon account. Bookwyrm is where you can share with others about the books you are reading.
There is a whole fediverse out there. :-)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@pika: I was just thinking the same thing about danger to Fauci
pika
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sadly, that is a very good point
cain
Yes, people will large followers are targets because they can shitpost into their timeline and get people to react to them. On a good instance, they would be gone quickly especially with a decent mod team.
I don’t have any of that – and I follow a lot of people. Honestly, I dont’ even have that on twitter and I even have right wingers follow me but for some reason neither of us get into each other’s timeline to shitpost. Maybe some kind of weird stay in our lane thing.
But twitter has turned into a elon musk – hell, people are getting blocked for speaking ill of Space Karen. I’m thinking of calling him ‘elroy’ the (much nicer) kid from Jetsons.
Alison Rose
@BR: Okay, thanks! Done. https://mastodon.online/@alisonrose
WereBear
Changed my nym to link to Mastodon
Ruckus
I was on twitter for a few years but haven’t gone back in the last few days to see whats going on. It’s taken a bit to break the habit. I’ve got a mastodon.party account but it isn’t twitter. Which means twitter had/has it’s problems, now worse than ever as there is a racist man/baby in charge who seems about as smart as a 6 min old slug who is showing his lily white South African rich boy roots but by shear effort it worked. But the word cesspool now seems appropriate. At the least though if you didn’t know who or what SFB II is, you should by now. A website like twit will show you what it is and what a way too big percentage of the population is if you let it, and SFB II is doing exactly that. Because he’s one of them.
I’m not closing my account but I am doing my damnest to stay the hell away. It gets easier and easier, day by day. I’m still actually a bit amazed that he spent $44 billion to get a loudspeaker for his hate. He really is an ignorant, racist white boy.
Ohio Mom
I have about a dozen twitter sites bookmarked, and that’s how I go there, I don’t “follow anyone” or have a timeline, or a feed or however it works.
My bookmarks are a hodgepodge, not all are political sites. The Tweeters are in various levels of panic about the future of Twitter, and some have opened auxiliary mastodon sites but other than that, my Twitter experience is the same as it ever was. (Hope I’m not jinxing myself but) I haven’t seem hide nor hair or Elmo.
This is working for me and until it doesn’t, I’ll be sticking to what I’m doing. Yeah, I hate Musk but all day long I support big businesses I hate because I have no choice. Right now it is toasty warm and well-lit in my house because I’m supporting the ratfinks at the electric company.
Alison Rose
Okay, right off the bat, the multiple instance thing is confusing as hell when trying to follow people.
Kay
@ian:
They are the most coddled, whiny, crybabies in the world. The idea that we had “lockdowns” in the US is just more of their ridiculous drama. They were locked down Really? No they weren’t. They made that up so they could be nastier and more resentful.
ian
@pacem appellant: I think it is a strange argument to make that people cannot ethically consume twitter (and don’t get me wrong, I think people should find alternatives).
Do we apply the same logic to gasoline, plastics, or lumber? How about credit card companies?
Big organizations and things can be unethical, and people can still consume them because they gain a tangible benefit from them. Would it be unethical to use a credit card? Is it unethical to watch television news? Would it be unethical to fill up their car? What if you needed the credit card to pay for food? What if you had to drive to the hospital?
People can still use twitter in ethical ways (such as marginalized communities communicating, individuals informing themselves of news) while the bigger problem (twitter being an unethical organization now) is also true.
This statement, “one cannot ethically consume twitter”, blames consumers of the product rather than the producers of the product.
Ruckus
@Tom Levenson:
My mastodon address is [email protected]
I also grabbed the first instance I could.
Geoduck
I’m another one who has an account there, which I’ve never posted under or officially followed anyone with. There are ten or so accounts I have bookmarked, and will continue to check in on as long as they decide to stick around.
MattF
@Alison Rose: Put the address (i.e., the @xxxxxx@xxxx thing) of the account you want to follow into your search bar (i.e., the magnifying-glass thing)— that will take you to the account of the person you want to follow. Then press the ‘follow’ button. Actually the same thing you do on Twitter, except with two servers rather than one.
Kay
I hope there’s an effort to defend Dr. Fauci from the Musks and Greenwalds and Weiss’ and Taibbi’s of this world – along with the rest of the antiwoke crew who freaked out over the fact they couldn’t go to the movies for 18 months – the humanity!
Dr, Fauci has contributed more to the world than any asshole lucky heir billionaire or Right wing internet influencer. Not one of these people could have been a physician or done his work. None of them have practical or useful skills, which is why they sell dumb, conventional Right wing opinion on Twitter.
If I’m in a bad situation I’ll take Dr. Fauci on my side any day over any Elon Musk or Matt Taibbi.
Alison Rose
@MattF: Right, but the weird thing about not always being able to just click “follow” is dumb.
Geminid
I followed last weekend’s attacks on two electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina through state media. The CBS hourly radio news covered the attacks and their aftermath a number of times as well.
I also found a good article in E&E News titled “Attacks on grid infrastrucure in four states raise alarms,” December 9, 2022. Besides the Mooresville attacks the article reports on two subsequent substation attacks in North and South Carolina. Six attacks made recently in the Pacific Nortwest are also described. Two were in Clackamas County, Oregon and 4 were in Washington state.
I’ll see if I can put a good link to the E&E News article in a subsequent comment without screwing it up.
Cephalus Max
I finally gave up and pulled the plug on Twitter this morning. No real final straw — just the accumulation of antisemitism, Q bullshit, Fauci hate, and that’s just from Elmo in the last week or so!
Based on Tom’s comment above, I signed up for mastodon.online and I’ve now followed him there. It took me all of 5 minutes total. I’ll start looking for others from my Twitter follows.
My biggest concern right now is how to recreate Josh Marshall’s curated Ukraine list.
(I’m @[email protected]. But I’m likely to be mostly a lurker, just like here.)
Kay
@Geminid:
I think it’s worth following. I figured the far Right would be riled up after losing another election and escalate. I’m not suprised they have a new tactic.
cain
@Ruckus: Following you, although it is only official if you approve. :)
Steeplejack
Gonna do a little pimpin’ for Amazon here. Got a promo e-mail and did a mild spit-take when I saw this Shokz OpenMove Bluetooth headset for 60 bucks. Great product and a hell of a price—lower than I’ve seen since I got mine on sale a year ago. It’s great for phone calls and surprisingly good for music—especially if you’re out jogging or walking and want to maintain awareness of your ambient surroundings. Highly recommended. (Hat tip to PST for recommending it a year ago.)
JaySinWA
@Alison Rose: The most straightforward way I see to follow someone that you have a link or @[id] for is to be logged in to the instance you are on and copy/paste the @[id] or profile URL into search to find them then click follow from the results.
As you have probably found if you go to their profile link and try and follow from there it will look for your account on the instance that the profile is on instead of using the account in your instance
ETA and MattF got there first
ETA2 If someone follows you, you can find them in the notices and follow them back from their without the copy/paste.
cain
@Kay:
He probably needs a security detail.
