Listen, I was just maintaining my lists, and I've noticed a bunch of you who I follow HAVE NOT POSTED ANYTHING IN AGES.

Now, before you get all snippy with me, there is no excuse for this! None! Yes, I get it, you read on Reddit that Mastodon is too hard! You have to pick a server! YOU. HAVE. TO. PICK. A. SERVER!

Well, you already *did* pick a server, so now it's as hard as Twitter was, which is to say, not at all!

"Oh but I switched to Threads" you claim! Sure you did! Well, at least turn on federation on your Threads account and let us follow you then. And don't forget to tell us in your old account what your Threads account is.

"Oh I wouldn't switch to Threads, it's a corporately owned evil organization!" you claim, "So I switched to the corporately owned evil Bluesky instead because all the anti-mastodon snobs who aren't sure why they don't like Mastodon but are pretty sure it's bad because reply guys* and because certain folks have rights on Mastodon like the right not to be harassed, are on here. This is the platform my favorite authors would switch to if they didn't love Twitter so much, like that author of that fantasy wizard kids book I love, what's her name, not that I share her views!", well at least post that fact. Nvm we know why you didn't! But you'll be back eventually because BS will screw you over just like Musk did when he closed Twitter and replaced it with the decrooked swastika*** site. So why not skip all that crap and just post here anyway?

Come on, you owe me content! A human can only live on so many cat pictures a day!

(j/k, also I'm getting too much content if anything, though that friggin cat pictures account does post rather a lot. But I did notice, alas, a lack of activity by a lot of accounts I was hoping to see content from.)

* I'm not entirely sure what a Reply Guy is, the people certain Mastocelebs describe sound like the kind of trolls I put up** with all the time on Twitter anyway (at least until I added privacy), so I'm not sure how Mastodon has more of them. If it's the content/etiquette policers, who genuinely can get annoying and see Maspecific, remember you can probably avoid them by not using mastodon.social. Then it's literally none of anyone's business how you post. But use CWs folks especially when discussing hate crimes, include alt-text on your pictures, and most of all don't be a bigot, because that's what good people do, regardless of whether they're on mastodon.social or not.

** Edit: to clarify, "put up" is past tense here, I don't have an account on the decrooked swastika site.

*** Edit 2: For those who weren't brought up on WW-II movies as a kid (they were cheap in the 1970s and 1980s for the BBC to license), the swastika was referred to as the "crooked cross" in half of them. Just thought I'd explain that.

#fediverse

@poundquerydotinfo yeah....this probably won't inspire people to post.

Especially because I'd think that those people just aren't here anymore.

I'm willing to bet 30-40% of my follow relationships have left over the past year and a half because Mastodon has almost completely taken over Fedi to where new users don't even know there's anything else here.

So when Mastodon absolutely refuses to add safety and moderation features, people get fed up with harassment and leave.‍️

We can only do so much to keep people here if the devs won't even do the most basic things for moderation.

I've been harping on the dev team to add these things for a year and eventually got personally blocked by Eugen because of it.‍️

@BeAware @poundquerydotinfo

I suppose the answer to this is #plugins. It worked well for #Usenet and there's no reason it shouldn't work here.

Is there resistance to the idea of #plugins too. I've never seen this discussed so I'm ignorant here.

@marqle @poundquerydotinfo well, the infrastructure for plugins would have to exist first...

People can't just make plugins if there's no way to "plug them in".

Mastodon has no such way to do that.

So if they won't even make basic moderation features, I highly doubt theyll be making any sort of plugin infrastructure so we can change the platform more deeply.

@BeAware
@poundquerydotinfo

Difficulty aside, I think I'd prefer the #plugins route.

It would allow for the natural growth of #moderation.

Otherwise, we'd probably have people delaying #updates they didn't want and ultimately more forks.

Thats what seems to happen when people are split here.

I also think the #argument for #plugins is harder to argue against.

@BeAware
@poundquerydotinfo

I suppose ultimately, it is down to Eugene inasmuch as it's his wheelhouse.

But maybe the fundamental problem is, #mastodon has too much of a #monopoly in the #fediverse?

@marqle @poundquerydotinfo that's it. You hit the point there, finally.

They definitely have too much of a monopoly here and it's worrisome.