OSNews now has an official Mastodon account. It’s a bot account that mirrors our main RSS feed, so it’s a great way to keep up with our stories if you’re using Mastodon. This official Mastodon account joins my own personal Mastodon account and that of our web master and developer, Adam.
I will be convinced Mastodon has a chance of going mainstream if most people start saving as odt instead of docx. Most people simply don’t care about alternatives and particulars and go where the inertia is instead.
Twitter is a bit special though, and by this I mean the echo chamber addicts who cannot survive without the constant shrieking around them. Silence to them is like sunlight to vampires, except more dangerous. The problem seems to be that Mastodon is somewhat distributed and people might have trouble locating just the right bubble for themselves.
Most people are too lazy and dumb to save a spreadsheet as a csv file, no matter how many times they are told it has to be a csv file. Mastodon seems like an instant messaging app with extra steps almost no one will take.
Something tells me there’s other things about Thom that people might want to know about, but I can’t quite put my finger on what those other things might be.
> Since I’m done with this nazi-infested hellscape, come join us over on Mastodon:
Source: https://twitter.com/thomholwerda/status/1587039506435301377
Less censoring on Twitter recently, so it’s “nazi” now š
That’s the normal tone Thom’s twitter account.
Twitter is more of a right-wing hellscape then it already was. It’s a “fReE sPEEch” space now rather then actual free speech.
It waters down the meaning of “Nazi” and trivializes it to mean anything you don’t like. Which is the same as meaning nothing. But “standing” with actual self professed neo Nazis is OK.
I typically don’t express political opinions or try to be confrontational, but this abuse of language gets on my nerves. I have family that fled from their homeland escaping from actual Nazis, which is NOT the same thing as getting triggered and rage quitting Twitter “because Elon”.
devloop,
You’re not wrong, but I also think it’s important to recognize when current events start to resemble the nazi’s rise to power. If we wait for full out naziism to show up before applying comparisons and lessons from the past, then it will absolutely be too late. We must all be proactive in confronting nazi-like behavior before it takes root.
I agree with you that the twitter nazi reference wasn’t insightful in this instance and it shouldn’t be used as an insult. Unfortunately I do think it holds some relevance to the political environment today though.
This might seem like a useless comment, but I just want to say: agreed.
The rise to power of those that resemble nazi’s had me worried a lot. And it’s not the nazi’s themselves, it’s those who support and vote for those who actually don’t seem to have any good intentions. They were probably able to dupe people because of economic precarity. Which means it’s is a failure of the other politicians or society as a whole (not producing good politicians or not let them rise to the top).
History doesn’t repeat, but it rimes. And it seems to be because the previous generations who lived through it have died. And people don’t learn (the right lessons) from the past.
The beauty of ActivityPub (which Mastodon implements) is begin a federated protocol. Centralising on Mastodon, instead of hosting own instance, is against the idea.
Absolutely. I doubt the motives of the current “move to Mastodon” movement (see the nazi-infested hellscape discussion above), but I very much like the federated design. Maybe I’ll install an instance on my home server for personal use.
evert,
Indeed. It goes against the grain these days given the way a few corporations have taken over almost every aspect of the internet. Honestly the internet was envisioned to be federated and IMHO this is how it should be. Mastodon isn’t perfect but I really like this push for decentralization and I hope it’s more than just a passing fad. We must get away from all powerful tech companies. I suspect this movement may be more motivated by the political circumstances of twitter than a broad effort to stand up for independence. Still though, even baby steps help.
Yeah, not unlike the ads on this site when you click a link expecting to be taken to the site you intended to go to, but instead get a huge ad in front of your face that you have to recognize first before going to the link you clicked.
Right?
Hypocrite.
lol well meant to post to “Microsoft is showing ads in the Windows 11 sign-out menu” ah well.
Is Mastodon more twitteresque than say Matrix?
It is, it’s basically a clone of Twitter with a similar UI and “microblogging” feel. Matrix is more of a chat-oriented thing, kind of a hybrid of old school IRC and modern day Slack.