My wife was telling me about the news out of China – there is some serious COVID going oin there where 60% of the population is projected to be affected because the people have decided to rebel against zero covid and I think their medical facilities are going to get overwhelmed as well as their supply chain of medications.
Apparently even here in Portland, it’s hard to find cold related medications and hospitals are seeing a lot of patients.
These people still want to go after Fauci – the proof is staring at them straight in the face. This isn’t normal!
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: But how do we know those attacks on infrastructure aren’t the work of BLM & Antifa? — wing nut trolls
Geminid
Link?
https://www.eenews.net/articles/attacks-on-grid-infrastructure-in-4-states-raise-alarm
This works I think.
Alison Rose
@JaySinWA: Yeah, and that’s just messy. Also, you can’t even see the whole list of who someone is following on your own instance. I guess I just don’t understand why they did it this way. Back in my MMORPG days, games had multiple servers and you chose one to play on, but that was because you couldn’t really have a game with 8 jillion people playing in the same version. This is different, and it’s just a little annoying to have to do these extra steps and search and tabs and stuff just to follow someone.
cain
@Geminid:
If you’er attacking infrastructure you are domestic terrorist. Perhaps we can now finally focus on white terrorism aka the militia as a clear and present danger. Start getting judges to stop giving these idiots lesser sentences while throwing the book at black defendants for very minor crimes.
Ksmiami
@ian: let them die… sorry not sorry.
@MisterForkbeard: bankrupt the fuckers… it’s the only way.
Kay
I hope national Democratic pols, specifically, defend Fauci from these horrible assholes.
They should look at the results of the last election- Musk and Greenwald and Weiiss and Taibii are fringe most people won’t have an insane burning hatred of the octogenarian public service physician. That seems to be limited to middle aged and no longer relevant formally “trendsetter” pundits- not a political constituency with any numerical power- no one has to kowtow to them. There aren’t that many of them.
Righteous Hazard
Longtime reader de-lurking to agree that Musk crossed a line last night. I quit twitter a the second Musk took control because to me Musk has some form of obvious sociopathy, and 2016 taught me to not wait around an see if things will work out when sociopaths take control of commons. Like you, it was a personal decision, and I wasn’t calling for mass action.
But seeing in my blog feeds what he has done over the last two days: whipping the worst of his deranged followers into a bloodlust and pointing them at Yoel Roth, tweeting “my pronouns are prosecute and fauci”, and the damned image you mentioned; those things have all changed my mind.
Musk’s damned hellsite should be depopulated now, and blogs should just stop linking it. I could be wrong, and I probably am, but I don’t see any way this doesn’t end in tragedy now that idiot manbaby has turned to incitement to drive engagement.
cain
@Alison Rose:
Frequently, you don’t have to put the server name. I found MisterForkBeard by just searching @MisterForkBeard in the search – just like you would with twitter.
JaySinWA
@Alison Rose: I updated above, but checking your notices may be a bit quicker for following back than using the follow list. But yes it is a bit convoluted and takes some extra effort.
Alison Rose
@cain: Brought up nothing for me.
Ksmiami
@ian: except everything you compared Twitter to actually has tangible value ie gas until we move to 100 percent alts etc. If Twitter is no longer safe, interesting and relevant, who cares. Let Musk lose his investment- it’ll only make humanity better off.
Kay
@cain:
There is somethig going around here (NW Ohio) which involves a weeks long hacking cough and fatigue. It’s not covid (I got tested). My husband and I have had it for 2 weeks and I noticed coughing on every floor of the courthouse last week – just ringing in the hallways. No one can find OTC coldflu meds here either.
ian
@Ksmiami: Do you ever have a solution that doesn’t involve people dying?
Kay
Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of the antiwoke crowd. They found their leader.
Mai Naem mobile
Is there a reason why mastodon caught on and not countersocial? Forget Post. I trust Andreesen about as much as I trust Zuck. Post will end up being about monetizing writers by big tech because they haven’t monetized other people’s labor enough.
Kay
Also- is there anything funnier than the pronouns joke?
How long are these people going to use this one joke? They all tell us how creative and brilliant they are- can they come up with another mediocre joke or is it just the one?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Agree — it’s the right thing to do because public health officials should be able to do their jobs without right-wing oligarchs using disinformation to gin up mobs against them. And like you said, there’s not a significant constituency for the brand of QAnon-infused bullshit Musk is peddling anyway. I’d like to see us go on offense against these deranged mofos.
Ksmiami
@ian: actually, yes, but you do realize the uptake of the most recent Covid vaccine is 12 percent and with vax disinformation, people have reduced flu vax intake as well? Unless we can shut down the sources of lies and disinformation, I’m afraid our society is ill equipped to do anything collectively beneficial.
Josie
@JaySinWA: Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Maybe I’ll get this figured out in a year or so.
oatler
@WereBear: Thanks for the link. Maybe I can lurk on it as I did with Twitter until they popup-blocked me.
MattF
@Mai Naem mobile: Good old network effect. The server mathstodon.xyz already had several people I wanted to follow.
Geminid
@Kay: I’m a little surprised these attacks have not been a bigger story. But the six in the Northwest were not reported at all until a few days after the Mooresville attack, when a Homeland Security warning memo was given to the press. It described the attacks in general terms and probably had been distributed to law enforcement agencies and power companies, but not to the public.
The E&E news reporter interviewed the CEO of an industry monitoring group who happened to be named Manny Cancel. “It’s the most complex threat landscape that I’ve seen in my experience, and I’ve been in the industry a long time,” said Mr. Cancel
They say he’s a cultured man.
Kay
I’d get off Twitter just because Musk will give personal information to Right wing political activists lke Weiss and Taibbi. Musk is a liar. Because he said he didn’t and won’t means absolutely nothing. It’s like taking the word of Donald Trump.
Don’t do business with dishonest people who treat you like shit. It’s not complicated.
cain
@Alison Rose: hmm.. weird – what about just ‘@misterforkbeard’ without the capital letters? that showed up just fine for me as well.
I wonder if it is your particular instance..
Steeplejack
@PsiFighter37:
Truth. It’s like the “public square” is now perceived as a really cheesy reality show by too many people.
rikyrah
As someone who grew up when Black Santa figurines were hard to find…the depth and variety of his mother’s collection is impressive.👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTRVjK3hN/
cain
@Kay:
Yeah it’s all over here as well. That’s another reason why I just keep wearing my mask. I’m not interested in a bacterial/viral combo tag team out to put me out.
Alison Rose
@cain: Nope, tried it with and without the @, with and without capitals, nothing. This is what I mean…this doesn’t make sense. In order to find someone, you don’t just need their handle, you need their domain too.
Also FYI, tried to follow you by clicking your nym, and the link is broken.
Mai Naem mobile
@Kay: sounds like Baby fElon is skirred that something’s coming down the pike. Maybe the SEC’s got something coming down. Maybe his bankers aren’t happy with the Tesla stock price. Who knows?
