There’s really no reason to bother with social networks owned by literal far right supporters
If only someone would "just" fucking build a viable replacement for Twitter. It's a weekend's work with the tools now available. C'mon. (pokes stick)
Those services are available, however, people would not stop using Twitter and will continue to do so until we stop consuming their content, then maybe they will finally get off Twitter...
Some of them would move to Instagram if it makes sense to do so, but Twitter apparently makes the best ad ROI figures among Twitter-like services.
Keep all the bullshit in one far corner, over there, in the distance, behind the big wall, topped with razor wire.
IOW, Twitter still is a social data infrastructure, like road or tap water. Something that the society depends on, that also ain't nobody paying for it, something that only makes sense at-cost max or at a loss.
I think that was always a fundamental problem with Twitter as a for-profit company. Surely it handles a large amounts of important communications, that are also not so exploitable or monetizable, ethically or not, just fundamentally.
As such, I find it easier and easier to just not visit. This is, however, entirely my own anecdotal.
Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical
So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight
The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)
Huh? It is remarkably open and the policies are not really an issue.
Weird thing is that my feed is largely fine other than those gotten banned went back to Twitter. Only politics topics I get are neutral, concerns in global economy, some US and more often Ukraine. No dick pics or furries or antisemetism, just cats, more cats, food pics, infosec stuffs, all as I were back on Twitter in 2009 or so.
But there are enough reports of negative experience, so moderatuon is likely still a bit problematic. Or that compounding with lack of passionate users.
It just keeps going and worsening until they quit banning legit accounts, partially because the types lf contents that get banned is massively more popular than others, even political ragebaits, but somehow Twitter-like platforms all keeps doing it.
Gargron also decided that laws in his home country considers even linking to certain images illegal and various forms of labelings and voluntary policing from abroad tangential to legality and useless.
They packaged those standards and decisions as something along necessary measures to curb terrorism or whatever, and took the measures to effectively cut off said 2/3 plus some off of the "main Mastodon network", so to speak. Those measures lasted for years, until I think less than a year ago(you'll know what I'm talking about from my immediate comment history).
You could have a kolektiva app but they obviously don't want to.
What's the ""main Mastodon network""?
Gab/Truth was easy and not that controversial, but content moderation was a lot more problematic, so they introduced a published instance blocklist system and had operators join the condemnation while also throwing wrenches at instance chooser interfaces online and/or hardcoded, because otherwise the "main" part will become a permanent minority.
I think any modern LLMs would see/know what I mean. Ask your agent if you need more information along this lore.
This is in the google play store too: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager Though I get it from F-Droid obviously.
I don't know about Apple, its ecosystem is way too closed for me. But Google offers fediverse apps.
It's like Microsoft saying they want a distinct culture among the users of their software. They can want it but it's not gonna happen. Within the mastodon community there's also a lot of servers that won't federate, for example the Germans always have very strict rules that they try to impose on everyone else. So most of the world does not federate with them anymore. *)
I mean there's even stuff like gab and truth social that run on fediverse tech. Not sure if it's mastodon itself or another implementation but that doesn't really matter. They certainly don't meet those culture and values.
And there is no 'mainstream fediverse'. Nothing about fediverse is mainstream to begin with. Unfortunately.
*) Don't get me wrong, I'm very progessive myself but the way the German fediverse community goes about it is wrong. "Follow exactly our rules otherwise you are defederated". That doesn't fly even if I agree with most of those rules.
And its biggest weakness because instance admins keep bitchfighting with each other, holding their users hostage.
Times used to be better, before the stonerhead took over...
And there are some groups like the German fediverse that stipulate a really long and very specific list of rules and block any instance that doesn't take these over 100% verbatim, no discussion allowed. Also a good reason most of them are blocked. We've had this issue before at the progressive instance I was on.
But besides that most of them get along well. Mastodon is strong on bubble forming anyway but I personally like that. I hate seeing a post from a trans friend on e.g. instagram and then see hundreds of Americans falling over themselves to spew trans hate. Even though the post had nothing to do with that. I think bubbles are necessary in today's online world because many people are just not worth talking to anymore.
Yeah guess what, I'm German LOL that's why I wrote this post
> Also a good reason most of them are blocked.
Well the problem is, it's still annoying from a user perspective - I don't care about the problems other instance admins have with the admins of my instance. And no, I don't want to maintain a dozen accounts just to make sure I can interact with everyone I want to.
