I opened up an account on Mastodon a while back to see how that environment has developed in the wake of the exodus of the "oppressed" from X (formerly known as Twitter). I followed a few hashtags for topics in which I am naturally interested. My account is on mastodon.social rather than part of one of the many personal fiefdoms created as part of that distributed network.
Many writers flounced out of X due to the alleged overwhelming presence of fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, commonsense, blah-blah, etc. Any idea that slightly diverged from leftist opinions of the moment was called intolerable. Mastodon was one popular destination.
My exploration began with topics of personal interest that were mostly related to genre fiction. I explored some political topics as well.
My first impression is that there wasn’t much activity related to Worldcon or the Hugo Awards. There also wasn’t a lot of activity related to several genre-associated hashtags. Given the number of genre authors doing their Dorian Grey impression, I would have expected more activity related to those topics. There was precious little activity related to those hashtags. [I eventually identified some other genre-related hashtags that are more active.]
Later on, we had the misfortune of the attempted #assassination attempt on #donaldtrump. For clarity, it was fortunate and good that he survived. Political violence is always a bad idea.
A check of the hashtags #trump and #assassination in the days following the attempt suggests to me that the Mastodon admins are purposefully censoring or otherwise throttling which topics are allowed to trend on that platform. The hashtag stats suggested that few were talking about the event. A review of the search results of posts on Mastodon indicated that many people WERE talking about that event. The hashtags were included in the text of various posts, but a hashtag search didn’t correlate well with a post-based search.
Conversely, both tags were quite active on X. I cannot say that the tag search and the post search accurately reflected each other on X. Only that both were active.
There is also evidence of censorship/down-platforming/throttling of certain Mastodon accounts. Doing topical searches, I found several accounts that Mastodon admins had purposefully muted. You could still click through to read what they have posted, but you do get a notification that the account has been muted.
None of the accounts I found (roughly 5, so not a big sample) had posted anything overtly offensive unless one holds that moderate disagreement with leftist positions is ipso facto proof of offense. Comrade Stalin would be proud.
It would be unsurprising if I learned that my account had already been deprecated or otherwise throttled.
Individually, Mastodon users generally (exceptions to everything) appear to lack any interest in critically engaging with diverse viewpoints. One recent example was a discussion in the wake of the tableau from the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics that was designed to invoke da Vinci’s Last Supper.
My interlocutor responded at some point with “artistic license”. I pointed out that the artists were appropriating another culture and that I am reliably informed that cultural appropriation is an unacceptable behavior. Having nothing to offer in response, they blocked me.
Casual accusations of racism, sexism, blah-blah, etc. are routine. I’ve already been called racist despite not once offering any opinion that relates to race in any reasonable manner. Again, Comrade Stalin would be proud.
Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter/X the platform was infamous for quietly throttling accounts expressing opinions that were modestly right-of-center. There was a two-tiered system of moderation in which the slightest of infractions by someone right-of-center would engender suspensions, throttling, and bans while identical (if politically inverted) behavior from left-of-center accounts would be overlooked. [I came across a recent thread on Mastadon about abuse on that platform. So leaving Twitter didn't really solve any problems, eh?]
After purchasing the site, Elon revealed exactly how biased the prior administrative efforts had been. Many normal reasonably centrist and modestly right-of-center accounts were restored.
It appears that the Mastodon user base prefers to live in a mutually affirming silo. The platform is distributed so that people may create private chatrooms where they can police ideas into conformance. And that choice is their absolute right!
Yet they still are tolerating extreme forms of authoritarianism in their midst. I found many profiles using Che Guevarra and communist Hammer-and-Sickle images as profile icons. Other accounts will readily endorse socialism and/or communism as viable alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism.
Most informed people will recognize that socialism/communism continues to have a higher body count than fascism. Socialism/communism also continues to foster higher rates of poverty and murder by state actors. Ask the citizens of Venezuela about it.
While Mastadonians have cleared Hitler, the Nazi cross, and real fascism from their social media environment, they have left far more offensive, destructive, and murderous opinions untouched.
None of this is particularly surprising. Nor is it unique to left-leaning folks. People on the right (with some obvious exceptions) have seemingly lost the ability to participate in good-faith engagement with people who hold different opinions. The number of right-leaning accounts that are comfortable with using helicopter memes to address communists is quite…well…deplorable.
People in all corners of the political pool only seem to want to assuage their emotions by participating in the vibe. Labels matter more than substance.
Me, too…from time to time. But I try to be aware of the problem.
Mastodonia isn’t a solution. It is a reflection of the problem of reacting to conflict by shutting out contrary perspectives. Siloed communities are not a solution. Good faith engagement is the only solution. I don’t see it coming back in fashion anytime soon.