Ruckus
@Ella in New Mexico:
I was on FB every day for a long time, a long time ago. But it continued to get worse and worse and less useful. I left. I saw twitter as a replacement for FB because of it’s restrained post size it worked in a cesspool better and one could block morons/assholes. But SFB II has done his best to turn it into FB shorter. And as his best is non too good, as in extremely close to shitty, it has rapidly gotten worse. Now yes you can still block, but so many have seen the light and left that it’s not worth staying – it’s worse than a waste of time.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile: I think countersocial is not part of the fediverse and honestly it has tech bro energy and while it looks nice – I wouldn’t trust it.
narya
While I still have a bird site account, I mostly use it be able to read a few people these days. I’ve found it particularly useful when someone is live-tweeting something (e.g., the sedition trials), and I don’t pay attention to a “feed.” That said, I’m gonna delete my (very few) posts and just hold it so it can’t be taken, at least for now. I’m on a mastodon instance, and have found a few of my usuals there, but . . . I’m still trying to sort it out. Someone (MisterDancer?) had a post awhile back that I meant to bookmark but did not. Perhaps those how-to posts or links could show up on the side here at some point?
Kay
@Geminid:
One would think they would cover it because it’s fascinating- to me anyway. But I don’t know what interests them or why. I almost never align with the interests of national media.
It’d be a good story for the WSJ. They do a nice job on covering industries and explaining systems.
cain
@Alison Rose:
Yeah, that’s very strange – I don’t know why you can’t search like that. It must be something to do with that instance. It works fine here on mastodon.social. I found you just fine like less than a second – and also found this other podcaster alisonrosen – who I decided to follow too. lol.
cain
@Kay:
I’d love to see you on Mastodon – there must be an educator focused mastodon server for you to jump on. I built my wife a mastodon server – but I’m thinking it might be better to hit one of those servers that gives out mastodon servers instead of building my own.
My wife like you is an educator and is heavily involevd in her school district – but of course, she is a BiPOC and encounters a lot of stuff that white person doesn’t and she needs a safe space to talk about all that.
Mai Naem mobile
@cain: a friend told me there’s no cold medicine available in Phoenix either. There’s a nasty non COVID upper respiratory infection going around and few people masking.
WaterGirl
Tax the rich.Tax the hell out of the rich.
jonas
I don’t see how Twitter survives the next couple of weeks. Musk has clearly lost it. Having spent 44B on something worth, generously, 1/10th that amount has completely broken what remained of his rational brain. He seems to be under the impression that letting Twitter just become a place to retweet Nazi memes from Der Stürmer — and charge people for reading them — is going to be a great revenue generator. Good luck with that. My bet is that this just gets worse over the next couple of weeks, Apple eventually reverses Cook’s promise to keep Twitter on it’s app store, Musk declares bankruptcy and walks away.
trollhattan
The gold-plating on this Musk turd is his bleating The Radical Left is forcing his every move all while asserting he is not who he is: a hard-right conservative sociopath. It’s all too rich.
Threatening to sue his own employees, also very on brand.
cain
@Mai Naem mobile: I’m definitely been being careful. I need to tell my parents who are coming back from India to be extra careful. My parents are mid 70s and early 80s and so stuff like this can be extra bad for them.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think the subscription model for the antiwoke crowd has created an echo chamber for them. If you buy Weiss or Taibii or Greenwald substack or content you already agree with them. Weiss and Taibii and Greenwald then take their experience inside the little validating echo chambers they have created and believe the whole country agrees with them.
I think that’s why the midterms were so upsetting to them and why we’re seeing more asshole, vindicative moves. They really believed the country was so mad over masking and pronouns that there would be a Red Wave. They believed that because they are no longer in a broad marketplace like at a newspaper- they are in a validating, pay-for-entry echo chamber.
Albatrossity
Yep. I held out until today in the (naive) hope that he wouldn’t circle the drain immediately. But no more waiting, and as others have said, it is sad to see that site destroyed right in front of our eyes. But my time does not need to be spent propping up a fascist toddler.
Meanwhile, my Mastodon account is quite active @[email protected]
Martin
Billionaires are a policy failure.
karen marie
@WereBear: I’m also there (@[email protected]). I’ve solved the overload problem by creating a list where I store all the people I like to see on the regular. The feed for that list includes not only the people I follow but any posts that they’ve boosted. I’m enjoying it quite a bit and have found many new people to follow. I like the option of looking at the entire world (the federated feed or the local feed) to see what’s up that I wouldn’t otherwise see.
Since it’s user “owned and operated,” whatever server/instance you establish an account on (which you can change if you find one you like better) , do your host a kindness by donating whatever amount you can afford to defray costs.
Wonkette has established a server/instance – wonkodon dot com. Certainly a pleasant option!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
All fo Joe Rogan’s guests told Joe Rogan that the country hates The Woke and there would be a Red Wave. So Joe Rogan takes that echo chamber he’s created and pastes that onto the country, so is shocked when election results dont flatter him and validate his opinions like his guests do.
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: I had no problem signing up for Mastodon. One of the reliable people I followed on twitter posted an invite link. It was easy-peasy to then sign up.
Here’s an invite link for anyone here who is interested. It will put you in the same server/instance as me. Once you have an account, you can switch servers if/when you find one to which you’re better suited. I’m very happy where I am.
Brachiator
Musk posted this himself? He can’t be content to just own Twitter. He’s doing everything he can to actively tear it down.
I did not use the service much, but often looked at threads posted here.
What Twitter often provides is of great value to many people. I think that alternatives can prosper.
Alison Rose
@cain: I got their URL from your following list, and when I put that in my search box, it worked. So yeah, I think you can only find people just by their @ if they’re on the same instance? I don’t know. I feel like this site is gonna be like crypto for me and I’ll never fully get it.
Martin
@Mai Naem mobile: Countersocial is a mastodon implementation which is walled of from the rest of mastodon.
The benefit of mastodon is local funding and moderation, which also means that if things go sideways on that server, you can move to a different server and still have your follows, etc. You lose that with countersocial. It’s just as susceptible to some tyrant running the show as Twitter, where mastodon’s ability to migrate is a critical feature.
Alison Rose
Another question: How come sometimes when I click on someone’s following list, it says they don’t follow anyone even though there’s a number there? Is that what happens if they make it private?
WhatsMyNym
@cain: The @ is not showing before sri in your nym link.
Betty Cracker
@karen marie: I tried it three times — never received a confirmation email. Maybe I’ll try it again eventually, but for now I’m in “fuck it!” mode. 🙂
@Brachiator: Yep — I doubt he made the meme himself, but he tweeted it, plus a whole load of dangerous Q-adjacent garbage that’s probably endangering the life of his former head of safety and others.
Agree with your point about the platform Musk is turning into 8chan providing value. I hope a viable alternative catches on.
Geminid
@Kay: The Homeland Security memo sure was interesting. From CBS 17 (WNCN):
A story by WRAL (Raleigh) reported on the same memo (I think) and said it was dated November 30.
Kay
“Prosecute Dr Fauc because I couldn’t go to restaurants for a year!”
Can you imagine any of these people actually defending a country, like in a Ukraine/Russia situation? Theyre the biggest crybabies in the world where Fauci would probably kick ass, rolling bandages or whatever. I’ll take Fauci any day.
Princess
I’m sorry Betty. It was a tough call but it was the right one and I admire you a lot for making it.
at this point it’s like that old line, “What do you call ten people at dinner with a Nazi?”
