I decided to give Mastodon another shot here recently, I found exactly one promising leftist instance, mastodon.lol. Bills itself as an "LGBT-friendly antifascist mastodon instance"
I watched another user get banned for saying that Azov were neonazis and I got banned for sticking up for them, then as part of his 240V power trip the admin posted a pity thread where he claimed we called him literally Hitler.
The only other leftist instance I saw welcomed all socialists except "authoritarians" so I assume it's either a socdem or sectarian anarchist instance.
TL;DR - Mastodon hasn't changed at all, it's still ran by power-tripping micro tyrants
Mastodon feels a lot like leftie twitter to me in that it seems more like a radlib social club.
I have my issues with hexbear but what I like about it and why I keep coming back to it is that it feels like people are here because they believe in things. The subject matter is more important than weird vibe checks or slogans.
For so many twitter leftists it feels like their beliefs are just based on vibes and aesthetics. And those are the people who I know love mastodon. People who still watch Contrapoints in 2022.
I think twitter/masto is the way it is because it prioritizes the individual user feed. Blogs are similar, but you legit have to effortpost to maintain a blog. Microblogs just run on memes and vibes. People like following powerposters who entertain them and pretty people (to the point some transfems use masto like a dating service).
It's possible to form a nice little friendgroup on there, but beyond that advanced discussion feels impossible. Lemmy's success in promoting longform discussion is in de-emphasizing the user and emphasizing the post/comm.
it’s still ran by power-tripping micro tyrants
Almost the law of the internet
Can't believe the admins won't let me say racist transphobic and intentionally divisive things :angery:
lol no. the only reason this site is "good" for our purposes is because the sitemods act tyrannically and without accountability. there's a reason there aren't many "democratic" online communities. the closest is Wikipedia, which operates as an adhocracy with elected bureaucrats who, in practice, are the users with the most time and devotion to the project.
they were literally way better when they were called webmasters, ironic isn't it
SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER!!!
oh you were talking about the Twitter clone carry on.
I’m all for talking about the band lol Feels like my estimation of that band rises and falls and rises again as the years go by.
Right now I’m like Mastodon is great and cherished part of my childhood.
Yesterday I might have said Mastodon is cringe and lame.
Prefacing this by saying I know sweet fuck all about Mastodon beyond the surface level, but how easy/feasible would it be to create your own community/instance, like a Mastodon
cthhexbear?There are webhosting services that have pre-built mastodon packages where you can click a button and have it set up for you automatically. Maintaining it is another beast entirely.
Admins/Mods are often the unthanked/unrecognized glue that holds internet culture together.
Actually creating and running one would be pretty easy but I wouldn't want to be responsible for moderating it. I modded one of the sub's ofshoot Discord channels for a while and that ended up being a nightmare
Incredibly easy. Mastodon itself doesn't "suck", it's actually very cool if you want to create some private group. It's more like "trying to find good, public already-existing leftist spaces on Mastodon sucks"
Like, I plan on running a mastodon instance for friends and family and I think it's gonna be sweet, like our own private FB.
It's incredibly easy, and I don't know why people don't just run their own and not deal with petty tyrants on these big instances. If you have $5/month (or less, in some places) plus $10/year for an offensive domain name, you can be your own tyrant and put your hyperindividualized ideological prism over the flow of terrible posts.
For a one-time fee of like $50 you can run a tiny Pleroma instance on a Raspberry Pi.
Wild how anti-"authoritarian" left spaces tend to be the most authoritarian of all
At some point I'm going to have to listen to this band just to keep up with the jokes
I'll die on the hill that Once More Round the Sun was fucking sweet even if most people disagree
you have to look around before saying you like once more round the sun, but i agree. I like it.
yeah i really like it too actually, needed to make the post pithy at the expense of truth
extra soft spot because it's the record that got my dad into them
I’ve been signed up for that exact instance (Mastodon.lol) for a bit now and have been spending less and less time on it because of shit like that. It’s all sectarian anarchists and Pelosi worshipping libs, and "anti-fascists" who think that Putin is Hitler reincarnated and Azov are heroes. Oh, and of course ML's and Maoists and the like are no different from Nazis according to that instance. I think I've lost more brain cells there than I ever did on Twitter.
