Mastodon isn't monolithic, and only exists because of server admins and people that work hard to build communities.
You sound like you've never actually used Mastodon or even understand how it works. Even as someone that's only used it a handful of times I noticed right away how much different it was from Twitter, in terms of what it allowed. I can't speak for all Mastodon instances but the one I used actually let people post NSFW content and porn so what you're saying about Mastodon not respecting free speech is unfounded. Are you considering Twitter a bastion of free speech where you aren't even able to mock its owner despite following the rules and labelling yourself as parody?
Mastodon isn't threatened by ideas and conversations, it's a culture shock between capitalist social media and homegrown self-hosted communities. The whole point is that the community decides for itself what it wants to look like, and if you don't like it then you run your own instance where you can do whatever you want. So having the freedom to run your own server and decide what content and community you want doesn't constitute respecting free speech? That is a freedom you will never get from Twitter.
The Twitter "refugees" joining it don't understand that self hosting an instance is a largely thankless job that requires lots of time and money just to keep the lights on, and don't understand decentralization and federation. They just want the same narcissistic and centralized self-promoting rewards structure as Twitter, while Mastodon was designed against that and that's why people originally chose it over Twitter. Instead it's supposed to be a chill place where people can be weird.
If really you want to host a gigantic, centralized Mastodon instance for that sort of Twitter experience that's also friendly to edgelords, no one is stopping you.
>Mastodon isn't monolithic, and only exists because of server admins and people that work hard to build communities.
Sure and yet they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
>You sound like you've never actually used Mastodon or even understand how it works.
In fact I was an early adopter who has a coveted handle. I did the same with the various other social media.
>I can't speak for all Mastodon instances but the one I used actually let people post NSFW content and porn so what you're saying about Mastodon not respecting free speech is unfounded.
My pihole blocks porn. I did not particularly go seeking this out on mastodon. I don't follow how you went from 'they allow porn, so no censorship' when there's a years long history of them censoring.
>Are you considering Twitter a bastion of free speech
No. This is why Elon needed to buy it and fire all the political activists. It may be a bastion of free speech in a few months.
>where you aren't even able to mock its owner despite following the rules and labelling yourself as parody?
I saw it for myself before she was banned. Kathy Griffin NEVER labelled herself as parody and was pushing 'vote for the democrats' under elon's name. Not only is this an actual crime, it was never allowed on twitter.
Kathy was banned because she was not following the rules.
>If really you want to host a gigantic, centralized Mastodon instance for that sort of Twitter experience that's also friendly to edgelords, no one is stopping you.
I created my account on twitter only days ago. I must say, really loving the changes so far.
> Sure and yet they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Are you referring to Mastodon developers or server owners? For someone that has actually used Mastodon you still seem to be confusing where responsibility lies. And again, you can maintain your own cookie jar if you choose to by running your own server as you see fit.
> In fact I was an early adopter who has a coveted handle. I did the same with the various other social media.
Great, you must feel very special.
> I saw it for myself before she was banned. Kathy Griffin NEVER labelled herself as parody and was pushing 'vote for the democrats' under elon's name. Not only is this an actual crime, it was never allowed on twitter.
I wasn't referring to her, there were others, specifically @h3h3productions:
Actual crimes? What law specifically are you referring to? You do know parody is also considered a protected class of free speech? Do you really not see the irony here?
> My pihole blocks porn. I did not particularly go seeking this out on mastodon. I don't follow how you went from 'they allow porn, so no censorship' when there's a years long history of them censoring.
My point is that what constitutes "censorship" is relative. Twitter might be guilty of "censorship" by disallowing porn, just as any Mastodon instance might be guilty of "censorship" by banning someone for violating the community standards that a particular instance owner and/or community decides. By running a Pi-Hole that blocks porn, you are also choosing to participate in censorship.
The point being, that if you feel like you are being unfairly "censored" and not allowed to post what you want, then you can run your own Mastodon server. You are not being "censored" by the entirety of Mastodon, but rather a particular community. If that's the case you can run your own Mastodon server to decide how much you want to "censor", if anything at all. I'm also someone that sees social media cancel culture as problematic and believe that people should still have the freedom to saw terrible things that are not lawbreaking. However that is very different from freedom of venue for said speech, and again, Mastodon gives you the freedom to create your own venue for whatever speech you want to tolerate. There is no singular "them", you are not being oppressed but rather are being too lazy to run your own Mastodon server and community.
> No. This is why Elon needed to buy it and fire all the political activists. It may be a bastion of free speech in a few months.
I'm not going to argue that social media moderation in general is problematic, but "political activists" is really just a distraction from its owner's terrible decisionmaking and narcissism. I don't think you're following the situation closely enough and are blinded by worship. He fired a majority of Twitter's SRE's that keep the site up and running just from a technical standpoint for being too stupid and impatient to come up with a cogent plan to restructure the company (even Steve Jobs took a month to plan out layoffs when he returned to Apple). He did such a bad job with choosing who to lay off that just days later they have to start hiring people back. He chose to make the remaining employees work themselves to burnout for his artificially short deadlines to pay the price for his bad decisions. He scared off advertisers with his chaos in buying the company and just being a dick that no one wants to associate with.
These are all terrible ways to run a business and if you think that moderation can magically improve when there's not enough engineers to keep the site running and revenue streams are dying off, have fun with that fantasy.
But yep, it's definitely the fault of those pesky "political activists" and not the person in control that actually made the decisions and has a track record of being totally incapable of running a business and taking responsibility for his own actions. If and when things go south, there's no one to blame besides himself.
> I created my account on twitter only days ago. I must say, really loving the changes so far.
Safe space being: "intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations".
What Mastodon is receiving right now is 'potentially threatening ideas and conversations'. Not going to go well for mastodon.