Kay
@Geminid:
I wish I had more faith in Homeland Security and the FBI. I don’t think they’re captured by the Deep State. I just think they fuck up an awful lot for federal law eforcement agencies who get so much funding and have so much power.
I wish I thought they were really good, but I don’t. Partly its because so many of them seem to be Right wingers and wholly political. I wish they’d spend less time trying to harm Hillary Clinton’s election chances and more time solving crimes.
Omnes Omnibus
Apparently I am unethical. But I do have a mastodon account. I am unimpressed so far. Maybe as more people show up, it will get better. OTOH I have not found Twitter to be the sewer that some do; probably because I use recent posts and don’t let the algorithm control my experience.
Martin
@Brachiator: This is *why* Musk bought Twitter. He wanted a right-wing site with greater reach and bought himself one. This is the point.
You can work a problem from the inside if there are people operating in good faith in leadership. That’s not Musk. He won’t see the light. And he can’t be forced out. This is just his personal playground and you can either voluntarily play in his playground or you can deny him the audience. I left weeks ago.
MisterForkbeard
@Alison Rose: Interesting. Maybe I was easily found by other people because we’re on the same instance?
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: The main problem with mastodon is the lack of official channels – news outlets, my local government orgs, etc. There are bots for some news outlets that mirror their Twitter feeds that you can follow, but the loss of agencies is a real loss.
Apart from that, I find I like it a lot better. My server has a nice community of people with interests that I share, so my personal feed is a little worse than my Twitter chron feed (I never did algorithmic either), my local is better than anything Twitter offered, and federated is fun to browse for new follows now and then.
So basically I feel like I have a worse news hookup, a better interest hookup, and better interactions with other users. There’s less trolling and dogpiling and more meaningful interaction. I had insulated myself from a fair bit of that on Twitter already, but I feel like I can engage with people more meaningfully.
Depends a lot on what you expected to get out of Twitter, of course.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
I had this in late October (in NoVA). Also trouble breathing. SpO2 briefly went below 90. Tested negative for COVID and flu. Still getting over the fatigue.
jeffreyw
I am @[email protected] (mastodon but not federated)
Also @[email protected] (a mastodon joint)
And @jeffreyw at post.news
MattF
@Martin: Similar, so far, for me. I think a ‘news’ oriented feed would be hard to do in an organized way, for a variety of reasons.
Martin
@MisterForkbeard: The way Mastodon works is that every instance isn’t automatically connected to every other instance. Every instance is connected to every instance that the users on that instance follow (there might be a bit more to it than that). So if the person is on a completely unknown instance to your instance, they won’t show up in search *unless* you include the domain so that the search tool knows how to find the other server.
In short, there’s no master instance list on Mastodon. That’s a feature of it. Each instance that gets added in theory has the same access to the mastodon network as any other instance the moment it gets added – you don’t have to ask permission to be part of the network. If you’re on a large instance, statistically speaking you’ll see nearly everything. If you’re on a small one, you’ll see less.
Each instance can then firewall itself from other instances on a case by case basis. Again, this is what federated is designed to streamline. It’s a kind of most favored nation status. Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than Twitter, but these are things you need to have to ensure you’re free of the benevolent/malevolent dictator nature of Twitter.
Yutsano
I’m giving Mastodon another go. [email protected]
CaseyL
This is a great thread for finding BJers on Mastodon: I’ve added a bunch of you to my Follows!
And I’ve added my mastodon address in the BJ Website field; let’s see if it works.
ETA: It does not.
So, if anyone does want to follow me on Mastodon, my handle there is @[email protected].
I joined via the nz instance because it was easy to do so, and because I like New Zealand. I have to say, using the Local feed for that instance is wonderful, because I am sure as hell seeing stuff I wouldn’t otherwise!
patrick II
I have been getting emails from a PAC with the return address of “she lost her job for us”, and asking if Liz Cheney deserves a medal of freedom. I also received one asking for money for Liz Cheney’s run against John Barrasso in ’24. It didn’t say if Liz was running as a Democrat or in the Republican primaries, or if it’s just another right-wing PAC looking for easy money. I declined, but found it interesting.
I went to look up Barrasso, and interestingly, given the context of this post, this is what I found: https://mastodon.social/@GovTrack from a Google search for “Wyoming Senators”.
This government tracking service has moved their government tracking over to Mastadon.
guachi
I follow Betty Cracker on Twitter for the nice bird pics. She’s even liked some of my replies. But I’ll be weaning myself off of Twitter, too.
I never see ads as I use an adblocker on my desktop and when I use my phone I immediately block any accounts that advertise. For years I’ve sorted chronologically so I only see what I want to see and don’t see stuff boosted by some algorithm.
But I can no longer justify using it by saying I’m not giving Musk any money. I can’t give it my eyeballs and I can’t give it my engagement.
Steeplejack
@Geminid:
I’m also a bit surprised that I haven’t seen any follow-up on the Moore County attack(s), especially since the feds are supposed to be actively involved. I’m sure there is some if I look hard, but it hasn’t drifted spontaneously across my news ecosphere.
Spanky
@Albatrossity: Seeing people you’ve boosted is sending me down rabbit/bird/volcano holes.
Starfish
@Alison Rose: You are in the bay area right?
olivia
I really got a lot of timely good information from Twitter about world events from people I followed.
I was permanently suspended last week for suggesting that trump’s head would explode if Zelenskyy got Man of the Year and I hoped to watch it happen.
I decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to object because it is becoming more and more of a toxic waste dump. So I signed on with Post. We’ll see how it goes.
karen marie
@Betty Cracker: Did you check your spam? I have a vague memory that I did not immediately receive the email but I got it on the second try, and that was at a time when there was a massive uptick in new account creation at Mastodon.
I think it’s worth you trying again. In my opinion, it’s an excellent alternative.
karen marie
@Yutsano: That’s me – @axomamma – sent you a follow request. Cheers!
I changed my “preferences” so that the accounts I follow can be seen. There may be people that I follow that you and/or others here might like to follow as well.
Starfish
@Josie: I shared a list for Mastodon before.
I am going to share a list again. Not all of these are people here. Some are just people you might like.
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
Yutsano
And since the thread be open, it looks like they captured one of the Lockerbie bombers.
EDIT: better link
Denali
I got off Twitter when Musk started recommending who to vote for. He has gotten much worse since then. I got on Post, and it seems to be getting better and better as it gets the kinks out. There s too much talk there about Musk though, and I don’t want to read anything about him or TFG.
JaySinWA
@CaseyL: I went to my profile page and copied the URL from there for my link here.
davecb
@Betty Cracker: If you’re having trouble finding an instance that works, try https://hachyderm.io, which is inhabited and run by a bunch of rather brilliant computer nerds. I’m @[email protected] there
Suzanne
I am @[email protected]. I only share photos, and not often. But follow if you’re so inclined.
Starfish
@pacem appellant: You have been a great follow on Mastodon.
