I'm seriously considering defederating from #fosstodon at this point. I'm applying a limit for now, which means if you're on that instance, I may not see you.
Mike Stone (effectively) doubles down on moderation principles based on keyword, not context. Additionally, he confirms limiting accounts without notification is part of the policy, effectively shadowbanning accounts.
I'm on Fosstodon. English is not my birth language. And yet I don't think Fosstodon's English-only rule is racist.
Please, before you reply in anger or scroll past, hear me out. I'm one of the "diverse" people whose interests you are defending - so surely you would not dismiss my views?
Musk has recently decreed that "tweets" should now be referred to as "x's". This is, for lack of a better descriptive word, stupid. Tweet made sense. It was a bird. The company was(is?) called Twitter. X's? I'm not even sure that's grammatically correct. Even if it is, how does "X" equate to a post? It's not like we're sitting here saying, "Welcome to #Fosstodon! Here your posts are called #Kevs!"
The #Fosstodon English-only policy is shite, and they deserve grief for it. However, it does highlight a flaw in #Mastodon... language filtering doesn't work well, so people see a lot of posts in their feeds that they literally can't understand, presumably because many posts are not correctly language-tagged.
Is there a way to detect the language in drafts and warn people who may have indicated the wrong language, without sending people's posts to a privacy-violating 3rd-party server?
Seeing the #fosstodon posts reminded me of something:
"We studied open-source software communities because open-source software communities are an extreme example of gender inequity. Seventy percent of all the software that supports technology infrastructure is open source, which makes open-source software integral to the future of the tech workforce. Yet women make up only 9.8% of the people who contribute to open-source software projects.
In seeking answers to this retention problem of the tech industry, our research found that women’s negative experiences range from minor to severe harassment, sexism, discrimination and misogyny to explicit death threats. Their expertise is challenged, their contributions are not well-received and their roles are diminished. They face constant harassment and deal with normalized abuse, often hearing that “guys will be guys,” and they deal with isolation because they are often severely outnumbered by men."
If your #Mastodon server enforces a colonialistic "English-only" rule and forbids languages like Irish and Welsh (or any other minority language) from being used, consider moving to a more inclusive server (and keep posting in your language!) #Fosstodon
Having spent a few hours catching up on allegations and how concerns and grievances have been handled by #Fosstodon admins so far I wonder if it's time for my first #FediMove to an instance more aligned with my values (and one that lets me emit the occasional toot in 🇩🇪).
Problem is, I don't know where to go 😓
My dream instance has always been chaos.social - any #recommendations for an #instance along similar lines?
as someone who primarily toots in English, i'm absolutely livid about the #fosstodon situation because I'm fucking bilingual. most of my accounts state that I speak Spanish and I try to connect with more Spanish speakers on my "irl" @taco account. I legitimately need to do this because otherwise I will start to lose the pieces of language that I have learned over the past 20 years because I am not speaking Spanish in my day-to-day life here in West Virginia. but these mono language mother fuckers don't understand that
Between @downey and @aral getting issues with #fosstodon, is it too much to speculate that they're preparing to go along with #Threads moderation rules?
Any other, similar experiences? @doot and @nightjar had issues before, Someone got banned for calling Rowling a TERF, me for calling a AfD-adjacent person a Nazi (that was years ago).
Thanks to feedback, I'm unsure if this is new - which would be good, it could just be the same old issues. Can we collectively watch this?
I've seen countless people I've followed move from #Fosstodon to other servers over the past few days. I can't quite figure out why people are so disillusioned with it; I'd guess it's the RMS style extremists but I haven't actually seen any of them...
Obligatory yearly toot about #FOSS so I can stay on #Fosstodon 🎉
I saw the other day that German state Schleswig-Holstein is going to switch to fully #FOSS. Which is great and hope it works out for them.
Having set up a fully (F)OSS (desktops, apps, servers, etc) IT env for a large non-profit, might I suggest proper enterprise support instead of a lone coffee-addicted sysadmin who tries to keep systems together with hopes, prayers and duct tape? 🥲
My alt account specifically for non-FOSS stuff is now bound by #Fosstodon's rules?! That seems kinda stupid, and defeats the point of me having an alt account...
I've been very happy here on #Fosstodon . Well managed, good size, supports open source.
But it has an "English-only" rule for public posts. I'm not monolingual, my life is not monolingual, and this rule limits what I want to say far more than I thought it would.
So, I'm looking for a different server to join. Ideally similar to Fosstodon - stable, well managed, decent size, widely federated - but that allows any language. EU or Japan location a bonus.
I'm now debating -- even more so now hearing that #Fosstodon is cracking down on non-English: I occasionally want to try to join a conversation in a language I'm learning (German) -- that I might fully jump ship to my Firefish account @BlakeL.
Up to this point the moderation and pressure here has kept me in check but I'd very much like to stay on good terms with my community and moderation.
I like the freedom the Firefish software gives me too.
Apparently there's a rogue mod or admin on #Fosstodon now, who's suspending accounts without reason or notice to anyone? There's that trollbaiting/ragebaiting extremist, which sure, but you know at least a notice would be nice, but also an admin for a friendly instance, who I was personally told was "a good bunch" just a couple days ago, was completely disconnected from everyone over here?
I've spent long enough mulling over whether to stay on #Fosstodon - now it's time to decide where to go.
Can anyone suggest a server to fit my interests? I'm an inclusive Aussie maker of #3dprinting, #Arduino, #FOSS and of course #retrogaming stuff and would love to find a new place to share the things I make or collect. My pinned posts are typical of what I do.
Boosts would be appreciated. I also couldn't find a good tag for this - maybe #suggestaserver could be a thing?
Is it just me or am I not the only person not seeing the number of re toots or likes on posts unless I click on the post to view it ?? #Mastodon#Fosstodon
I completely respect the #fosstodon admins' choice, but personally, I just blocked the Threads . net domain from interacting with my account.
If anything I have not missed anything coming from zuck-owned platforms for over a decade now, and I'm 100% confident I won't miss anything in the future. But if by some twist later on they can still reach / scrape my stuff in the future, then I'll probably have to resort to start hosting my own.