I don’t think the term nazi should be thrown around like this.
People on social media behave like idiots.
Oh no someone i disagree with! –> nazis …
Grow up. It’s just social media.
Just my 2c
Is parody ok?
“Grammar Nazis”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM
While It does make light of a sensitive topic, personally I choose not to take offense where non was actually intended. To me it’s not the words themselves that are offensive, but the context. There’s a big difference between joking around versus spewing actual hatred and ill-will. That’s the line in the sand, in my head anyway. I know some people may disagree with me on this, but the problem I see is when people are so quick to attribute malice where there was none, it can actually push people to become less reasonable and more extreme.
Oh yes, because Thom definitely lovingly called them nazis right?
Nah. Just saying he doesn’t agree with the way twitter is going isn’t enough, so words like nazi have to be thrown around.
I have disagreements with many people, just like anyone else. I wouldn’t call them nazis …
If i called you a nazi because of your reply, i don’t think you’d like it, ill intent or not.
p13.
No actually. Earlier I said it shouldn’t be brandished as an insult and I still feel that way, so I’m not really sure why you’re saying this.
Maybe you disagree with me that parady is ok, but from what you are saying here I don’t know if you missed my point. If you call people nazis out of hatred and frustration, I don’t think that’s a good thing.
Y’all can be technically correct and call them neo-Nazis or neo-fascists or such if you want, but a lot of the trolls Thom is talking about do in fact have genocidal far-right beliefs, and are pushing them in any social spaces they can. And IDK how people can dismiss the relevance of this shit when Italy just elected an actual fascist party member, France almost got Marine Le Pen (and might still), and the US until recently had Trump with his Mussolini-like rallies and deliberate weaponization of COVID against states that didn’t vote for him.
It’s not affecting you personally? Cool. Don’t assume it’s affecting nobody. Spaces like Twitter are just the propaganda and public opinion front.
Also, LOL @ people assuming a guy from the Netherlands doesn’t know anything about Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_in_World_War_II
I like your comment so I boosted it. Oh wait….
I understood there is a way to connect your WordPress website to Mastodon.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/share-on-mastodon/
or
http://mastodon.tools/wordpress/
FWIW
rainbowsocks,
There’s so little context it’s hard to tell exactly what Thom meant. But it does remind me of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” moment. It was a political faux-pas and her comments were easily misattributed to the entire republican party out of context even though it’s not what she was saying.
https://www.npr.org/2016/09/10/493427601/hillary-clintons-basket-of-deplorables-in-full-context-of-this-ugly-campaign
The rise of fascism and alt right authoritarian extremists across the globe is very disturbing. Too many of us take democracy for granted, and I think the past few years should be alarming. The overthrowing of democracy, if that ever comes to pass, would/will be a travesty for the world and it’s children.
Sadly; what you see as a good thing (“democracy”) is actually a system that encourages the manipulation of public opinion to gain and maintain control; and its this system (a desire manipulate of public opinion) that is directly responsible for the rise of fascism (e.g. Russian trolls/bots using social media to persuade Americans to elect Trump in 2016, for the purpose of weakening USA).
Of course some people are always going to be sheep. There’s no doubt we have work to do. After all, the US ranks 15th in the human freedom index.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-12/human-freedom-index-2021.pdf
But unless you’re a defeatist or masochist who enjoys watching people suffer, it’s better to fight for democracy than give up and live under the rule of a fascist dictator. We don’t have to ponder what this would be like, fascist countries exist today. I don’t know about you but for me the grass does not look greener on that side.
Democracy can be done in stable ways, the problem is it has to be actively defended both on the institutional and personal level. Institutional as in e.g. measures to prevent regulatory capture and keep officials accountable, personal as in people have to actually give a damn and engage with politics (and be encouraged to do so). I can’t speak for Europe, but the US system has foundational flaws in the interest of preserving slavery and the power of landowners, and it’s also now in the long tail of a trend of deregulation, public service cuts, and concentration of violent power. Things didn’t have to be this way, and IMO we still have time to drag ourselves out of the hole.