Right winger are organizing a false mass report campaign of over 5000 Twitter accounts in a blatant attempt to deplatform the Left pic.twitter.com/WJx18iFps1— Elm Fork JBGC (@elmforkJBGC) November 25, 2022
Mastodon has some issues but in general, the bigoted "free speech zone" instances tend to get ostracized and de-federated fairly quickly. Mastodon itself should be viewed as a tool. Everything depends on who's hands it lies in, and what purposes it is applied to. Mastodon (like Lemmy and Hexbear) has been found useful by the types of people who are driven off mainstream social media either by bans or overwhelming harassment. This includes political groups like Anarchists and Marxists, as well as the right wing extremists who ended up on Gab (technically a Mastodon instance). It includes a lot of oppressed groups like LGBTQIA+ and people of color.
The main problem with Mastodon is that the largest "flagship" instances try their best to be "general interest" and have fairly Liberal moderation policies. They prohibit obvious bigotry and intolerance, but kinda fall into the trap of "both-sidesism" when it comes to political violence. There are many (thousands) smaller instances, each of which set their own policies and blocklists. Setting aside the reactionaries, some are focused on tech news, some are focused on LGBT issues, some are focused on art and music, some are leftist sects, some are far less sectarian.
The other issue is that if you are looking for updates from your local transit system, or a journalist you're interested in, they very likely aren't on Mastodon - though this is changing as the bans and hate speech pile up on Twitter. More and more news organizations are beginning to create accounts and some individual journalists are far ahead of this trend, while many others are lagging behind.
In short, it is the least bad alternative. The only alternative that has a compelling pitch to explain why it isn't going to get bought up by some FAANG or VC firm within the next five years and belong to the next Elon Musk in ten. Due to its decentralized and largely non-profit nature, it also seems better suited to avoiding state pressure to install national security goons the way Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok all have been forced to.
Mastodon has some issues but in general, the bigoted "free speech zone" instances tend to get ostracized and de-federated fairly quickly. Mastodon itself should be viewed as a tool. Everything depends on who's hands it lies in, and what purposes it is applied to. Mastodon (like Lemmy and Hexbear) has been found useful by the types of people who are driven off mainstream social media either by bans or overwhelming harassment. This includes political groups like Anarchists and Marxists, as well as the right wing extremists who ended up on Gab (technically a Mastodon instance). It includes a lot of oppressed groups like LGBTQIA+ and people of color.
The main problem with Mastodon is that the largest "flagship" instances try their best to be "general interest" and have fairly Liberal moderation policies. They prohibit obvious bigotry and intolerance, but kinda fall into the trap of "both-sidesism" when it comes to political violence. There are many (thousands) smaller instances, each of which set their own policies and blocklists. Setting aside the reactionaries, some are focused on tech news, some are focused on LGBT issues, some are focused on art and music, some are leftist sects, some are far less sectarian.
The other issue is that if you are looking for updates from your local transit system, or a journalist you're interested in, they very likely aren't on Mastodon - though this is changing as the bans and hate speech pile up on Twitter. More and more news organizations are beginning to create accounts and some individual journalists are far ahead of this trend, while many others are lagging behind.
In short, it is the least bad alternative. The only alternative that has a compelling pitch to explain why it isn't going to get bought up by some FAANG or VC firm within the next five years and belong to the next Elon Musk in ten. Due to its decentralized and largely non-profit nature, it also seems better suited to avoiding state pressure to install national security goons the way Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok all have been forced to.
I've been having a blast with the other folks on the hexbear instance :sicko-hexbear: