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I decided to take some time to reflect on some of the #QuoteBoost discourse, from the lens of moderation and community development. I expect these are not new thoughts since there's a lively discourse to which I'm largely oblivious.
Special thanks to @futurebird, whose posts have been especially illuminating for me.
https://write.as/collisiondomain/some-thoughts-on-quote-boosts
@cd24 @futurebird I get the desire for them but in my experience the negative side has been much worse than the positive side. Quoting out of context to inflame followers is an easy way to gain notoriety. And replying directly to a post takes more guts than those craven simps usually have. I prefer boosting a post I find noteworthy and adding a reply if I think I have something to say to my followers. Boosting doesn’t mean I agree, it means I think it’s worth discussing
@PongoTwistleton @futurebird I can understand the intuition that others will abuse the tool, but I do not think the risks are unique to QB and avoiding rich support for links within mastodon really just makes the moderators job harder. The bad actors you’re describing there will still do a “QB” but it will be much harder for mods to enforce policy against them.
@cd24 @PongoTwistleton @futurebird one thing I find perplexing is the presence of both these responses:
1 quote boosts lead to abuse
2 a boosted reply is equivalent to a quote boost
What stops someone from replying with a dunk, and then boosting it and the original post, for their followers to pile on? Because that happens now, and is more costly to moderate.
"Craven simps too cowardly to reply" doesn't hold water. Trolls *usually* reply, that's how it works.
@isaacs @cd24 @PongoTwistleton @futurebird The only thing I can think of is context: “Look at this [insult]” works differently when you can see it. Having to click through and scroll back takes more effort, and dims the outrage a little. I think there’s some truth in that, especially since Mastodon is always a little slow, but probably less than people think (assuming that’s what they’re thinking)
I was thinking about the merits of the opposite extreme. A system without any boosts. The only option is a quote-boost or a reply. In other words *add something* to the discussion, don't just passively re-share or like.
In examining why I care about this issue so much, I think one of the more personal reasons is due to finding much more value in replies & being quoted with a reply than in likes or boosts.
What we have here is a system that needs boosts to work and blocks quotes.
@futurebird @iramjohn I like this a lot. Reminds me of ye olde blogs, where you'd typically quote a bit, provide a link, and add your own commentary or reasoning for its inclusion on your site.
n95
@futurebird @iramjohn the result would be people boosting by going 
(Boosted thing)i
@futurebird@sauropods.win @iramjohn@mastodon.social
I wonder if commenting propels posts through the Fediverse as well as boosting? I imagine it works better in Misskey where I can see the post being replied to than in Mastodon where I have to click through to see it.
@futurebird @iramjohn
This makes more sense for me as well.
@futurebird @iramjohn I'm similarly passionate regarding searching for content-discovery, but that gets a similar response in relation to abuse.
I've seen https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/109578183000537458 and I wish this could be ported into to glitch or even vanilla
@uc @futurebird @iramjohn Yeah, geography is really helpful general search when looking for news.
Would love that use case to be addressed.
There is also the point that, especially on a platform as increasingly diverse as this is, any quote-reply is potentially a boost into another community of readers, with or without "boosting" as an explicit feature.
@futurebird @iramjohn I really like sharing funny and/or insightful things with others. It often leads others to reply to the OP and broadens the topic or makes it funnier, or leads to friendships. "What she said!" is okay if you agree with someone, yeah?
I also really like getting a little note that someone liked what I wrote when they favorite, even if no one else will ever know. Maybe they're shy. Maybe it's just a virtual pat-on-the-back, "good job". Maybe it's just a moment of compassion.
Sometimes you need to be anonymous about some of the things you like, or someone said something that you largely agree with but wouldn't phrase in the same way. I find I want to give encouragement, but I don't want to endorse yet. And I don't want to have to get into a discussion about how I "agree with the sentiment" but don't like the manner or the words.
Or someone doesn't need my words, just my acknowledgment.
I like the opt-in nature of the #fediverse. As long as I can choose, all good.
@futurebird @iramjohn If the Explore feature counted replies, faves and boosts, it would be helpful in surfacing top content. But it would also probably need to federate in order to bring in content from other instances.
I want quotes or annotations for boosts as well, for context adding, hashtag adding, and for visibility without having to boost my replies.
Soon some instances will have quote-boosts, and then we'll see how that flies. It might be helpful for users to have opt out for posts.
@futurebird @iramjohn New user here. I’m feeling the lack of QTs here keenly, mainly because when I boost a post, I do so with the expectation that the small group of people who follow me will be interested to read something... and more interested when I comment on why the boosted post interests me. I want to invite my friends into a conversation. It’s frustrating not to be able to do that. Merely boosting feels so passive.
@megmuttonhead @futurebird @iramjohn that’s it exactly, it’s passive.
@megmuttonhead@mas.to @futurebird@sauropods.win @iramjohn@mastodon.social if you reply then your followers will see your reply and then the thread. Not the same but it’s not too bad. I enjoy these richer discussions
@megmuttonhead @futurebird @iramjohn absolutely this. Boosting makes me feel like I'm literally reimplementing an algorithm myself like a manual cog in a wheel rather than actually adding context.
Even with retweets I knew Twitter would filter it out appropriately (ish), and likes helped. But I boost much more often here, and feel like a robot every time 
@futurebird Here is the thing: if everyone who wanted quote-posts moved to an instance who supported them (hint: there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of them), they could have what they want and still be able to interact with Mastodon servers. Furthermore, if they went away from Mastodon en masse to Misskey or Pleroma, and Mastodon was reduced to a minority actor in the Fediverse, it would have to adopt the new standard.
So, let’s see whether those master ‘organisers’ decide to move their asses and get what they’re asking for.
People won't need to move, the changes will come when some servers decide to simply update with forks that support the feature.
@futurebird Incrementalism FTW!
Listen, those who want that feature can’t code, and those who can, either don’t want that feature, or already have it implemented, but not on Mastodon or any of its forks. If you’re willing to live with the status quo, that’s alright with me. I do have quote posts on this instance, but, with all due respect, your stance is simply ineffective.
You don't need to know how to code to ask your admin to consider updating to the #hometown fork of Mastodon on the next server upgrade.
Anyone can do that.
Though, given that most of the forks of Mastodon are implementing QT I don't think it's true that "those who want that feature can’t code" Just something you see to be assuming for some reason.
@futurebird Yes, anyone can ask. Meanwhile, those who can actually do stuff remain the gatekeepers of what actually gets done.
Good luck convincing admins of installing a new tool because some people who couldn’t be bothered to do it themselves want some feature that the whole Fediverse is divided about and has barely been used for years even where it is available. Also good luck convincing Mastodon developers of supporting at least showing those quote-posts as they’re meant to appear instead of just as links. Finally, good luck convincing moderators of working much more for free.
I already gave you a solution, but as a really wise man said, YDHTTMWFI.
@josemanuel@qoto.org @futurebird@sauropods.win maybe we shouldn't support hopeful feature implementation on Mastodon or their forks. the original brand is quite posessive of the image and functionality of Mastodon to the point of expecting their users to not discover Misskey or Pleroma, and anything implemented elsewhere they will actively seek to silence by making the post make no sense due to feature disparity. it does not fail gracefully, it saves face.
we just have to get used to what the brand wants or expect dissenting users to change to another implementation altogether.
(mastodon reads like a brand to me at this point. that is not good for any FOSS code.)
>tfw can't snug klonoa IRL 
|
It really is a brand at this point though, the same goes with the cult of personality around Eugen that only exists on the Mastodon side. They treat Eugen like he's their Jack Dorsey, an internet daddy of sorts. It's also a joke outside Mastodon that it's referred to as "The Mastodon Network" by journalists and casual Mastodon users.
@PhenomX6 @josemanuel @futurebird @ink8
The is a thread on this https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ but site down at mo... The "center of activertypub" needs more competent people to get involved.
It's getting messy, the loon and mad energy is the default.