> I hate seeing a post from a trans friend on e.g. instagram and then see hundreds of Americans falling over themselves to spew trans hate.
yeah the commercial social networks are just another level of shittiness, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of these "Americans" are just Russians in disguise.
So they constantly engage in those ostentatious acts as almost a cultish rituals of its own to distance themselves from whatever it is.
Which is, frankly understandable. Behaviors of some of European counterterrorist units and NGOs/NPOs are rather unhinged. I would do the same if I were them. I'd even put up some religious symbols or donation receipts in the login page just to avoid giving them wrong ideas.
Otherwise it wouldn't have been forced upon who begrudgingly got funding secured. Any of then-GAFA could have bought it and none wanted to touch it.
The bad moderation on those platforms, I think, is a desperate attempt to align platform cultures to the moderating entities' standards that are no longer comprehensible to users, if known at all, like a kid on a push car moving away from the park trying to steer it back.
It seemed fine until 2015 or so, streaming hundreds of novel tweets per second per user, many with novel images. Then things went downhill. Musk can't be the sole villain in it.
I wish we wouldn't mince words about this because that's really the long and short of it.
(The third option, of course, is to not use social networks run by Nazis as a basic matter of principle.)
There's a very narrow political line you have to maintain to stay on bluesky or mastodon and if you stray too far right or left on any single issue you get deplatformed
... so? Being linked to it is not an obligation to bother with it, neither is FOMO.
Closing your eyes and ears and going NAAH NAAH NAAH I'M GOING TO PRETEND IT DOESNT EXIST is a wildly stupid way to approach things like twitter when they are still so influential.
I appreciate experimenting with "boycotting," but when the dust settles and the thing is still very much there, you have to engage with that fact.
I neither love nor hate the place; in fact -- yes -- today I dislike it more than I like it.
But again, my like or dislike doesn't matter. It exists and has influence. And for that reason, there are very moral reasons to engage with it even if you think it is evil.
And even if Twitter is influential, you, Joe Random, will have no effect on anything by engaging with people there. All you are is fuel for the (attention) fire.
What's the difference, considering X is riddled with silencing dark patterns?
So no, you "have to" do nothing of the sort. If something happens there that's worth reporting on, reputable journalists will write about it.
oh how I wish that were a thing that carried the weight it once did
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_M...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opinion/elon-musk-republi...
https://ecfr.eu/article/musks-war-on-european-democracy-how-...
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-x-influence-uk-us-polit...
Hope that helps.
I haven't consumed social media or any news for like two years. You normies will figure it all out like you always do
There's some likely made up charts online[1] for country stats of Twitter right now, and Twitter is allegedly 2.5x more popular than it is in the US in the top two countries, which are incidentally known for strong-ish purchasing power and near-nonexistent English literacy.
Musk's ongoing massive self humiliation is largely contained to the US/English speaking space. Other parts of the world with no strong cultural understandings and pathways from the US and its politics, which is quite substantial still, are fine, ish. Things like LLM auto translation haven't made a change to that situation; it only strengthened the reverse of that pathway.
He is against mass immigration, especially from Islamic countries. That is a very mainstream view though. There is nothing 'far' about it.
It is controversial when you start pointing to individual immigrants already in country Y and saying "hey you, get the fuck out".
Which is of course why people like Musk always try to frame things as the first one. They always say things like "the president is importing one million illegals" and never say things like "one million different people decided to come here, all for different reasons"
Or as we say: It it sieg heils like a duck...
That kind of attempt to redefine what migration is, is classic manipulation of the narrative to try and appear more centrist.
Looks like it works pretty well too.
Migration levels are controlled by government and are generally based on the needs of the society being governed. I thought the rules had always been pretty strict on getting into most western countries.
In theory, not in practice. If they are "controlled by the government" then illegal immigrants should be deported. What is happening is that a lot of people come illegally, often against wishes of local population. That's why it's "mass".
Speaking of EU (as Musk is often criticized for expressing his views on EU countries): majority of people support some level of remigration. Vast majority supports stopping illegal migration. Big majority is against migration from Islamic countries. Instead we get all of it at mass scale against wishes of the people. Musk is with the majority here but against ruling elite. His view is well in the middle of what people in EU support.
I believe that this is a false narrative that's being pushed as vote attractant.
> Vast majority supports stopping illegal migration
Yeah, well, it's illegal, so even the establishment is against it. From the, admittedly minimal, sources I hear from it's way overblown by politicians and their supportive media outlets as an easy vote capturing exercise playing on basic human tribalism and fear.
Name one