Tim Bray discusses the ethics of moving to #Mastodon (and probably the #Fediverse in general), considering the views of groups such as #BlackTwitter whose norms and needs differ from those of most Mastodon users.
He concludes (correctly, I might add) that it is ethical to leave #Twitter and move to Mastodon and the Fediverse.
Also, #Vivaldi now has its own #Mastodon instance. I think #Brave Browser had an unofficial instance at one time, and #Mozilla intends to open theirs early in 2023.
I'm still not "there" yet, but I am doing some #PHP stuff. Maybe I'll be able to help make !GNUsocial and #Friendica competitive candidates for $ORGANIZATION deploying their own #Fediverse presence.
> BREAKING NEWS: Gargron is no longer the most followed person on mastodon. This is great news (no offence to
@gargron ) as it signifies the network is growing to be more independent of its most famous developer.
> The new most followed person is @georgetakei@universeodon.com
So let me tell you why this is NOT a good thing. George Takei is a celebrity actor. That people are crawling after actors and other celebs means that the #Twitter migration is bringing their culture (with all its flaws) here. Again, as they did this before during #Mastodon's early growth. Much Masto culture is merely Twitter and Tumblr culture, sometimes reflected in a mirror and sometimes adopted wholesale.
Thankfully, the #Fediverse is more than just Mastodon.
@geniusmusing I guess that means that any journalist that uses #Twitter should be opening one or more backup accounts in the #Fediverse and using it enough to be familiar and ready ... and giving their current audience enough heads up so they know where to find their chosen news sources.
@evan@prodromou.pub @evan@identi.ca ( and formerly @evan@e14n.com ) has said this a few times, but here it is again.
"Every time you post on Twitter, you produce value for the advertisers.
You tell everyone in your network there that it's OK to stay. That you're all helpless to leave.
You tell the people who've lost their jobs, the people who are being hounded and harassed, that they are not important to you.
You know you're going to be ashamed of it later.
Just stop posting.
Do it here, not there. Connect here, not there.
Don't reply, don't like, don't retweet.
Stop feeding your life into the machine."
This was true before Elon #Musk bought #Twitter, but I guess it wasn't as important before.
I don't fully agree, simply because there may be some advantages to many people who continue to use Twitter instead of moving to the #Fediverse (e.g., #GNU_Social, #Mastodon, #Pleroma, #Misskey, #PixelFed, #Lenny / #Lemmy, etc) or they would have moved over already.
Also, because unless one self-hosts one's own presence, an angry instance admin is all it takes to lose all posts and connections and have to start over. Or, if one has contacts on a different instance, then irate instance admins participating in #blockwars (including #fediblock) can separate the person from some portion of their contacts.
So remember, everything that Twitter is or can do to you, your Fediverse instance can also do. Most instances will never do most of those things, but pretending that one is safe here could result in disappointment in the future.
The monthly active users figures for #Mastodon seem to have peaked and started heading downward, even as new accounts continue to be opened.
I wish they'd use a tracker that doesn't filter out everything that is not Mastodon. As I recall, when the number of accounts for Mastodon hit 5,000,000 the number for the #Fediverse as a whole was over 11,000,000 ... but those numbers will always be larger than MAU, so I'd also like to see those numbers Fediverse-wide.
Tagging this thread with #Fediverse #Security ... whomever made the script obviously read some protocol docs and some source code. With just a little #JavaScript, they were able to knock some #Misskey and #Mastodon instances to their knees.
This isn't the first, and it won't be the last. Remember when someone posted a humongous image and locked up any #GNUSocial instance that tried to download the image? Remember when someone's instance was replaced by some sort of cryptocurrency site and PuSH es from your site to theirs would crash your site because of their site's response? (I'll bet I still have that domain blocked at the firewall.)
We have to stop being naive about the intentions of those in the current migration. The overwhelming majority will have benign, if not good, intentions. But a select few will have bad intentions. Among those intentions is to colonize the Fediverse with #Twitter's culture, to come here and impose that culture of anger and disrespect upon the inhabitants here ... which already happened once with the first wave of people joining #Mastodon instance, except it was Twitter and #Tumblr at that time.
In both cases, they are dead wrong, just like the #blockwars / \#fediblock people are. The #Fediverse is for everyone. Right or left wing or no wing at all. Government agencies, corporations, churches, non-profit organizations, individuals, groups, families, small businesses. Everyone.
The network derives its utility from the ability of people on instance A to interact with people on instance B, so indiscriminate instance-to-instance blocking and mobs chasing people away only makes the network less useful for everyone.
#Misskey security update. Someone created "instances" which trigger a denial of service in Misskey and possibly #Mastodon. From what I hear, #Pleroma is not vulnerable. #GNUsocial is likely also vulnerable.
We can expect a lot more of these kind of things now that the #Fediverse is getting attention.
This is a month ago, but this is a CNN reporter's take on #Mastodon (and the #Fediverse, though they apparently do not yet know that there's a lot more than Mastodon).