The other thing is Mastodon has gained a bad rep among AP developers for doing things "it's own way" and being picky about accepting messages, among other things. There's also a feeling that AP for the longest time was whatever Mastodon/Eugen wanted because of the critical mass, and yet all the new features being added outside the Mastodon mainline ecosystem is proving the opposite is true.
The good thing is, it's also easier to self-host the alternatives. I've managed to make Pleroma work on a SPARC workstation as a server and I've seen Pleroma work on the worst/cheapest VPSes as well.
I've encountered this kind of pessimism before about Mastodon (kept me from supporting their patreon for a long time.) They recently posted a roadmap; that has given me hope they will focus on ... growing not dominating.
It's tempting to buy-in to the idea that ugly way QTs from other services look on mastodon servers is a conspiracy-- but I don't want to totally jump to that conclusion.
It's better for all of us if this can be ... cooperative.
@futurebird@sauropods.win QT on Misskey appear as both a reply and an individual post. What would be the negative there? It's purely cosmetic.
And Mastodon kinda does have the image that the devs do what they want as they might be on a power trip. There's no reason whatsoever to not have implemented Misskey's QTs yet, or custom emoji reactions. Indeed, they haven't even implemented unicode emoji reactions.
They haven't implemented five-option polls. They haven't implemented support for more than four images. They want to baby their userbase like GNOME does their desktop environment's users by removing anything that a human could find confusing; however they try to make it into a perfect work of art instead, because they don't actually care about implementing features or perfecting the user experience.
And I don't care much for Mastodon's success either, because of "The Mastodon Network" being a thing at all. And I will not use expletives here but I really would like to, because they're being really hostile to basically anyone who doesn't run mainstream official Mastodon code.
It's not pessimism. It's hatred.
@ink8 GNOME is good, if you want extra stuff, there's extensions. There's no 'babying,' it simply has a different goal from KDE, XFCE, and so on. They're all good. This really doesn't help your case, there's different WMs for different folks' wants and needs, and that's okay, that's open source.
@20kqueso@queer.party "This really doesn't help your case"
Do you realize the actual connotations of this choice of words?
Never mind the fact that you're trying to derail the thread. Don't bother me.
@ink8 Buddy I agree with you, but you're not making sense
@20kqueso@queer.party I don't even know what to reply to you. I don't need every single part of my post to make sense to every single person that comes across the post. I'm talking about Mastodon here. If you wanna actually talk about GNOME go make a post elsewhere.
@ink8 You used it, poorly, as an example for your argument, hence my whining. I'm not opposed to you or what you're attempting to say, but that's it. 
@20kqueso@queer.party DUDE WHO CARES
How have they been hostile? Can you explain a little more?
(NOT doubting you at all. I just have not been around here for years and don't know the history. I was shocked to see that features and issues that I was raising as if new have languished in the discussion and known bugs sections of github for years. I am "Concerned" and remain "Concerned" -- )
How did it go down? Tell me more.
https://archive.fo/k26Ij
The end result of this mindset however is more pronounced outside of Mastodon's mainline branch. There's forks like Fedibird, Glitch-Soc, and Hometown with Mastodon that add in emoji reacts, quote posts, and the like. These are features that mainline Mastodon has lagged beyond and there's a reason for that: Eugen didn't create them either.
Wander further into the sphere of Misskey and Pleroma and you'll notice that they absolutely love to add new features, and the people who use these features tend to get hooked on them. This isn't always the case, as Soapbox-FE only supports limited emoji reacts (I've heard the reason for that is that Alex does not want to add negative reacts to the site him and his wife run to slow userbase deterioration) despite numerous people asking him for it. But lately in the fediverse all the new features get added by the Misskey or Pleroma devs (or one of their fork devs). I'm talking about quote posting, emoji reacts, better moderation tools (you can ban problem users from your instance as opposed to entire domains), and whatnot.
There's also numerous forks of them as well, either website specific forks or forks because features wouldn't be added into mainline Pleroma/Misskey.
Thanks for this great history.
I think there is an assumption that people who have come from twitter just want to jump in with the "make it like twitter" camp.
I don't think it's that simple. This huge new group of users isn't a monolith.
