Recommended follow list for Ukraine war on Mastodon
Here are my recommendations for coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Only accounts active recently and you can easily import them from a file. They are split into two different lists by type.
Ukraine: OSINT & war updates
This list mostly has accounts posting quickly about daily events of the war and doing open source intelligence.
The import file relies on the List import feature recently added to Mastodon. I have noticed the list import results in a few accounts sometimes ending up in their separate list by the same name so you may have to fix that manually afterwards if this happens on your instance. If many people are on an older Mastodon version and want it I can also post a follows file that will work for those.
Import instructions:
Sign into your instance on the web
go to settings (Gear icon)
Choose Import and Export -> Import
For import type choose "Lists" (could also be "Translation missing: en.imports.types.lists" if there is an issue with the localization).
Select "merge" to only add to your current follows/lists so nothing you have gets deleted
Anyone following @kevinrothrock should be VERY careful. Meduza gets good scoops on #Russia, which is their focus, but Kevin has some odd takes on geopolitics which he likes to interject as commentary. He also has paper thin skin. I wrote a thread about him a while ago.
BTW, seems like lemmy did not show your message either as part of the thread before I tagged @ukraine in this reply even though you posted on #lemmy. Weird.
@dan80@ukraine Some good additional suggestions there and thanks for linking your list as well! There's lots more accounts to follow besides the ones I mentioned for sure if anyone is left wishing they had a larger list.
The better known ones that I may have left out I probably just put in a slightly different category due to other stuff they post about or think are inactive on Mastodon currently.
@73ms cheers for this. Ukraine coverage (solely from accounts I know) and polling/election stuff are the two big topics where I still need to go to the other place for, via Nitter.
Having more Fedi options is very welcome! Especially accounts that post the same on both platforms or primarily here.
@DuncanMSussexPol@ukraine Another thing you can do besides nitter is use a bridge such as bird.makeup to get the posts to fedi from there. It might not have recovered from the recent breakage that also affected nitter though and there is always the worry that Musk will eventually completely block these solutions...
Are those accounts globally neutral ones (focused on trying to double check the data they receive before echoing them), or do some of them tend to support NATO or Russia? If so, it could be useful to precise it (through a mention in parenthesis, for instance).
One of Mastodon's features that I love is that it allows us to keep a balanced news stream from opposite views on any world event or phenomenon 🙂.
@ijatz_La_Hojita@ukraine I don't think anyone in these supports Russia but I've at least tried to find ones that strive to be accurate and reasonably objective.
@ijatz_La_Hojita@73ms If you equate Russia/Nato I think you already have a screwed view of what is happening. I don't think this is a very good list (kudos for trying, though) because the accounts have very different quality, but I think there is no pro-Russian account in it, and there doesn't need to be. You also wouldn't have wanted a pro-Nazi view in your timeline in 1939, would you? The accounts I know from that list also tell about Russia's views/ statements, but they don't support them.
@annanic@ukraine If you have other quality suggestions, feel free to offer them like others have done. I've gone through hundreds of accounts from various lists but most lists are either very small or have tons of dormant accounts. Personally I think most on this one are reasonably good quality but obviously that's a matter of taste.
If you narrow the scope by whatever specific criteria you will probably end up with a pretty small list as things stand on Mastodon right now. Even this one is not a particularly long list.
@73ms@ukraine I did not want to put your effort down, and of course it's always easier to critisize than to come up with solutions - my intent was not even to critisize but to answer that specific comment. I just think there are big differences in the quality of infos those accounts give, some mean well but become overenthusiastic too easily etc... I will try to make a list of accounts I would recommend myself when I'm able to, which I'm not right now. I know it's difficult on mastodon. 👍
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