
Mastodon Is Like Twitter Without Nazis, So Why Are We Not Using It? - jboynyc
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mastodon-is-like-twitter-without-nazis-so-why-are-we-not-using-it
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zephyrfalcon
"We" are not using it for the same reason nazis are not using it: because
hardly anyone's there. It needs critical mass first. Once that happens,
nazis/trolls/etc will find their way there too, I'm afraid.

~~~
guelo
Nazis are banned by policy.

~~~
FreeFull
I doubt that Twitter's policy is very nazi-friendly either.

~~~
rmc
Depends. You can take free speech very seriously and hence not want to ban
Nazis. For example the ACLU went to the US Supreme Court to support the
National Socialist Party of America to march in USA
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_America_v._Village_of_Skokie)

~~~
jubalfh
Not every country is the United States of America, and freedom of speech is
not exclusively defined by amendments to an American constitution.

You can ban the nazi symbols & language and still have freedom of speech.

~~~
dogma1138
I'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning banning
anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level / token
candidates.

Twitter has a pretty well rounded TOS and they tend to go out of their way to
block/ban people even when they haven't violated the TOS/CoC when there is
sufficient pressure.

That said I don't understand why people want to turn their social networks to
echo chambers, if you only having discussions that do not make you feel
uncomfortable or challenge your views you often do not hold discussions worth
having.

~~~
rmc
> _I 'm pretty sure that "banning Nazi's" is a catch all phrase meaning
> banning anyone whose opinions we do not agree with above a certain level /
> token candidates._

The mastodon.social terms ban this stuff:

> \- Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or
> Nazi symbolism > \- Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism

So, er, literally "Nazis", not just "things I don't like"

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metaphorm
Twitter addicted journalists have started to perceive their tweeting as one of
the most important aspects of their job. This is not good for journalism or
society.

You know what a better solution to Twitter problems would be than "clean"
Twitter? No Twitter. Just drop it. This is a problem not a solution.

~~~
LordWinstanley
Twitter seems to have become an alternative to Reuters or AP for most
journalists the days. Even major newspapers and news organisations seem to
'back up' their articles with numerous quoted tweets —as if the half-baked
shite spewing out of Twitter in response to World events was some kind of
confirmation of a story's authenticity.

~~~
metaphorm
it's pretty disturbing. I wish I had better insight into the causes of this
but from where I sit (an outsider in a different industry) it looks like a
noxious combination of race-to-the-bottom, intellectual and professional
laziness, lowered standards, groupthink, and institutional corruption.

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blowski
First time I've heard of Mastodon, but I really hope it takes off. Social
networks are now too integrated into modern life to be completely owned by
private corporations.

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jitl
Why is this flagged?

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mod
If we use it, the nazis will come.

PS: this reads just like a big old advertisement.

PPS: the scrolljacking is real on this page.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
VICE lost me as a reader when they overhauled their sites and made them shitty
to unusable. I would have stuck around using reader view, but their writing
quality has gone down again too.

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Grue3
There's a popular adage that technology only becomes useful when it starts
being used for porn. The reason is that, when the technology was thought up,
the idea was not to use it for porn, but for something else. However the fact
that the porn industry has independently found the technology useful, despite
it not being targeted at them at all, shows the true potential of the
technology.

The same can be said about social networks, except swap porn for nazis.

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daliwali
Since it's decentralized that means there wouldn't be an effective way to ban
someone from the network without consensus. Anyone, "Nazi" or not, would be
free to post offensive content without a central authority policing users as
is the case with Twitter. I don't think this is actually a solution that
certain users and most advertisers want.

~~~
pbtflakes
Mastodon.social would ban them, and if other instances don't police content
sufficiently then Mastodon.social doesn't have to federate with them.

~~~
daliwali
It would defeat the purpose of federation if there's a different server for
each political persuasion. Why bother with federation if you don't want to see
anything you disagree with? Each server would be its own hugbox.

~~~
smacktoward
There is a big difference between "I would prefer not to be routinely
confronted with literal threats to kill me" and "I demand my own hugbox."

~~~
daliwali
The problem with that is there is no practical difference between the two
points of view. Both lead to balkanization and isolation.

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ksrm
Why on earth was this flagged?

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LordWinstanley
What I would like to see from any of these FOSS alternatives to Twitter is a
way to import your existing Twitter archive.

I don't know if it's colossal arrogance, or colossal stupidity that makes so
many developers launch their "Alternative to Hugely Successful Product X"
without giving people any way of bringing across their existing "Product X"
content, that they may have spent years creating.

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ryanx435
So it's twitter with less content.

~~~
vnchr
Less Nazi content, in particular

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busterarm
I wasn't aware that Twitter, or really anyone in 2017, had a Nazi problem.

~~~
smacktoward
Did... did you sleep through 2016?

If so, you might want to sit down. I've got a _lot_ of bad news.

~~~
busterarm
Calling them Nazis is misguided and self-defeating. Whoever the they you think
are Nazis are not Nazis. The NSDAP and its related organizations have been
dead since 1945.

You may want to take another look at Godwin's law.

~~~
cholantesh
I mean neo-nazis are largely interested only in the racial policies of the
NSDAP anyway, so it's not _that_ far off base.

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Neliquat
Who is worried about nazis? Really? Any why take any default political stance
as a medium. About as smart as voat's strategy of going the opposite
direction.

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LordWinstanley
So, you complain about Twitter's inherent lack of freedom, then offer an
alternative which "bans nazis"? Given the frequency with which internet
debates end up invoking Godwin's Law, that sounds even worse than what it's
trying to replace. Who decides who's a nazi?

I'm also confused by the distinction (or relationship) between this and
GNUsocial. The article seems to suggest that Mastodon is an instance of (or at
least compatible with) GNUsocial. The Mastodon FAQ seems to suggest it's a
completely separate and incompatible thing.

FWIW, there are already several longer established GNUsocial-based almost-
clones of Twitter out there, offering more than Mastodon seems to. Personally,
I use Quitter, to scratch my FOSS 'twittering' itch:

[https://quitter.no](https://quitter.no)

~~~
progval
Mastodon uses OStatus to communicate between instances, so it's totally
compatible with GNU Social. I checked it myself.

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mindcrash
Nazi, noun -- A person with a opinion "we" do not like/agree with.

See also: libertarian, classical liberal, conservative.

Update: -3 points for mocking the world view of, apparently, a shit ton of
people these days? Damn...

~~~
synicalx
Mustn't disagree with the hivemind, it bites