I do think there are ways to mitigate various levels of privacy-- other issues need to be more consistent. And some debates just seem... silly.
@futurebird Just a note of appreciation for your persistence and patience. I'm learning a lot from following these conversations, both about the topic and from your approach in pursuing possible solutions. Cheers!
Privacy? IDK go on facebook and make a group-- or if it is higher stakes use tor and forum software.
Public internet spaces are a special challenge and there are few good solutions that bring strangers together.
Do we need more private things?
@PhenomX6 @futurebird @ink8 Sounds like open source is doing it's thing. I don't know anything about this Eugen, but if he wants to run things as a benevolent dictator for life (hourly more benevolent than Torvalds (love hearing the man's thoughts but his behaviour as BD4L is hard to justify 3 decades), while others can fork it and create the vertical microblogging change they want to see in the world, then great. Many of the forks are interoperable, if I'm not mistaken, so why not?
@PhenomX6 @futurebird @ink8 I was speaking more generally. Your post is the first I've heard of either of them, so I have zero valuable thoughts to share on those lol
@gordoooo_z@nerdculture.de @PhenomX6@fedi.pawlicker.com @futurebird@sauropods.win they're free :D
Misskey used to come with a room but they deprecated the feature. But we still have custom emoji reactions. For instance, I'm gonna react to your post with a ferret emoji
@gordoooo_z @PhenomX6 @futurebird @ink8 Whatever Eugen decides at this point it’s irrelevant. He’s pretty much lost his grip over holding the Fediverse brand as secondary to the notion of a fantasy “mastodon network” when he gave that Time Magazine interview two months ago in which the word “Fediverse” appeared not one single time - that caused enormous, untold damages including confusion that remains in the news media and disenfranchisement of large swaths of developers and users alike on not just other platforms, but mastodon instances themselves.
There’s really no such thing as toots anymore, Eugen himself refers to “Posts” and “Quote Posts”, and the submit button in mastodon now says “publish”. The reason #Misskey calls them “notes” is because that’s what they are actually called in #ActivityPub - there are also other types, that other platforms use as well, including “article”, although, instances like #qoto have set the character count for notes at 65535 
It’s been covered in this thread already that Quote Posts are simply beyond the control of mastodon devs, Eugen’s edicts, or local mastodon users or admins, because most other platforms support it and there isn’t anything #mastopub can do about it. In Misskey, users can disallow it, but that only affects other local users, so it’s s moot point (except for silo instances).
There are very few Fediverse platforms that aren’t taking advantage of most things that are possible, for example, #Soapbox now has federated events, and introduced custom emoji reactions like Misskey has, and live chat - Misskey’s traditionally led the way with these federating features with #Calckey going even further.
Some platforms however, intentionally incorporate a leaner set of features; #Smithereen is one example, it doesn’t even sccomodate boosts, which harkens back to #Myspace, #VKontakte (aka, “VK” - not sure I spelled that right), and very early #Faceplant days. #Epicyon has anti-silo capabilities baked in.
#Mitra has #Substack style subscriptions at it’s core. Anyone can subscribe remotely from any Fediverse server instance where the user can receive DMs - and in congruence with privacy concerns that are typically expected for Fediverse implementations, it’s based on #Monero (XMR).
Most platforms also support #Markdown, with Cakckey being perhaps supporting the greatest superset IIRC, including #LaTEX, and #Friendica, being much older than msstodon, has continued to evolve over the past decade and still has support for #BBCode too, and direct links for uploading images for those who prefer to.
I didn’t see any mention of Markdown support when I bothered to look at the mastopub roadmap, yet even on that platform, Quote Posts are all throughout the stream and people boost and reply to them as the time - and, as mentioned earlier, anyone can create a post, simply pasting the link from someone else’s post, and then boost that… Voila! Local #Quote_Post.
mastodon was successful in its arrogance of leveraging some pretty graphics and welcoming verbiage into a brand that Eugen weaponized against virtually all other Fediverse platforms, and now, with all of the fine forks like #Hometown and several newcomers, we’ll soon be seeing hardforking as a result of that hostility.
