Socialists on mastodon?
The recent purge of reactonaries from twitter et al. caused renewed interest in the fediverse and mastodon specifically. if you never heard of it, it's a open source alernative to twitter. When you register an account you register it on a specific server. those are self-hosted, so no one can take you down (apart from your ISP/hosting provider ofc). they are self monitored and don't have an overlord. If you are familiar with lemmy.ml and chapo.chat, mastodon is to twitter what lemmy is to reddit.
The problem is, there aren't any socialist communmities on mastodon (to my knowledge. if there are, please let me know). As an influx of reactionaries is heading their way, i am worried that they will dominate the space. I know, mastodon probably won't take on twitter in terms of userbase, but we should have communities that we actually control anyway. leftists get purged too, as im sure you know. We should have a second leg to stand on and build upon, you might say we should build dual power structures on the internet. We should not rely on proprietary corporate platforms for our communication.
I am currently looking into the technicalities of self-hosting a mastodon server and the costs involved. I am not a webdev by any stretch of the imagination, but i do have experience hosting my own stuff and administering a server. They have very good documentation, but it does look like a pretty elaborate operation, especially once you scale it up. I am curious if there is any interest in a socialist mastodon server, and if there are any comrades who are interested in helping with hosting it (assuming there is interest).
Anyway, that's about it. if you have any input, please leave a comment and if you want to help in any capacity feel free to dm me.
There are a whole bunch of leftist Mastodon instances, unfortunately most of them are sectarian ancom or ansyn servers which are anti-ML
i read their sever rules. nothing about explicitly being for anarchists/anti ML. I think it just happens to be dominated by anrachists, like most of political mastodon. my guess is that's because it's mostly folks from The West ™️ ©️ , and there tend to be a lot more anarchists than marxists in western countries
Most radical Mastodon instances are dominated by anarchists, and not cool ones, more like raddle anarchists. I got yeeted from todon (back when it was todon.nl) for defending Cuba even though I'm neither an ML nor an anarchist. You can use https://instances.social to find others I guess.
Updating with fun finds:
- Self described French anarcho-stalinists
- Instance for liberals lmao
- Cool cyberpunk instance
- The Catholic Church ????
yeah that was my impression so far also. i just got onto kolektiva.social, let's see if they give me the boot for being a red fascist smh.
kolektiva.social
is the only one i've heard about, and only today after researching. i've only been around the FOSS/Linux related instances so far. thanks a lot for the hint
edit: i did look at todon.eu as well, but they are explicitly anti ML, i don't want to join a server that calls me a fascist. like wtf
As an influx of reactionaries is heading their way, i am worried that they will dominate the space.
Mastodon/ActivityPub did an ok job (there's still a bunch of bullshit on some servers) w/ deplatforming hate, so they all got mad and went to gab. The fediverse hasn't been super welcoming to fash, though there's still a decent chunk of them. But there's a reason Trump went to gab.
gab is such a clusterfuck. As a radical proponent of free and equal access to the internet, i am okay with fascist communities online. or rather, the problem is them being fascists, not them being online. BUT we need to keep them in their boxes, and capitalist social media tends to turn conservatively minded ppl into all out nazis, so that is def a problem. I say let them stay on gab, parlor and 4chan
I have an account on anticapitalist.party and its pretty chill. Its a bit of a big tent leftist instance and if you look at the instance timeline everyone is cool imo. I thiiiink someone here is a mod there? (Some mastadon instances are anarchist only or are really jus to filled with demsocs and libs so look at a timeline before you apply. Also join one that makes you apply its easy and keeps most of the chuds out, plus it means the mods give half a shit.
Another shortgap of sorts could be a return to IRC (though can also get banned by isps). Other is the obvious try to move hosting away from five-eye countries, ideally in multiple places around the globe.
i'm skimming my TL and besides the instances others have mentioned:
- radical.town (applications closed, queer, tumblry)
- scholar.social (academia)
- social.coop (tech hippies, democratically organized)
- sunbeam.city ("solarpunk," applications closed)
yeah nothin leaping out at me