Alison Rose
@Yutsano: my computer thinks that’s an email address…
Alison Rose
@Starfish: Yep, northern Bay Area
Spanky
Totally off-topic, but here’s 8 hours of department store Christmas muzak, which I’m – not snarking – totally enjoying in a nostalgic haze.
Starfish
@cain: I have made the mistake your wife made. It took a while to feel better.
Geminid
@Steeplejack: I just look up “Moore County grid attacks.” North Carolina news outlets are still covering the story, but there is not much new info. There was a report that the FBI subpoenaed cell tower records hoping that the saboteurs texted or called while they were near the substations. And the state, county and Duke Power each kicked in $25,000 to make a $75,000 offer for information.
I haven’t looked up the Oregon and Washington attacks since after the Homeland Security memo was passed to the media. When I heard about the memo on WTOP Tuesday night I searched for reports without success.
The feds may have asked the power companies and cops to sit on the information, but judging from the E&E article if there was an embargo it’s been lifted so I imagine that media in those states have articles now.
CaseyL
@JaySinWA: I’m finding a variety of things work: sometimes just the @handle, without the instance; sometimes you need the whole thing.
Bobby Thomson
I’ll miss you there. Still torn between not contributing to numbers and not giving him what he wants, but the value of Gen X Reader’s Digest has declined significantly.
Starfish
@ian: Quitting twitter is easier than quitting oil or lumber. You can choose where you direct your attention. It is hard, but we must.
I am going to other websites, reading books, inviting friends over during the week before Christmas. Annoying my Republican neighbors on NextDoor.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
That’s what my nurse practicioner told me to watch so I bought the monitor. It hasn’t gone below 96 but it’s discouraging how long this thing it hangs on – it’s been two weeks.
I was coughing while waiting to get tested for covid, as were most of the other people waiting, so the injection lab technician came out of her workroom with her personal cough drops for all of us :)
CaseyL
@Yutsano: I’m not finding you, but maybe you’re not “active” (and findable) for a little while yet, so I’ll try again tomorrow.
Kay
@Starfish:
I haven’t joined our NextDoor because I think that would be RIGHT up my alley :)
Disaster. Best to stay away.
Starfish
@Geminid: So are the substation attacks domestic terrorism or something else?
Redshift
@Betty Cracker: Please keep trying; I don’t want to lose you! I’m likely to settle on one platform in the end, and I don’t think it’s going to be Insta. I just got a confirmation from Post after several weeks, they say they’re expanding faster than they were planning, but it’s still a slow rollout. And I guess I just jumped on Mastodon before everything got slammed, but there are new servers all the time, so it’s worth hunting around.
zhena gogolia
I liked somebody’s idea that maybe blogs would come back. They’re so much easier to use.
Starfish
@Mai Naem mobile: CounterSocial forked Mastodon, as in took the code and altered it in some way, and a lot of people were ticked off at that dude before for blocking certain countries. Those two things make CounterSocial harder to reach from the rest of the Mastodon instances.
I don’t like that he has the stupid ticker on the CounterSocial website. I find the screen too busy. Not all Mastodon instances are like that.
A lot have three columns of stuff like TweetDeck did. I do not love that. The instance I am on does not have three columns of stuff.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Amen to all of this. The only thing I would add is that the FBI agents seem to be relentlessly white and “middle-class” in a throwback ’70s kind of way. (“The little woman better have dinner on the table for me when I get home.”) And they seem supremely proud of their (not that great) success rate.
And they get so much free P.R.! CBS (the Copaganda Bullshit Shows network) has one night when all three of its prime-time shows are FBI hagiography: FBI, FBI: International, FBI: Most Wanted. If you need a break from Criminal Minds and the FBI’s omnicompetent profiling unit. Jee-sus. I guess the consolation is that no one under age 60 is watching.
Gracklefeet
My Twitter feed is mostly LGBT activists (like Erin in the Morn), Brazilian entomologists, nature photographers, music theory people and some fluff accounts like Threatening Music Theory. At one point the algorithm suggested Ariarita, who turned out to be a Brazilian musician who is trans! (I’m working on Portuguese and it’s a great way to improve vocabulary.) JUST YESTERDAY Ariarita started joking back and forth with one of the Brazilian entomologists, Elfa dos Insetos. I’ll be very sad if / when it all comes crashing to the ground.
I also follow a few political writers. Tom Nichols says he plans to stay til they turn the lights off.
Goodbye Betty, I will miss you! You are one of the very VERY few people who follow me on Twitter ;)
Redshift
I’m @[email protected], btw, though I may try to migrate if I find a server that looks congenial. Anyone have a suggestion for one for space/science enthusiasts (rather than just scientists)?
Though for the most part, I’m just interested in reading the Home feed of people I follow, so which server I’m on doesn’t much matter.
Starfish
@rikyrah: My mom would be so jealous! She would buy black Santa when she could find him.
davecb
@Martin:
I was just listening to a podcast, and one of the commentators was from Switzerland, where he said most of the local governments had mastadon instances. I think it just may be too new for US and Canadian governments to notice.
Starfish
@Albatrossity: On Mastodon, you can follow hashtags. I made up for you and Betty Cracker not being there by searching for #BirdsOfMastodon and following the tag. That makes a bird occasionally pop up in my time line.
Starfish
@Alison Rose: No. On Mastodon, you can’t see the list of people someone is following unless you click into their profile and go over into their instance. Once you are on their instance, you can see their list. Is this annoying? OH SO ANNOYING.
JaySinWA
@CaseyL:
That is inside a Mastodon instance. I was talking about a clickable web link, as our nym link is.
WereBear
@Martin: Twitter was my go to for news and snark, but without it being curated for me as here, I rarely hunt it down.
While I had a lot of followers (for me) and loved interacting with shelters all over the word, there were serious lacks I was happy to find on Mastodon.
Better discussion because no one will bust in on vulnerable groups. Depths and sincerity drew them. If shelters need it for fundraising they will stay on like walled forts.
Delk
@[email protected]
post. @ssdelko
I haven’t posted or followed anyone yet because I just joined them but feel free to follow.
Soprano2
My feed is full of people who “so and so follow”. I don’t see many of the people I actually follow anymore, probably because a lot of them quit posting. It’s going to be a useless wasteland pretty soon.
Josie
@Starfish:
Thanks so much.
Geminid
@Starfish: Why are you asking me?
Yutsano
@CaseyL: Okay weird. Mastodon is acting like I don’t exist? I’m not sure what’s happening.
EDIT: I GOT IT! You’re somehow in Mastodon.nz, not Mastodon.social!
Starfish
@Alison Rose: I see you already made your account by the time I made it this far in the thread. There is a sfba.social instance, and there seem to be some cool people on it.
JaySinWA
There’s Universidon that I am on, but I have issues with trying to do account imports there. George Takei is what led me there.
Starfish
@Gracklefeet: There are so many LGBTQ folks on Mastodon. There are entire LGBTQ instances.
Steeplejack
@Martin:
JaySinWA
@Yutsano: I found you. May be CaseyL’s server is ahead of itself being in NZ and all.