But not just forks, funding and ambitious development as evidenced by existing and emerging platforms like #Cloudflare’s #Wildebeest, Tumbler, and the very unique, #Django based Takahē Fediverse server that I wrote about here:
https://tallship.writeas.com/takahe-a-new-fediverse-paradigm
Average people are already migrating in larger numbers everyday away from the archaic mastodonian resource hog to other, more capable and promising (and friendlier) platforms elsewhere in the Fediverse that have integrated and fully support #masto_migration, and even ones that don’t (yet) haver that feature.
Unlike other dinosaurs and the eponymous mammal for which Eugen chose the namesake of his #TootSuite product, we shouldn’t expect extinction for his platform, but the apathy and indifference levels are rising, as is the enmity in many sectors of the community for what others perceive as a betrayal (or sellout), and that kind of self-inflicted damage is often difficult to mitigate, with waves of disenchantment reverberating get into the future… Just look at what happened to #SourceForge - it still technically exists, but never recovered after the community betrayal it committed years ago.
And finally, there’s a irony so obvious that’s it’s not even plausible to deny… Eugen subverted the very rudimentary principal that the Fediverse network is ideologically predicated upon - #DeSoc… There’s no question that his goals shifted to that if building a silo for himself, at least to some great degree. Very sad.
An interesting thing about condescending others, you find yourself alone and isolated in an otherwise vibrant, busy world.
#tallship #Takahe #ActivityPub #privacy #community_values #FOSS
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@tallship @PhenomX6 @futurebird @ink8 Interesting. Thanks for the summary. I'll fill in the gaps from here, and definitely look into all these other projects. I am aware of Wildebeest, and from a technical standpoint, it sounds like a much leaner platform that might actually be able to handle the kind of growth Masodon has experience the last several months, but I'm more inclined to support something that isn't tied to a...
@tallship @PhenomX6 @futurebird @ink8 ... CloudFlare sized megalith (although I know it's open-source, and I'm sure someone will put in the work to untether it eventually).
Eugen just added his other monolithic silo mastodon server to a competing #CDN service following last week's DDoS attack:
https://www.chinafy.com/technology/fastly-china
#tallship #Fediverse #FOSS #ActivityPub #Privacy #fastly
.
Eugen's "Mastodon Network" branding combined with his tendency to silo users towards instances with a specific political viewpoint has somewhat neutered media attempts to promote or run hit pieces on the platform. Blueticks were signing up for instances, getting banned for no reason with no way to move to another instance easily (because getting banned blocks that usually), and going back to Twitter. It's also neutered hit pieces as journalists with no idea of the network will run a hit piece on "The Mastodon Network" instead. Case in point, a hit piece alleging it was full of CP and making the bold accusation that Eugen is trying to hide a CP problem didn't even name other instance software and while it named the fediverse, it only named GNU Social.
The other thing is that the branding thing Mastodon went for can be done better. Soapbox/Rebased is a great example of this. Soapbox has a UI designed to be easy for someone who grew up with phones and Twitter to use with no experience, as opposed to Mastodon being a total pain at times. Instead of running PR online, Alex prefers to make something that anyone can use.
The major problem with Soapbox/Rebased is that the developer has a hate army following him over his views on the transgender community (which basically call out the community), who will harass instance operators and threaten to block them (if they aren't posting wrongthink) and focus on the developer's political views over any aspect of the code, while whining that their Mastodon instance with 10 people crashed again. If this sounds crazy, a fedi admin who tried to contribute to GoToSocial got yelled at by the dev of it for even talking to Alex.
https://shitposter.club/notice/ASaCuox2fO9CZ11Jlg
Or how about someone getting a pull request to a website's modified code complaining about Alex:
https://gitlab.com/awoo.fyi/howler/-/issues/1
Or a while back some viral post sharing a nginx command to block all connections to Pleroma servers and whatnot, and making a blocklist of all servers:
https://ligma.pro/@r000t/109396033621130514
This mindset is also shared among Twitter refugees up to date with the latest drama, because the truth is, people who aren't extremely online and addicted to fedi meta drama don't even know anything about either side and could care less. I saw a left wing anarchist account on .social sharing fe.soapbox.pub the other day, which lets you log into your Mastodon instance and post there with Soapbox as the frontend.
