Me: "Almost 500 people follow me on Mastodon!" 🎉
Coworker: "You could have had 300K followers on Twitter by now."
Me:
@Gina What a statement: You could have 299.500 Nazis following you, why wouldn't you want this? 😂
@sphinxc0re Meh, being blonde and blue eyed nazi's generally left me alone on Twitter. Incels however..
@Gina Not as annoying though, are they?
@sphinxc0re Dunno, the rape and death threats got old really fast.
@Gina Oh, yeah, sorry, I totally forgot about the misogyny that comes with Incels...
are you still active on twitter?
@sphinxc0re Nope, although lately I've been thinking about setting one up again. Unfortunately there's still a lot of valuable IT news found there. How about you?
@Gina FYI I use a crossposter so my fediverse posts appear on my Titter account (I have it set so those with @mentions don't get crossposted). That way folks still there can still follow and boost my posts without me having to login and interact with it.
@sphinxc0re
@strypey @sphinxc0re I'm thinking of doing the same.
@Gina @strypey @sphinxc0re
Using #Twitter gives TWTR power. Some of us cannot or will not use Twitter. If you mirror all your posts on Twitter, you become part of the problem by failing to give ppl a reason to step outside of twitter.
@resist1984
> Some of us cannot or will not use Twitter.
Excellent. So you can follow we in the fediverse.
> If you mirror all your posts on Twitter, you become part of the problem by failing to give ppl a reason to step outside of twitter.
How will not knowing my posts (or the fediverse) exist at all give people a reason to step outside of Titter? There are much betters to migrate from T to the fediverse than 'to be able to read Strypey's stuff'
@Gina @sphinxc0re
@strypey
When you post to twtr, you add value to that repressive #centralized monopoly. It's socially irresponsible to feed & empower that #walledgarden. Twtr has the power & marketshare that it has b/c of ppl making the same decision as you.
@strypey @Gina @sphinxc0re
I'm not sure ppl fully realize the fallout. E.g. I cannot microblog to my government or local school board b/c they use TWTR exclusively, w/the assumption everyone is on TWTR. And TWTR disallows me access, so a denial of #freespeech has manifested to some extent. Getting a phone# and giving it to Twitter, Inc. should not be a precondition to government comms.
@resist1984 I agree this is a problem. But this is an excellent use case for a crossposter. It's not realistic for the school to go off T cold turkey. Arguing for that is pissing into the wind. But if they can switch to a fediverse app as their daily driver, and use a crossposter to still get posts from users on T, that makes it much more likely to happen. It's a transitional strategy.
@Gina @sphinxc0re
@strypey @sphinxc0re @Gina Presumably crossposter tools limit all posts to the TWTR character limit. A tool designed to address the TWTR exclusivity problem would ideally compose the two posts side-by-side & make it practical to write more information in the #Mastodon post. TWTR users should see a shortened abstract & fewer posts as well, so the Mastodon data value is relatively higher.
@Gina @sphinxc0re @strypey in fact a good approach would be to xmit the #Mastodon/#GNUsocial post 1st, and then populate the TWTR buffer with just a pointer to the mastodon post - & in cases where the character limit is not exceeded the twtr post could be populated w/the msg as well.
@resist1984 the crossposter I use doesn't limit my Masto post length, and as a result, does show a shortened abstract on T, with a link to the full Masto post. I choose not to crosspost any posts with @mentions in them to T, so T followers only get the initial post, not any resulting discussion thread. They don't get any replies I make to other fediverse posts either.
@sphinxc0re @Gina
@resist1984 I look at it this way; crossposters allow people to focus their posting activity here, without losing the potential reach of the T audience. Promoting them as a transitional solution makes people more likely to come here, not less.
@Gina @sphinxc0re
@strypey @sphinxc0re @Gina if you truly condemn Twtr then I suggest this RMS article on how an org can use #Facebook w/minimal societal harm: https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html Some of that advice can be adapted to #Twitter.
@resist1984 you're teaching Grandma to suck eggs a bit here. I was sending links to that page to the #CC #Aotearoa Project Lead about a decade ago to advise him on whether and how we engaged with FB for that project. My minimal engagement with T is very much is the spirit of the strategy RMS lays out in that essay.
@sphinxc0re @Gina
@strypey @resist1984 @sphinxc0re @Gina I've gone for a kind of middleground approach - I don't crosspost everything, but I follow some people on Twitter via my reader app, plenty of interesting people still there. To interact I reply to them there via Bridgy, and put my Mastodon/website in my bio/handle. Maybe I'll pique the interest of someone to check the Fediverse now and then, without feeding the beast too much.
@strypey
> There are much betters to migrate from T to the fediverse than 'to be able to read Strypey's stuff'
This is like saying "my vote is too small to matter so I why vote at all?". Large numbers of ppl w/that same mentality is why #Trump is in power. Collectively this rationale is harmful.
@Gina @sphinxc0re