Well I fired up my 7 proxies and made a drama post if you still have an account and want to interact with it: https://mastodon.lol/@15October1959
Yes I am aware of how petty this is
Followed and favorited that post.
Eh, who cares. Petty can be fun, like in this case.
It's been a half hour and the account hasn't been banned yet. I guess if it's still around tomorrow I'll log in and boost the post
You definitely should if it's still around somehow tomorrow. I'm honestly surprised that I'm the only person to have interacted with it yet.
I just found out what you're referencing with that Mastodon username. Pure perfection.
Yeah probably. I feel better about it having said my piece now so I'm just gonna let it go
I treat my Mastodon fandom the same way I treat my warhammer fandom. I only talk about it with people I trust are not chuds.
Please excuse me if this is just a joke I didn't pick up on but I'm talking about the open-source Twitter clone rather than the band
As much as I love metal as a genre, it's a community with a lot of chuds in it.
I also didn't pick up on the on the twitter clone because I've been drinking with my neighbors.
No worries lol, you're out there touching grass and I'm in here bitching about tiny internet forums on other tiny internet forums
Addendum:
I'm drunk in a bar full of plastic paddy's and fighting the urge to school everyone on irish history.
I'm Scottish.
maintaining and harboring a solid leftist space is extremely difficult, and im not even talking about the fed shit that can pop up too. it's just kinda a sad reality of how fractured the actual left is, especially if the space is just a catch-all big tent with no real underlining reason for coming together. Does not help that moderating internet stuff attracts some of the worst types of people either, it's really difficult to make it work without previous experience or a solid set a principles the space maintains. And even then, sometimes rules are okay to be bent if it's for a good reason but even that can tick people off.
i think a big problem though is so many people take themselves too serious and have hard time letting go of extremely petty grievances that aren't actually a problem. i see it happen all the time, like a very mild ribbing in good fun can turn into a goddamn scene real fast if someone takes something the wrong way. And the thing is a lot of people are fighting really hard for Good Things and are constantly in battle with reactionary forces that letting your guard down for fun can be tough if you're not actively trying to chill. So while i don't always agree with petty squabbles i definitely see how it went down.
It’s because everyone has a list of things, and the sign to switch to their topic is the fucking moment something else gets a millimeter of momentum.
Yeah and honestly now that I've got my petty drama post in about it and it stayed up for a little while I'm fine with just letting it go now. Gonna clear out my browser cache and just not go back
i've definitely seen ML instances. i'll look around and send you some.
I think a hexbear instance would be extremely cool, but I don't think our lovely admins need another project to manage.
TY I'd appreciate that. And yeah, moderating one site is more than enough work
Okay so at a glance the only explicitly Marxist one I can find is tankie.ml, which is a BookWyrm instance, not Mastodon or some other microblogging service. It federates with activitypub, but not really what you're looking for.
I am finding open communists on these sites tho:
- mastodon.social: by necessity of being the flagship instance, it has generally lax moderation standards, so a good number of commies. I think as long as you're not harassing people or posting porn you're probably safe, but might be more annoying libs than you'd like
- mastodon.online: similar to above
- necropolis.online: tiny, might not be open to applicants
- tech.lgbt: i know a few comrades on here, seems not overly radlib
- octodon.social: invite only, but nice ppl
- monads.online: elite level posters, approach with caution (also invite only)
- dads.cool: fatherhood focused community, so try to have a kid first
- mk.nixnet.social: misskey server attached to a pleroma server, but without the usual nazis afaict
- antibaka.me: animu focused
- tilde.zone: my home instance :)
update: i asked the admin of tankie.ml and they also suggested
- hellsite.site
- egirls.gay (invite only)
- jumanji.co
- telescope.garden (small, closed applications)
- myasstodon.xyz (BIPOC only)
- goblin.camp
- elekk.xyz
monads has had quite a few struggle sessions on the network from hosting "tankies" (they usually responded that they find other instances have a habit of being racist towards them). I think they're pretty close with octodon.