At the same time, mainline Mastodon is lagging behind literally every single popular fediverse instance/server software in terms of features, okay maybe not behind GS, GoToSocial, and a few other dead ones. But the situation with it reminds me a lot of what's happened to Pleroma as of late.
Pleroma has had two forks that have gone in their own direction and added in features Pleroma wouldn't add. Rebased has added some from Akkoma and Pleroma, and Akkoma is basically "custom reactions the fork" and while the updates for Akkoma are literally "breaking shit for the sake of it" at times, the selling point is custom reactions. Reactions won't even make sense if you don't even use a Mastodon fork however because mainline Mastodon does not support these while Misskey, Pleroma (and it's forks), and whatnot do already. This happened for a different reason of course, both drama with Alex Gleason acting as a product leader (he's mellowed out some after only working on his own fork), and Lain taking a long break from the project to the point of seemingly being MIA online.
I'm seeing the same thing with fedibird, hometown, glitch-soc, and more Mastodon forks and while they might not fix Mastodon's resource hogging issue, they have features Eugen won't add. It's even worse because Mastodon isn't stalling development wise, Eugen is just not listening to the reality that the fedi is moving on without him. Nobody has been able to totally subvert the fedi since no single instance has gained critical mass (see e-mail) and the userbase there is absolutely anti-corporate, the media would rather let it rot in silence than try to shut it down because it's very hard to shut it down.
Actually Pleroma-FE supports BBCode as well and has several markdown options. Friendica wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that when a friend of mine ran an instance on it, it was being DDoSed by Mastodon instances seemingly which were flooding it with requests.
I haven't used Calckey but it's interesting to note how Calckey unlike Akkoma or some of the other lesser used forks has taken on a life of it's own. I'm not a fan of Misskey or how the original instance running it (stop.voring.me) is a resource hog and I'm sure the dev of it probably doesn't have the best opinion of me for numerous reasons, but the fact that it's eclipsed Misskey in terms of being mentioned by random people speaks volumes to just how strong word of mouth is on the fedi. I'll admit, I also never paid much attention to the misskey side of fedi either and instances that used it just ran it, but I also never heard the vocal complaints about it like I heard over Mastodon mainline or even Pleroma mainline (but it's also used less).
I wanted to use Misskey ages ago but the guide Google gave me was junk and outdated so I gave up on it and ignored the fedi for like 2 years
, maybe if I did earlier I'd be somewhere else in life IMO. Which speaks to just how much the fedi can survive without Eugen and Mastodon. The truth is, Eugen sees himself as the CEO of the fedi. He is not. No other fedi developer pretends to be the CEO of the fedi for a good reason; they know they're not. They're in it to have fun or because they're invested in using their own instances.
@PhenomX6 @tallship @futurebird @ink8 Thanks for even more info! I have come across a bit of this myself. Signed up for a Gleasonator account, and then came across Gleason's account, saw the word soyboy in his bio, and nope the fuck out, and ended up coming across said TERF blog post.
He seems like an interesting cat from the perspective of dude w/ code editor, but his opinions on human rights are garbage and his last name is the last thing I need tacked to the end of my first name lol.
@PhenomX6 @tallship @futurebird @ink8 Finding out there was no Markdown support was surprising to me. I used to do the ol' unicode italics/bolds trick on birdapp, but it's not great for accessibility, so I just kind of assumed an open source project like Mastodon would support something, if not Markdown. Genuinely surprised there's no formatting support of any kind.
Unfortunately, federating with php just wasn't performing for me, so my posts would take forever to federate. I'll own the fact that it's probably because my server was underpowered and had too little memory and a slow spinning hard drive, but when I moved to pleroma because it was lighter, I was seeing posts federate instantly and that was enough to keep me on it. Later I moved to Soapbox-fe and rebased.
Lots of great options, and lots of options for completely different things, such as peertube for video and lotide (or lemmy) for reddit style discussion boards.
