i do not understand why a news site would not have an #RSS feed of their latest headlines.
you don't have to give your content away if you don't want to. but you cannot bitch & moan about #facebook or #twitter cannibalizing your readership in their fascist gated communities when you've turned your back on web standards and the open web.
Ben & Jerry’s Ends Paid Advertising on Twitter Due To Proliferation of Hate Speech
"The platform has become a threatening and even dangerous space for people from so many backgrounds, including people who are Black, Brown, trans, gay, women, people with disabilities, Jewish, Muslim and the list goes on. This is unconscionable in addition to being plain bad business."
Twitter is like a top of the range Lamborghini but you’re trapped in the boot full of broken bottles and it’s being driven over a cliff by a madman.
Mastodon is like sitting in the back of a dilapidated VW camper van, with knackered suspension, no air conditioning, but lots of nice passengers having a sing-song and there’s a dog called Mr. Snuffles.
Bluesky’s having a bit of a moderation crisis, which got me thinking about the ways in which the major Twitter clones approach moderation:
#Bluesky has libertarian “free speech at all costs” moderation. #Threads has puritan neoliberal top-down moderation. #Twitter has Nazis-to-the-front anti-moderation. #Mastodon has a server covenant and vote-with-your-feet, accountable community moderation.
The first three are run by tech-bro billionaires. The latter is not. And it shows.
Masto/Fedi: My dude we have like seventeen different ways to block people. Hell, block entire servers. Fuck it, block by default. Filter the letter "e" from your timeline and go full oulipo, we don't give a shit.
Yesterday I saw a post on #Threads from a journalist wondering how to do their job without #Twitter. Even to the point they wondered how work was possible without trending topics to look at.
And that’s kinda alarming to be honest. The media has become so dependent on Twitter to find news that they genuinely struggle to find sources and do their job without it.
It’s incredibly dangerous how the richest man in the world — deluded by paranoia, narcissism, and far-right conspiracies — can get arms of the state to go after his perceived enemies instead of holding him to account as they should be doing.
Something notable about the “X/Twitter added a 5 second delay on links to websites Musk doesn’t like” story is that it’s well understood in the tech industry that every second matters for retention.
You lose about half of your would-be traffic if your link doesn’t “load” within 3 seconds.
They’re leveraging a dark pattern to reduce traffic at scale.
That is the kind of thing that should be illegal to do as a massive platform. Twisting the web.
Fun little thing about #Mastodon. I've spent time as a #Wikipedia admin, and I know other Wikipedians are nodding their heads and chuckling because it's such a part of Wikipedia culture that they already know what I'm about to talk about.
Collaborative editing on Wikipedia is supposed to follow standards of civility. The uncivil behavior that I used to see on Wikipedia sometimes is pretty much the norm on #Twitter. What's ironic and funny about it is that there is a long-standing (unofficial) community mantra on Wikipedia known as "No Angry Mastodons." We (people) are hard-wired with fight-or-flight responses and, when confronted, either dig in and become super defensive, or we just check ourselves out of the situation and skedaddle. It's an evolutionary response to stress, because it helped us defeat and/or escape from predators in prehistoric times.
The idea behind No Angry Mastodons is that our fight-or-flight response is misplaced on the internet. On Wikipedia, there are "no angry mastodons" that are going to come after us. We don't have to worry about getting squished by prehistoric pachyderms. The TL;DR of No Angry Mastodons is that there is nothing that happens online that is worth subjecting yourself the stress of facing down an Angry Mastodon - there aren't any, so just chill.
NPR’s data shows that they lost nothing after being ostracized by the psychotic white billionaire. It counters the idea that leaving Twitter is a loss. Let’s dismiss the idea that we need to be held hostage on any platform.
#NFDI and many consortia are stepping away from #Twitter / #X in favour of platforms that are currently more aligned with our values.
That's why we happy to happy our own Mastodon instance.
👋 We welcome all who have followed us from Twitter/X to Mastodon!