Falling Diphthong
@Ella in New Mexico: To answer Cui bono: He’s about to relaunch the “pay $8 and we’ll certify you as anyone” service. Thus the twitter files (zomg you Nazis are totally victims of oppression), pedophilia charges (I see you Q!!!), followed by the Fauci attacks (draw in the people who are more focused on pandemic conspiracy theories).
If there are any other right wing conspiracies with a monetizable user base, expect Musk to give them a shout out in the next few days. Maybe crypto?
WhatsMyNym
@CaseyL: Try using the URL – https://mastodon.nz/@CaseyL for your nym link,
Starfish
@Geminid: You look like you have been following this issue more closely than the rest of us. It was a surprise to learn that it happened in multiple places.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
Locked my account for good this morning.
Moved on to @[email protected]
Done and DONE.
Yutsano
Adding Mastodon handle.
Starfish
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: You are a great person to follow on Mastodon!
Soprano2
@Kay: Hubby just got better from 4 days of a hacking cough and low-grade fever. Not all the way back, but a lot better. Now it’s a waiting game to see if I get it.
Roger Moore
Since everyone here seems to be doing it, I’m @[email protected] on Mastodon/Fediverse. I will happily follow (and follow back) anyone I recognize from Balloon Juice.
Steeplejack
@CaseyL:
Your nym link is only “mastodon.nz.” Maybe that’s the problem.
Tim C,
I quit when shit-stain was invited back. Let it burn and be Parler. Something else will rise.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Exactly, and I grew up with the idea that they were great so there’s the let-down.
I started having doubts with Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber. NOT JUST that they arrested the wrong person even though Rudolph called 911 twice to report the bomb he had just planted, but that it took five years to find him. Five years! And that’s not counting the two years where he operated freely, planting bombs. He was in North Carolina the whole time. How can it possibly take 5 years?
And then the Secret Service with the Obamas. An intruder got to the bottom of the stairs leading to the family residence. An armed lobbyist got on an elevator with Obama. WTF? They have a HUGE budget.
Kent
I’m late to this tread and haven’t read all the comments.
But I would suggest that if Balloon Juice wants to take a stand against Twitter then the front-pagers should stop making posts that contain a string of twitter links. Because all that does is push a lot more page views back over to twitter and amplify their page views.
It might be harder to generate front page comment without twitter, but I’m sure it can be done. Or if you have to use twitter to make a point, screen shot it so the links don’t go back to twitter.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Beautiful.
Geminid
@Steeplejack:
@Geminid: One other story from Moore County, from WRAL titled “Person found dead in Moore County after power grid attack,” Dec.6 (updated Dec. 7).
The person was found dead in a home in the community of Pinehurst. The medical examiner’s report may show tge death was related to the power failure, which could affect the criminal charges and penalties. A law professor at North Carolina Central University, Irving Joyner, told WRAL:
Starfish
@Kent:
I have said this too. I know Anne Laurie does a lot for us and finding good aggregators is hard, but I would like her to try and use Memeorandum, some of the bigger blogs that are still up, and maybe some of the better political reddits. (Does anyone know which political reddit communities are not bad?)
Steeplejack
@Spanky:
Thanks! Weird but oddly enjoyable. Eases the pain of SiriusXM Soul Town going into XMas mode. [shudder]
Redshift
@JaySinWA:
Ooh! I’ll check it out.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Weird about the cough drops! I never thought of that, but then someone gave me some, and I was like “D’oh!” Helped a lot.
Chetan Murthy
@Yutsano: I finally bit the bullet and got an account at mastodon.online. It was effortless. Though since all I really wanna do is follow Josh Marshall’s Ukraine lists, I wonder how to find those. Maybe I should email him and ask if he’s assembled same for Mastodon.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
It’s not domestic terrorism unless it’s committed by clearly identifiable Antifa malefactors. Otherwise it’s just sparkling vandalism.
Roger Moore
@Mai Naem mobile:
I think people like Mastodon because it is decentralized, which minimizes the risk of someone like Musk taking over and turning the place into a dump. If you dislike the direction your server is taking, you can move to a different one you approve of more. Servers can even block other servers if they think the server they’re blocking is bad for some reason. For example, the server I’m on maintains a blocklist of servers they won’t peer with and the reasons, mostly related to child porn and right wing material that’s illegal in Germany, where the server is located.
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: International news has been more difficult on Mastodon.
There is some weird stuff going on around that. Some instances are banning content in languages they do not know because to truly support a language, you need moderators who speak that language.
However, it is racist to kick people out for speaking a different language. But you don’t want people to be promoting genocide in a language you don’t know!
There have been some debates about moderation and how it works and how it should work.
Jay
@Kay:
Strep A is making the rounds here, along with Covid, RSV, the flu, pneumonia and our ER’s are slammed, mostly with kids.
Now they are warning about Bird Flu, as it is epidemic in the farms in the valley and they are worried about flu + bird flu hybrids.
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish:
I read the proposed RFC for this stuff, and was disappointed that it didn’t address the heart of the problem, which is incremental replication of database tables and materialized views on those tables. It seems to me that unless you solve that problem cleanly and in a manner that can be extended (e.g. to support moderation metadata) you’re never going to really have something with staying power. There’ll always be new things that people want to do, that just don’t fit into the current design. B/c not meant for extensibility in a clean way.
CaseyL
@Yutsano: OK, got you now! Your nym just had to percolate through the FediVerse a bit :).
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, Eugen and several others have been very reflexive in defending whatever has been built and not wanting to try new stuff. Fortunately, there are people who have taken some of the APIs and tried new stuff.
The Tusky app has been widely adopted on Android.
Geminid
@Geminid: I also found out some fun facts about Pinehurst while looking into the story. I had known Pinehurst as a big golfing destination. It turns out that Pinehurst was established in 1895 as a planned community with a town center designed by Frederick Lewis Olmstead.
An acquaintence told me once about the hospital there. His girlfriend wrecked her motorcyle at Rockingham Raceway, one county away I think. Her injuries were quite serious, including a head injury, and she was transported to the hospital at Pinehurst. It was the plushest hospital he’d ever seen. The facilities were immaculate, and all the nurses had fancy designer uniforms.
The woman recovered enough to be released after several days, although it took her a few weeks before she could talk right.
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
If you click on the profile of someone on another server, you’ll only be shown their follows/followers on your server. There should be a link that takes you to their profile on their server, which will have the full list. It took me a while to figure this out.
James E Powell
@Steeplejack:
Many of whom? Many of us? No, we saw what was happening & screamed about it.
Hillary Clinton pointed it out & the entire political media universe attacked her for it.
Many of you & your kind didn’t just miss what was happening, you all promoted it.
Geminid
@Starfish: I think the answer to your question is pretty obvious. As a matter of fact, I said this qualified as terrorism on the first thread discussing this, the day after the attacks.
Alison Rose
@Steeplejack: LOLOLOL
Sister Golden Bear
@Starfish: Any recommendations for LGBTQ+ instances?
FYI, I’m currently: @[email protected]
MaryRC
Betty, I don’t blame you for leaving but I will miss your great tweets: the birds, the pups and the evening boat rides. I’ve never tweeted but I followed so many people that I enjoyed and now they seem to have disappeared one by one. Even the ones who are still there talk about nothing but Musk. It’s turning into a wasteland. I guess that’s what he wanted all along.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
And don’t forget the Unabomber. Most expensive FBI investigation in history (to that point), and he was ultimately caught on a tip from his brother. “Yeah, I’ve been looking through some stuff in my brother’s garage, and, um . . .”
jeffreyw
Post this into the search box on Twitter to find which of your Twitter followers are also on Post.
post.news filter:follows
Betty Cracker
@Kent: I won’t be embedding any more tweets, but that’s just me. Others get to make their own choices.
WaterGirl
@BR: I think I tried embedding from Mastadon a few weeks ago, and it was a no go.
You definitely couldn’t paste the URL into the front page post (like we can with twitter) and get an embed automatically.
Now that I think of it, I didn’t look to see if you can copy code for an embed, and paste it in using text mode.
raven
Like this?
@[email protected]
raven
@jeffreyw: I got your address in mastodon but I have no idea what to do with it.
Wombat Probability Cloud
@Betty Cracker: As usual, I’m seeing this thread hours late, but you should give mastodon.world a try. Servers in Netherlands, and still accepting new users. I joined because they were mid-sized and had a solid set of rules for conduct (https://mastodon.world/about).
Starfish
@Sister Golden Bear:
tech.lgbt
mastodon.lol
I think there are others.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
The nice thing about the embedding system with Twitter is it embeds a literally copy of the text of the tweet. It looks like Mastodon wants to embed an iframe.
Roger Moore
@raven:
Just like that!
BR
@WaterGirl:
The embed option in Mastodon is in the “…” menu of each post. I think you have to be logged in to use it. Here’s an attempt:
Edit: attempt didn’t work, but that could be because we can’t embed iframes here. I tried to embed this:
https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei/109473693988695631
schrodingers_cat
As long as I can block and mute accounts I will be on Twitter. There is no substitute for it for India based news. I am also going to revive my blog.
Barbara
@BR: That worked for me.
BR
@Chetan Murthy:
Check out pwnallthethings and some of the posts he’s got that cover some of the same sources as Josh Marshall’s lists:
https://mastodon.social/@Pwnallthethings
raven
@Roger Moore: Now what do I do with it??
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@cain: You do understand the protests against lock downs in China started when an apartment building full people burned to death because as part of the lock down measure the doors to the building were chained shut. It’s very clear the Chines local governments have been get off on the lock downs and abusing the whole system,
MattF
OT. I’ve just discovered that there’s a trap in going to the Python.org website. If you lazily type .com instead of .org, you get redirected to a very different site. So, um… don’t.
The Up and Up
@CaseyL:
I deleted my Twitter account. It wasn’t memorable enough so I felt safe in that no one will claim. I followed Comrade Cole, Tom, Betty, and Yutsano from here. I can relate with Betty on signing up for Mastodon. The day I finally got in there was I think one English server accepting people? I haven’t done much with it though after that.
Anyhow hope everyone else is ok, maintaining, doing fun stuff, etc.
Lynn Dee
@Alison Rose: Ha. That is really good.
Roger Moore
@raven:
For your own address, you share it with other people. For other people’s addresses- say @[email protected] you paste it into the search box in the upper left of the web page. When you search on it, you should see a link to their profile and an opportunity to follow them.
Geminid
I think the Unabomber’s brother fingered him after the bomber’s manifesto was published in a couple newspapers with a national reach. It was one of the Unabomber’s demands, I believe. The brother recognized the content and notified the FBI.
Lynn Dee
I agree, Betty. Except that I’m a complete nobody on twitter (here too, as well, as attested to by all the blank looks!), but I enjoyed twitter, the experts in so many fields, the not-always-but-often good conversation, and — as a nobody — I was basically never trolled. So I’m sad at the loss of that space — and surprised by that. Musk is just making a spectacular ass of himself, empowering the Qanon-type folks and, in general, adding to the din in the worst way possible.
Haven’t tried mastodon, will probably try post.
So that’s that.
Arrghh.
jeffreyw
@raven:
i just followed you with the addy you just put up, but it is showing an hourglass.
raven
@Roger Moore: Thanks
Burnspbesq
Steve Vladeck and Popehat are what’s keeping me on Twitter. For now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this. It’s like that Pizza Gate Conspiracy Theorist who shot up that Pizza Restaurant when he realized there was no basement that the conspiracy theory depended upon. Rather than deal with the facts, he lashed out and attacked reality.
zhena gogolia
@Lynn Dee: Nobody here is a nobody!
rikyrah
I did lasagna in the air fryer
1. had to use 8×8 pans. two of them. 2. Shouldn’t put the cheese on the top. put a layer of the sauce with dollops of the ricota cheese/cottage cheese/spinach/italian cheeses mixture.
30 minutes at 350
20 minutes at 340
put the extra mozzarella on top only for the last 11 minutes on 340. it got cooked and bubbly, but, didn’t burn.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Everybody knows this is nowhere. . .
WaterGirl
@BR: Yeah, I can get to that page and i can see “…”
but i can’t click on it.
Lynn Dee
@Betty Cracker: Are you sure you haven’t been accepted at post? They’re so new it seems every communication from them has a new sender or identifier. Search your messages — including spam, junk and deleted — for “post news.” Searching for “Noam” won’t do it.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Starfish: Thank you!!
FelonyGovt
I left Twitter a while ago, closed my account. I almost never tweeted and had precious few followers, but enjoyed following some political and sports fan accounts (as well as your account, Betty C). But the anti-Semitism and racism did it for me.
Quiltingfool
I just joined Mastadon ([email protected]). Going to take a minute to figure stuff out. Like making a profile. Sad, isn’t it?
BR
@WaterGirl:
If you have a mastodon account on any server, it should let you click on the “…” — I just tried in one browser where I wasn’t logged in and another where I was, and I was able to embed on the browser I was logged in, and it worked even with posts from users who are on other servers.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
That’s how I recall it. The FBI was nowhere close to finding him.
zhena gogolia
Is it possible for innocent bystanders to read Mastodon, as we still sort of can on Twitter? Or do you have to join it yourself?
IdahoGoatGirl
I am a lurker, trying to learn Mastodon. Here is my handle just in case you are wondering who this Scouty person is that has followed you. @[email protected] I am likely to only post pics of goats and other animals.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Cough drops are better than they used to be. The Mucilex insta-soothe really works. The old ones would clear up my nose they were so strongly flavored but other than that, a waste of time.
BR
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, definitely — you can just browse mastodon in a web browser even without an account. And unlike twitter, it doesn’t block/force login of non-users after some some amount of time.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Burnspbesq: @[email protected]
MattF
@zhena gogolia: I believe you have to join a server to get access or to follow anyone— at least that’s been my experience. The Mastodon standard for exchanging information applies to servers.
BR
@MattF:
You don’t have to join a server to lurk on mastodon. Just start browsing. For example, here’s the local timeline of the journalist mastodon server:
https://journa.host/public/local
Here’s George Takei:
https://universeodon.com/@georgetakei
MattF
@BR: I suppose it’s up to the particular server whether to allow browsing.
BR
@MattF:
Oh, hmm. I haven’t found any that block it, but that makes sense.