The way everything connects together seems like the future to me. The way there isn't actually a CEO of the fediverse seems like the only way forward from my perspective -- many of us saw Google go from "don't be evil" to something some of us see as objectively evil, and many people loved twitter until Elon Musk bought it. As long as one person can control everything, that person can change even if you agree with them and like them today.
@PhenomX6 @gordoooo_z @futurebird @ink8 Yeah, lolz…
A few things there.
Calckey has great custom emoji reactions (Misskey does too, of course)
Alex must have pulled custom emoji reactions today. Dunno why, prolly temporary though. I’m on his home reference Soapbox/Rebased server instance and it’s a dream to use.
I dunno what I did, and I was still plugging GotoSocial for a while, but it’s kinda dead now, yet I got banned from the Matrix room and dunno why. I like getting the word out about good software regardless of whether the devs are hateful bigots like the GtS crowd - good Software is good software, but haters usually find nothing but failure in the end so i don’t plug it anymore.
I’m not mentioning Pleroma itself much anymore - not much has actually changed since this post, and it’s sad: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/ but that’s how things go. I don’t really follow Akkoma much either now, and unsubscribed from the git issue notificstions too.
I’ve had a few nimrods try that “hate army” bullshit on me, when advocating for Soapbox. They usually shut the fuck up though when I ask them why they enable JavaScript in their browsers or moreover, code with it, considering what an evil Satan person Brendan Eich is supposed to be (while they’re reading my query when they’re using Brave Browser lolz). They’re ignorance and hypocrisy knows little bounds. And then they are happy to paint themselves into a corner of an even smaller Fediverse by blocking me. Kewl - I prefer living life without hateful miscreants in my feeds anyway.
It’s an interesting perspective, your observation on the media taboo with respect to mastodon - it’s good that the JoinMastoPub cabal’s branding has minimized spillover of hit pieces into Fediverse proper. I hadn’t viewed it from that angle before
That graphic you posted, the author depended upon others taking their word for it - otherwise, they would have provided a link to the referenced blog post. But they didn’t, because what they said was a mischaracterization of what Alex blogged about.
I haven’t experienced any so-called Fediblock issues from this server, and only know of two that I interface with that actually block this one - Eugen’s main server is one, and that cesspit means nothing to me. If infantile miscreants want to paint themselves into a corner and remove themselves from society, that is their prerogative - I wrote an article about how silly they actually are in their folly here:
https://tallship.writeas.com/08-dec-12-dec-2022
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It’s quite validating what you said and I’m still at a loss to understand the capacity for hatred these morons are able to harness - it must hurt to have a heart so black and evil… But then again, I’ve always been a live and let die sort of person, not really giving a good shit one way or the other if someone wants to create such a miserable existence for themselves. It’s their life after all, and some folks just ain’t happy unless they’re miserable, 
I”mma follow you now, coz it’s good to know folks that keep up with the actual development side of things as much (and prolly better even) than I do
>It’s an interesting perspective, your observation on the media taboo with respect to mastodon - it’s good that the JoinMastoPub cabal’s branding has minimized spillover of hit pieces into Fediverse proper. I hadn’t viewed it from that angle before
Oh it has. Beforehand there were incidents like the Decentralized Web of Hate hit piece from a Mozilla fellow. But the thing with the Mastodon push is this, numerous people did not know about Mastodon before the Twitter buyout. They now see it as another failed social media site due to Eugen completely fumbling presentation. There was a post I saw a while back that advocated not telling journalists, Twitter refugees, and tourists how the fedi works in order to keep them in the dark about this so that they couldn't subvert the fedi with "NEO NAZI WEBSITE" hit pieces (as seen with basically anything that ever gets big that isn't caving to Apple's ToS policies) and would redirect them to Eugen. For example, the hit piece saying Mastodon had a pedo problem actually told people to contact Eugen himself about instances he did not run.
So when they write an article about journalists getting harassed, they think it's Mastodon doing it and not instances running some other thing, because to them it's all Mastodon all the way down. It's literally Eugen's own marketing backfiring hard on him.