Rachel in Portland
I had apocalyptic nightmares two nights in a row after reading Twitter before bedtime. Read a novel last night instead and had sweet dreams. The Fauci stuff is the last straw for me as well–but leading up to that, the principal conversation on Twitter right now is the Elon Musk psychodrama, and I agree with Betty that I can’t give it any more attention, and I am also sad about it. I wonder where Darth will go.
MattF
@BR: Well, the one I’m on, mathstodon.xyz, gave me only very limited access at first. Depends on what audience the server is going for, I guess.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I guess that’s why the FBI finally asked the newspapers to publish the manifesto. They were probably reluctant to give the Unabomber what he wanted, but they were stymied and hoped someone would recognize the author. The brother did.
BR
@MattF:
Interesting. Maybe server policies changed recently? It seems to let me browse without being logged in:
https://mathstodon.xyz/public/local
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
If someone he has defamed on his tool is harmed by anyone, Musk will be sued out of existance, financially.
if Yoel Roth, for example, is harmed, Musk will be liable for huge damages — really, just the online defamation opens him up to huge judgements…
Noskilz
As someone with no real footprint to speak of on twitter, I seem to have been largely spared the worst of the new regime, but it is also obvious it cannot survive for long on the trajectory Musk has set for it.
I’m only sticking around as long as useful and interesting people seem to be on it, and they are increasingly heading for the exits with good reason.
Basically putting a hit out on Yoel Roth seems to have been final straw for many.
Starfish
@J R in WV: The lawsuits are beginning, but they will take time.
The former female employees are suing because he fired like 15% more women than men.
A bunch of employees are suing because he is giving people less than the amount of notice that their state requires.
He is requiring people to sleep in the office while firing the janitorial staff. People have speculated that the fire marshal may have things to say about employees sleeping at the office.
J R in WV
@CaseyL:
Your link from your nym is only [@mastodon.nz.] — you are missing the @caseyl part — if I understand the linking process at all, which is no sure thing.
Librarian
I joined Twitter last March, so I’m not much inconvenienced by its downfall. I rarely posted and followed few people, including Tom Nichols, and Russia-Ukraine experts like Trent Telenko. I’m on Mastodon, on a small instance mostly for 18th century historians, and have found a community of academics there better than anything on twitter. I am following more people there than I ever did on twitter, and also those who moved from twitter, like Ben Wittes who started his own instance.
Starfish
— Marcus Hutchins
Albatrossity
@Yutsano: The problem is that you posted your Mastodon addy without the first “@”.
That is a Mastodon idiosyncrasy, but I found you when I searched for @[email protected]
zhena gogolia
@BR: Good to know! I guess I’ll have to figure out how to go there.
zhena gogolia
@BR: Well, I was able to read those, but it seemed more incoherent than Twitter.
FelonyGovt
Just signed up on Mastodon. [email protected]. I will attempt to follow everyone here who’s provided their info.
BR
@zhena gogolia:
The local browsing view isn’t really apples-to-apples twitter, since it’s just showing you everything from all users of a server. That’s a firehose of random content. Like with twitter it’s still better to follow specific users rather than just get random stuff, but some servers have good local feeds because it has a specific niche.
Starfish
@zhena gogolia: That allows people to be interested in a variety of stuff and find their place. It also makes it harder to have a Main Character and dog pile someone.
I searched for the Ukraine hashtag and found
@[email protected]
@[email protected]
I don’t know if any of these are reliable or not.
In addition to following people, you can follow hashtags on topics.
WereBear
@Sister Golden Bear: Once you use favorite hashtags to find people to follow, the home button becomes your personal feed.
Unless you don’t like the server, no need to switch to fully participate. But if you do use hashtags to find the like-minded folks, look at their server name.
El Cruzado
@Alison Rose: Searching by identifier ought to work across Mastodon servers but as with any highly distributed system glitches are likely to happen.
If nothing else new accounts take a while to be found across all the federated server space.
The URL search is the one “guaranteed” to work either way (assuming servers are up etc.) so if you got that you should be good to go to find someone and follow.
Roger Moore
@Starfish:
I don’t know about the fire marshal specifically, but ISTR the City of San Francisco had some questions about whether Twitter HQ was properly permitted as a residence. Basically, I think Musk- and a lot of MOTU types like him- is used to being able to break laws like that with impunity. Either TPTB ignore the violations because they don’t want to drive a big employer away, or his lawyers can stall the lawsuits indefinitely and try to fatigue the other side into giving up. The impunity part is clearly coming to an end, and I hope the ability to stall indefinitely will also not last.
FelonyGovt
@Roger Moore: It will be nice if California gets serious about investigating accidents involving “self-driving” Teslas.
JaySinWA
Tautology alert!
Roger Moore
@FelonyGovt:
I’m not holding my breath on anyone investigating the Tesla crashes, but there are a bunch of employment discrimination suits. Those were one of the things that soured me the most on Tesla, even before the rest of Musk’s descent into QAnon madness. They were a sign he A) doesn’t give a damn about the law and B) developed his attitudes in Apartheid-era South Africa.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
Considering twitter has been around for some time and had advertisers, so at least some money coming in, and 7000 or so employees, and constantly had to work on the structure while millions of people used it daily, often continuously, I’d be stunned beyond belief that someone could set up a system like it without a few billion dollars. But that’s how mastodon works, by having a number of servers to sign on to and that communicate as necessary rather than constantly. And I’d bet that twitter was the same thing it’s just that it’s servers were all in their own server facilities. Have you ever been in a server room and or know how it works? Because it is many servers that basically do the same as mastodon except all the servers are in one room or several rooms tied together, around the country. Mastodon just does this without the cost of a huge server room and in a way that the entire system can grow at a reduced cost.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Billionaires are a policy failure.
Simple, right to the point, and true. Nice.
Skepticat
Please don’t link to anything on Twitler. I’ve never been on it, and I don’t want my computer screen soiled with anything that mucking Musk touches.
karen marie
I am delighted that eight people used the invite link I provided above. It works!
Any issues you may have in your early days at Mastodon will resolve. Other than some of the people I followed on twitter not being there (yet) (primarily my farm follows), after a month, I am very happy with my decision to cancel my twitter account.
If anyone has any questions about how things work, ask by posting (and use hashtags) generally or ask me – I might know (but I’m still a novice and a light user compared to a lot of people) or I might be able to direct you to someone who can help
Earlier I put up a “hi!” post with the hashtag “BalloonJuice” – you may find folks here from searching for that hashtag.
karen marie
There’s an account called @[email protected] that has helpful tips on helping people understand how to make things work for them.
ETtheLibrarian
I quit about 2 hours ago. Didn’t even download my tweets because that would have just been a delay and for no real reason.
I wasn’t getting the nasty stuff, but was seeing more people I respected tapping out. It’s never going to finally fail unless more people leave and not stay just because.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
Israel demolishes the homes of the families of terrorists. Republicans approve of that tactic, right?
piratedan
[email protected] :-)
Lynn Dee
@zhena gogolia:
Thank you, Zhena!
Cephalus Max
@BR: Thanks!